Could GDPR Policy Erase Your Games? It Happened To an Ubisoft Customer (pcworld.com) 104
If you haven't used your Ubisoft account in a while, there's a chance the game publisher might nuke your account for being inactive -- that's the reality one gamer said he discovered after stepping away from PC gaming for more than a year. From a report: "In 2020, I sold my PC because I was gaming way too much and it went a bit over the healthy way of doing it. I made a choice to work and attend school," a Norwegian gamer named Tor, who wished to be identified only by his first name, told PCWorld. He sold off his Core i7 and GeForce GTX 1080 Ti machine, and began relying on his phone as his only piece of technology.
But by the summer of 2021, Tor decided to get back into gaming, so he purchased a new gaming PC, only to discover he was unable to log into his Ubisoft account. Tor told PCWorld he was able to reset the password, but eventually learned the account had been closed, taking several hundred dollars of purchased games with it. All Ubisoft titles from Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege series to Assassins' Creed and more were gone. But none of the other services he uses had been cut off. Only Ubisoft disappeared, he said. Ubi officials, however, flatly insist whatever happened in Tor's case isn't normal and that it has never deleted any account that hasn't been logged into in less than four years. The company also says any account that has a purchased game tied to it, would also not be up for closure at all. Despite what the company says though, Tor insists his account and games are gone. "Ubisoft told me they can't recover it. It's deleted, permanently locked," he said.
But by the summer of 2021, Tor decided to get back into gaming, so he purchased a new gaming PC, only to discover he was unable to log into his Ubisoft account. Tor told PCWorld he was able to reset the password, but eventually learned the account had been closed, taking several hundred dollars of purchased games with it. All Ubisoft titles from Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege series to Assassins' Creed and more were gone. But none of the other services he uses had been cut off. Only Ubisoft disappeared, he said. Ubi officials, however, flatly insist whatever happened in Tor's case isn't normal and that it has never deleted any account that hasn't been logged into in less than four years. The company also says any account that has a purchased game tied to it, would also not be up for closure at all. Despite what the company says though, Tor insists his account and games are gone. "Ubisoft told me they can't recover it. It's deleted, permanently locked," he said.
Re:This worked out well for Tor (Score:5, Insightful)
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someone came into my house with a bat and smashed all my antiques, would you be praising that person?
Depends on if it was an impish boy looking for rupees.
Under EU laws they maybe forced to refund / replac (Score:5, Informative)
Under EU laws they maybe forced to refund / replace the games.
Re:Under EU laws they maybe forced to refund / rep (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Under EU laws they maybe forced to refund / rep (Score:5, Informative)
Yea, it wouldn't take Ubi more than 30 seconds to find his past purchases and lfip the "its yours" switch. I don't like/trust Ubi but it really feels like there is missing information here.
Tor could go through his receipts as well. Presumably Ubisoft emails you with the proof of purchase like every other store.
This isn't an issue with the GDPR, the GDPR only governs how you handle personal data and nowhere does it say that inactive accounts must be deleted. Ubisoft did the typical over-reaction of people who have never had the GDPR explained to them at a 5yr old level and just deleted. The GDPR is there primarily to ensure that your personal details are not sold on without your knowledge or consent. This problem is with Ubisoft.
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You're assuming he kept his emails/receipt. I've seen people try to return something in a store a week after they received it/ purchased it who didn't have their receipt.
Also, depending on how long ago he "purchased" the games, he could have deleted those emails since enough time had passed he thought he no longer needed them.
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I mean, the GDPR still assigns a certain level of risk to holding any personal data (such as the games you play or the books you borrow from the library). There's a point where the cost-benefit between liability and customer service complaints says that at some point you nuke the account and eat the angry blog posts. This is like the blackouts in California after the state made the power company liable for wildfires: tilt the tables too far and at some point people stop playing.
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Re: Under EU laws they maybe forced to refund / re (Score:2)
The Ubisoft spokesperson continued, âoeThis case doesnâ(TM)t fit within our criteria for inactive account deletion, so our customer support team will reach out to the player to get his username so they can start an investigation and take the appropriate measures.â
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Can you prove you need an inactive account and all data contained within indefinitely? Obviously if the user never comes back, then that data is not needed.
Regardless, this is most likely caused by GDPR, as its strict data deletion requirements means it's easy to fuck up and delete more than what's necessary. The people implementing those deletion routines aren't lawyers either, so it's better to err on the side of deleting too much. The cost for non-compliance is way greater than the cost of fixing up a fe
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With GDPR you are not proving that you need data stored for X amounts of time, you prove that you need to process the personal details X, Y and Z specifically in order to do your business. Then you can save those details for eternity until the customer asks you to delete it.
That's literally false. From the European commission [europa.eu]:
For how long can data be kept and is it necessary to update it?
Answer
Data must be stored for the shortest time possible. That period should take into account the reasons why your company/organisation needs to process the data, as well as any legal obligations to keep the data for a fixed period of time.
Your company/organisation should establish time limits to erase or review the data stored.
And from the same page there's this little gem:
Your company/organisation must also ensure that the data held is accurate and kept up-to-date.
Which means you also have to keep bugging them to make sure their address for example is up-to-date. Or alternatively just delete the data. Which do you think is more likely?
If you make shoes then your users penis size is none of your concern and you are not allowed to process it, if you make custom Kotekas however you are perfectly fine to both process and store your users penis size in your database for as long as you like or until your customer asks you to delete it.
Yeah and if you want to ship it to them, now you need their address. Oops, now that's something you need to store. What if you ask for payment? Oh, that's payment information you need to store. What if they ask for a refund? What if you h
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No that is not false, I do however recognize that I didn't specify that this was for list of current active customers. "The shortest time possible" is something that you define yourself based on the needs of your business, all that is required is that you can when asked present a reason behind your time limit, providing a life time warranty is not one of them since that does not required personal information, that is what you use receipts for. Same is for refunds, no need for any personal info for that, bri
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providing a life time warranty is not one of them since that does not required personal information, that is what you use receipts for.
That's why I said "Now I don't run a business in the EU, but if I did, the users are going to be holding onto their own data. It'll be a digitally signed blob that they'll need to send every time they interact with me."
Unfortunately, that is a horrible user experience since users are forgetful and they don't backup their data.
there exists up to date registers from which all businesses source their data.
How do those registers comply with GDPR? They don't have a case for storing any of that data.
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That's why I said "Now I don't run a business in the EU, but if I did, the users are going to be holding onto their own data. It'll be a digitally signed blob that they'll need to send every time they interact with me."
Unfortunately, that is a horrible user experience since users are forgetful and they don't backup their data.
So you keep a lifetime register of who bought commodity X in order to serve them later? This I have never experienced in either USA, EU or Asia before, warranties have always been "present the receipt of your purchase".
How do those registers comply with GDPR? They don't have a case for storing any of that data.
Of course they do, their case is that they need to keep those registers in order to perform their business as making addresses available (most of them are also government registers). That said you don't have to keep an up-to date address of your customers either, the text in GDPR is "where ne
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There are no vague definitions in the GDPR, nor are there any "tax foreign companies" sections in it. There are zero limits on how long you can hold on to inactive accounts, it's only if the user specifically asks you to delete all their data that you have to delete all their personal data that you have, until that happens you can keep it as long as you like.
If another person named Tor asks to have his account deleted you of course ask for his proper credentials (like a userid or username) just like you nor
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There have been reports of trolls taking advantage of companies with poor security to delete other people's accounts. I wonder if you send a Right to be Forgotten request to Unisoft from a different email address to the one on the account, but put the account email address in the body, will they blindly delete it?
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Re:Under EU laws they maybe forced to refund / rep (Score:5, Insightful)
>Yea, it wouldn't take Ubi more than 30 seconds to find his past purchases and flip the "its yours" switch.
Umm, *if* they actually deleted his account in a misguided attempt to comply with GDPR (or perhaps due to a carrying out a mistaken, fraudulent, or bug-spawned delete request), then it certainly would. They should no longer have any record of what he bought. I'm pretty sure even backups are supposed to eventually be purged.
They could potentially have him send a copy of all his receipts and have someone go through to manually "repurchase" them all for him. Assuming he saved them, and that they contain some difficult-to-counterfeit confirmation code that proves they're valid, rather than just referencing a purchase record that may well have been deleted along with other personal information. But that's going to take time. He could easily have hundreds of games, and each could easily take a minute or more to validate, locate, and "repurchase" if they don't currently have an interface optimized for correcting such problems at scale.
So, potentially many hours of work by someone they trust with the ability to essentially give away thousands of dollars in merchandise (i.e., is probably making a lot better than minimum wage). Not to mention the details of their contracts with the publishers (and implementation of the database interface) - i.e. is it even possible for them to "give away" games without paying the publisher for them, and/or creating a new specialized database interface?
Basically - it could easily get quite expensive, and is certainly not a precedent they want to establish. Especially not if their terms of service give them an easy out.
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If that's the case then they would have issues with the tax authorities and that could be a lot more headache for them than just trying to dig through their archives. The tax authorities often requires 10 years of transactions logged. (but it may vary depending on country)
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I seriously doubt those tax records need any personally identifiable information about the buyer though - that would basically make simple cash transactions illegal.
And it's the personally-identifiable records that you need in order to reconstruct a customer's purchase history.
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Sometimes they do.
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Not to mention the details of their contracts with the publishers (and implementation of the database interface) - i.e. is it even possible for them to "give away" games without paying the publisher for them . . .
Um, what? Considering this is a story about UbiSoft's game store, yes they can give away their own games on their own store. They can set the price to zero for him if they wanted.
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Ah, does the Ubisoft store only sell Ubisoft published games? Seems like a dead end for anyone trying to seriously compete in the market.
If that's the case though, then I suppose they only have to worry about any other residuals that aren't 100% tied to sales price.
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Try re-reading my last comment.
You are right that article is clearly about games SOLD BY the Ubisoft store. However, I see nothing that would lead me to assume that all the games they lost are PUBLISHED BY Ubisoft. Which is why I was asking if the Ubisoft store ONLY sells games published by Ubisoft.
I mean, that would make them a serious outlier in the software store business. The Steam store sells games from lots of publishers. As does the Apple store, the Microsoft store, the Google Play store, and pr
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However, I see nothing that would lead me to assume that all the games they lost are PUBLISHED BY Ubisoft. Which is why I was asking if the Ubisoft store ONLY sells games published by Ubisoft.
Again, what does that matter? They were sold BY Ubisoft. It was THEIR game store. He was their customer. It does not matter if they were games not developed by UbiSoft.
I mean, that would make them a serious outlier in the software store business.
Ummm. No they are not outliers. Some companies only sell their own games on their store. For example, Activision.
If Ubisoft is only selling their own games, that would seem to put them at a huge disadvantage in carving a long-term niche for their store.
1) You do know that Ubisoft can only sell digital games (or anything copyrighted) that they have permission to sell, right? They cannot sell for example Halo Infinite if Microsoft does not let them sell it. And nothing says the MS
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>You do understand that if Ubisoft credits his account for a game that does not mean that Ubisoft does not pay for that game to the developer internal or external.
Yes. That was my original point - For any non-Ubisoft games at least they can't just replace them at no cost, it comes out of their own pocket, in addition to the cost of reconstructing what was in the lost customer library to begin with. It's something they're obviously going to want to avoid doing if they can get away with it. (Something wh
their terms of service give them an out NOT IN EU (Score:2)
their terms of service give them an out NOT IN THE EU as in EU there are real consumer rights.
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Ubisoft's problem, if they sell games without clearly advertising it is for a limited time, they should be on the hook for it at least as long as the shop exists.
I hope this specific fuck-up will cost them a lot more than the wages for a support guy restoring the stuff (in terms of lost goodwill and business). That is the only way of keeping large companies honest, short of a successful lawsuit.
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Do we have any evidence that Ubisoft sells games for a limited time? I mean, they claim
The company also says any account that has a purchased game tied to it, would also not be up for closure at all.
Sounds to me like this was far more likely some sort of fuck up, or even an attempted scam by the person claiming to have lost their games - with zero evidence presented to the contrary that possibility shouldn't be dismissed out of hand.
I agree that Ubisoft should totally be on the hook for fixing this (assuming it was actually their problem and not, say, the customer deleting their account, confirming that the know the
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Assuming he can prove he bought them, maybe.
User error? (Score:2)
Is there any proof that the purchased games were in this account? Users forget the basics of their accounts all the time. Maybe he had two accounts?
If this was happening at scale I think we would be seing a lot more evidence of it happening.
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and found an email about how his Ubisoft account was going to be deleted due to lack of activity.
Given that humans most certainly can be idiots, and that game companies can be evil, there's no good reason to take either of them at their word without question.
What we do know is we have an individual making claims, parts of which do not match reality, and a game company making public statements that do match reality, and private statements that match expectations.
I made an ubisoft account back in 2016 to redeem a humble bundle code.
I believe I only used it for a couple weeks, and just checking now my las
The search for more money (Score:1)
Is UBISOFT a bunch of dicks? Does the sun still rise in the morning? This and other news today at 5
Scapegoat (Score:3)
Many companies use the GDPR as a scapegoat. Websites begging you to let them track you is a big example. The GDPR doesn't require any of it. It is in fact illegal to even put those overlays up when the client has already indicated that tracking is unwanted (e.g., it sends the do-not-track header). But there isn't a company in the world that won't lie to your face to keep tracking you.
The GDPR doesn't force Ubisoft to be thieving assholes. That's just who they are and they needed a scapegoat.
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The GPDR does not require the blocking overlays, but does require consent from the user to collection infomration about that user. If the website is doing any tracking, then it is required by law to still get the user's consent. Blocking the user from accessing any content before any tracking cookies have been exchanged in the first place is simply a cost-effective way for the company to comply.
They could also fully comply with the GPDR by not exchanging those cookies with customers who did not give th
Re:Scapegoat (Score:4)
"You're seeing this because we want to track you and the GDPR says we can't if you don't want to be tracked, so we're ignoring your DNT header and using dark UI patterns to trick you into consenting" doesn't deflect blame quite as well as "this is what your government makes us do", does it?
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There is already the occasional call for banning "dark patterns" like this by (semi)-political figures. So maybe there will an amendment to the GDPR in the future. But I expect that it will take a few more years before the problem is fully recognized.
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Your corporate overlords thank you for being such a perfectly useful idiot.
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Your corporate overlords thank you for being such a perfectly useful idiot.
Thank you for admitting defeat in this discussion.
Publishers and their platforms. (Score:5, Insightful)
What happens to the games I legitimately bought when the company goes out of business... or just decides that maintaining a store no-one buys from is too expensive?
The simple answer is you lose the stuff you paid good money for. No publisher is immune from failing, not even EA who also seem to be abandoning their horrid idea of running their own store. Imagine if THQ had of forced us to buy games through their own store before they went under in 2012. Personally I've been here before, I used to use Stardock Central, later known as Impulse. It was sold to Gamestop in 2011, they decided to bin the platform in 2014. The games I owned on Impulse were no longer available to be downloaded or played via the client. Fortunately I only had two games and old Stardock Central backups were openable via 7Zip.
Because of this, I won't buy from publisher stores, this includes Epic which will likely go through the same thing as soon as Fortnite stops printing money. Only Steam and Gog have given me reasonable assurances that the games I buy from them will survive their collapse.
EA, like Ubisoft thought that they could cut out Steam without realising that making a store that people like is hard and Steam has worked very hard to make a store that works and is unobtrusive. They failed and they've put their entire catalogues back on Steam, how long will it be before they decide to bin off the stores altogether?
On the subject of the GDPR, during the leadup to GDPR day, as anyone from the UK would know, we were spammed constantly by any business who had any of our personal data and wanted to have their wicked way with it. Only two businesses who have my personal email address sent an email saying "hey, you know that GDPR thing, we don't need to you do a damn thing because we're already compliant with it". One was Singapore Airlines, the other was Steam.
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If they do it openly, without legalese hidden deep in the EULA, I think that would be more honest and acceptable.
Of course, people might respond by only paying half the money. As is, I already assume my purchased online content will disappear at some point. My personal reaction is that I'm rarely paying more than the price of a cinema ticket. If you are content with somewhat older stuff, that already works great for games. Sooner or later they will appear in some heavily discounted sale.
No (Score:5, Informative)
The GDPR explicitly allows continued storage of data as long as there is a valid business reason. Having products your customer may use again on your servers is a valid business reason. They may be allowed to delete after 5 or 10 years of inactivity, but that would be up to other laws.
Looks more like somebody at UBI Soft screwed up and not they cannot own up to it.
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Re: No (Score:2)
Indeed. I work at a University and we can keep the fact you graduated and the class of your degree in perpetuity.
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That is a different case. The "business reason" here does not expire. On the other hand, I wonder what happens if a student requests deletion. AFAIK, it is unclear at this time who has the better claim.
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And in actual reality, the GDPR requires "irreversible deletion" of personal data once the business reason to keep it is gone. So, no, you may very much _not_ archive personal data longer than that business reason is present. On request, unless you have an overriding business reason, you may in addition have to delete earlier and that most certainly includes the archives.
Seriously, I do GDPR audits. Where do you people get such flawed information?
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"Irreversible deletion" is a company policy, not a GPDR requirement. The company might do it so that it simplifies compliance with the GPDR, but the GPDR categorically does not require it.
The only reason to irreversibly delete old business clients from a database is so that the company has plausible deniability in the event of a catatsrophe. The GPDR does not require it.
how did he do school with only an phone?? (Score:2)
how did he do school with only an phone??
and how the hell do you even type an paper on one with no keyboard and small screen?
Re:how did he do school with only an phone?? (Score:5, Funny)
This may come as a shock to you, but you can write things out on paper using a pen or pencil.
Re: how did he do school with only an phone?? (Score:2)
True story: A few years ago, a guy brought a typewriter to a college lecture while everyone else was using laptops. He thought it would be a funny prank.
The sounds of typing annoyed the professor, and asked the student to turn the sound down.
There is a video of this on the net somewhere.
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Computer lab.
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Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. Some phones, in fact, support HDMI (DP) alternate mode over USB.
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Install an obscure OS on your computer.
OS/2 anyone?
No (Score:2)
Unless I am misremembering, the GPDR only requires companies to notify users of the data about them they intend to collect, require explicit consent to do so (as opposed to any kind of opt-out system), and that they must notify customers in the event of a data breach.
It seems to me like this policy of deleting inactive acccounts is, at best, a company-decided policy, and I suspect they are leaning on the existence of the GPDR because by deleting inactive accounts, the company can effectively terminate an
Loss of wealth. (Score:2)
While not necessarily a good investment, the ability to own items was a good way to preserve wealth.
When people in the past needed to get some extra money, they will often have a Garage Sale, in which a big money maker would be they would have a collection of Books, Records (now call vinyls), Tapes, VHS, CDs, DVDs, Bluerays, game Cartridges and Disks, which we could sell, after having taking enjoyment from them. In which the purchaser can get these at a bargain compared to new, and enjoy it further, and the
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Businesses have discovered that they can make a lot more money off of you when you are forced to rent from them. They especially like the monthly recurring income.
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All the more reason to fight for ownership again so that we don't become a world of renters and subscribers.
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CPUs: Want to get faster speeds on your CPU that are only disabled by software. Pay up.
Not GDPR. (Score:3)
But none of the other services he uses had been cut off. Only Ubisoft disappeared, he said.
The problem here is Usbisoft, not GDPR.
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The problem here is Usbisoft, not GDPR.
Maybe, but the reality is that the GDPR wasn't thought through very well (shocking for government, I know) and it's still open to interpretation (shocking for a law, I know).
Actually, no. GDPR is well thought through, and the responsibilities of organisations who want to hold personal data are abundantly clear. I'm a European developer and systems implementer and there's no confusion about how personal data must be handled.
It's just as likely that other companies simply aren't complying with GDPR properly, and what Ubisoft did was the correct interpretation.
If any company is not compliant at this stage, then they only have themselves to blame. And in this case, as others here have already pointed out, GDPR does not mandate the deletion of inactive accounts. Many online companies do have a policy of nuking accoun
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No. Ubisoft has a contractual relationship with this user (he bought access to games from them).
The GDPR clearly states that data necessary to fulfill contractual obligations can be retained.
So there is nothing in the GDPR that forces Ubisoft to delete an account after a period of inactivity.
And there are almost certainly provisions in the laws governing contracts in the relevant country (Norway, in this case) that would make Ubisofts decision to delete a user account associated with bought games a breach o
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Maybe, but the reality is that the GDPR wasn't thought through very well (shocking for government, I know) and it's still open to interpretation (shocking for a law, I know).
No. It's open to common sense. The problem here is Ubisoft lacks it. There's no requirement under GDPR to ever delete an account unless asked. There's a requirement not to store collected details unless there's a business reason to do so.
Just because retarded people exist doesn't make laws poorly thought through.
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Ubisoft has been a garbage company putting out buggy garbage for a good two decades now! I've forgotten which the last two straws were it's been so long, but they are absolutely off my list of companies to buy games from. Not even very old or used ones!
I picked up something on a steam sale that was 5+ years old but looked interesting and upon launch it tried to connect to their DRM servers which no longer existed. Apparently there was some sort of a work-around, but steam has a great return policy, so I wen
What nonsense is that again? (Score:2)
Game accounts, like at Ubisoft, get deleted after 2 years.
And that is ... loooong ... looong ... long ... long .... loong before GDPR was even incepted.
I have dozens of Ubisoft accounts deleted before the GDPR existed.
If he is such an addict, he should have payed attention to the EULA for a "cost free game to play".
Re: What nonsense is that again? (Score:2)
If he didn't play for 4 years, I guess he isn't as much of an addict as you claim he is
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Does not stop him from playing 20h a day if he starts playing again.
And, as I said: it was always the policy of Ubisoft (and that is more or less standard in the game industry), to delete accounts after one or two years of inactivity.
It is in the EULA which you should read but no one bothers to do so: when you sign up.
And you get minimum 3 reminder eMails when the deletion time approaches: "attention we are about to delete your account! 90 days remaining!"
How do I know that? I played very very very long Ubi
The article ends with... (Score:2)
(Paraphrased) "That isn't our policy. We don't deactivate accounts with purchased games. Not correct. If that's true, we'll fix it."
So where's the problem?
I'm not convinced the story is true anyway. "Your account is deactivated, click here to restore it", is dodgy, to say the least. And if it's true, to me sounds like a quick "mea culpa" and resolution.
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Lost the account to a phishing scheme and the email has since been changed?
Nothing to do with the GDPR (Score:3)
Tell me again why we should trust the cloud (Score:2)
?
How hard is it (Score:1)
1) Vendor should comply with GDPR - under which just might have some kind of language for what to do
2) Users who signed up 'free' or during a deal, HATED it and never logged back in should have to do NOTHING for their data to be erased
3) If it's an online game and you can't save the offline data, you should EXPECT additional steps
It's not a stretch to say that the company has to adhere to the letter of the law (since that's how the EU rolls) and
"logged into in less than four years" (Score:2)
So, if you haven't logged in for over four years, bye bye any Ubisoft games?
Hell, I've still got games on CD on my shelf - the original Half-Life 2 for example - now over 17 years since I bought it.
I'm fairly sure the CD key will still work, unlikely the CD's will - not that I've got a CD drive anymore.
That's not the point though. At least Steam has stayed true to their word - 17 years on and Half-Life 2 is still mine to play when I want.
Heck, if I ever do have a burning desire to play something like Far Cr
Not what happened... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a big lie. I can tell you exactly what happened. Happened to a friend of mine.
He sold the PC. Left all his accounts and personal data on it. Buyer logged in and transferred everything to their account.
Don't blame Ubisoft or GDPR for being a bonehead.
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Ubisoft lets you transfer games to other accounts?
Nothing (Score:2)
Nothing of value was lost.
Ordinary common sense (Score:1)
Stupid article (Score:3)
They blame a boogeyman instead of the obvious: Even Ubisoft agreed the account shouldn't have been deleted.
Precisely nothing in the GDPR requires deleting an inactive account. It requires deleting gathered user data unless there's a business reason to keep it. A user having paid for games and maybe wanting access to them in the future is a pretty damn good business reason.
I've seen this story blow up all over the internet and only PC World were stupid enough to blame GDPR for what was nothing more than a Ubisoft fuckup.
I'm Calling Total BS (Score:2)
I then logged into it (I saw I could connect my GOG Galaxy to it). All of my games are still there.
I think he's either making the store up for free games, or has crossed his accounts. (I've done this, I have two Steam accounts, one I made to get a free game, and another that I've used to buy games. I've accidentally logged into my single game account before and had a minor panic attack seeing all my games gone only to realize that I'm just in the wrong acco
This is on us (Score:2)
Ubi moved stores back in the day. I too had all the purchase history gone, but they at least moved my games to Uplay. Can't recall the exact timeframe, but it was about 2015-ish, so that matches with this person's story.
That being said, we assume companies will keep our "deleted" records, but then act surprised when they cannot be recovered. Back in the day, they would just mark a bit in the database. Now they will really delete stuff, except protected data, like purchases.
But even then, shutting down a sto
Re: (Score:2)
Just realize that optical media backups are only good for a couple of years, and hard disk backups are only good for the life of the inactive drive. Currently, the only reliable, 10+ year, consumer accessible backup medium is LTO tape. And then, the backup is only as good as having access to working hardware. Cloud backup makes things interesting though.
What about logging into account via web site? (Score:2)
Does that reset inactivities? That is what I do in getting its free games they offer. :)