Sorry Ubisoft

155 comments

ubisoft should get used to players no longer owning their games
- Sega is doing the exact same thing with their new release Metaphor: Refantazio
- Not to be that guy who defends Ubisoft (God knows I haven't bought one of their games in ages), but that quote from the CEO is taken way out of context.
  He was directly asked what would need to happen for game streaming to take off, and he responded with "players would need to get used to no longer owning their games", which is pretty much true as far as answers to that question go.
- Oops, replied to the wrong comment chain here. Continue your wrath, it is righteous.
  I mean, I agree, but what does that have to do with the relationship between buying + owning and piracy + stealing? Ubisoft being shitty is a great reason to pirate, but it does not change the definition of piracy.

Companies spend far more on anti piracy for single-player games than they would make if all those stolen copies were legit sales. It's a power thing
- Oh there's a whole Wikipedia page on the subject
- People always say this, but has there ever been a good proof? Bear in mind, individuals are often not truthful when stating “I wouldn’t have bought it anyway”.
  The closest I’ve seen was a sports game; since they release each year with updates, sales numbers are often steady and reliable. The year they added an antipiracy measure no one could breach, their sales jumped by a significant factor, supposedly because they had pirates now pressured into buying it. With a bit more time, I could find the article link.
  
  Here's an article that ars just posted yesterday in fact about that.
  Tldr some group states that piracy affects company's bottom lines by up to 20%. They also state that since game sales figures are almost never published, they had to derive a replacement by using reviews and active player count. To me that just kinda invalidates the whole thing because who the hell knows what the actual relationship is between those variables, and especially when it's making such a gargantuan claim that pirates are taking such large chunks of cash from developers pockets. If companies want to show they really are being hampered by piracy to such a degree, they should post their actual books and stop hiding key information.
  
  fifa? don't people joke about every game being the same?
- People spend way more money on locks and security than anyone ever steals. It makes no sense at all.
  
  more money on locks and security than anyone ever steals.
  Many more things would go "walkies" if that money hadn't been spent, the argument is therefore moot.

Sorry Ubisoft, I'm not buying some of your almost decade-old game that still has Denuvo.
If you don't put your old games that made the bulk of their money a long time ago on GOG, I won't buy it.

It never was, only a corrupt judge can reach that conclusion. Stealing is subtracting an item from one person and adding it to another person, if there are two copies of the item then it's not stealing.
- What?! Forging money isn't stealing?
  Man and I always thought that it is the same as piracy
  
  No, it's Forging.
  
  Money is not an object, it's a concept. Also when you forge money you devalue the whole currency therefore subtracting it from everyone. You could argue that pirating a game devalues it, but then I ask you is the game that you paid for any worse because Joe Schmoe made a copy?
- It can already not be stealing since that requires the stolen object to be in fact a physical (and a moveable one at that) object. Stealing non-physical property does constitute a crime, but it's not stealing.
  Note: this is very specific to your country of origin and may not be true for your country or the applicable law in the case of international crime

lol as if ubisoft games are worth pirating. I pay for my internet connection and I'd rather use it on something that isn't slop
- They have a few indie titles that are fun.
  \ I really liked Grow Home and Grow Up
  
  there's a small rebel group inside ubi who escaped the rituals where the rest sold their souls to Satan. they made things like rayman and the prince metroidvania... I don't think of them though when i think ubi tbh.

Ubisoft execs are correct, gamers need to get used to not owning Ubisoft games (or purchasing them, heck they're not worth the storage space to pirate.)
- They can start AI generating games and no one will notice
- Think of the time you'll save too!

Old-fashioned high seas pirating may have been stealing, but the modern copyright infringement form has never been stealing.
A key aspect of stealing is that you're depriving the owner of some kind of property. While you have that property, they don't, and they can't use it. Copyright infringement doesn't deprive the owner of anything. The only thing they lose is the government-granted monopoly over the right to distribute that "idea". If copyright infringement is like an old fashioned crime, it's like trespassing. The government granted someone the right to control who has access to some land, and a trespasser violates that law.
- I wish piracy was stealing, I want to constantly download Ubisofts games until they go bankrupt
  
  I suppose that is true if you download the from their site.
- Now wait a damn minute.
  So what? A company pays devs, story writers, testers, etc etc to build a game over the course of months or years, and then they release copy 1 which pirate cracker 1 promptly buys.
  You, every nitwit in this thread, and everyone else then take a "ToTalLy FreE" copy ("it's not stealing" so who cares?!) because obv developer is not out anything. And then? What?
  Who recoops the game cost? How is it determined whether or not to make a sequel if some angel donor covers total cost? It makes no fucking sense.
  Sure, Ubisoft sucks, no complaint. But just because it's digital doesn't mean this brain rot is universally true. It's like some perverse form of libertarianism: I don't want to pay any taxes or tolls or whatever, but I wanna use all your shit. Every pirate here laughs and says "I got mine" but you're a bunch of moochers who try to convince yourselves you're in the right instead of thanking those of us actually buying the content.
  I've sailed the seas in my day, but I never got it in my head it was a totally cool and reasonable victimless action. You can say "I couldn't have afforded it anyway", but that argument isnt universal and it doesn't make everyone entitled to a free lunch.
  
  Your line of reasoning is exactly the same as if a company -- for the sake of argument, let's say Ubisoft for absolutely no particular reason whatsoever -- made a shitty product that no one actually wanted to buy, and therefore only sold six copies.
  Who "recoups" the cost then? Nobody. That's called the inherent risk of operating a business.
  It's also why indie developers in this day and age typically wind up considerably more successful for both themselves and their employees, because they don't need to outlay the enormous bloated expenditures of the AAA studios and publishers, nor go to such extreme lengths to desperately rake in enough revenue to break even.
- The only thing media producers [Party A] is deprived of is a little bit of money they feel entitled to every time [Party B] appreciates & consumes A's media. If hundreds & thousands of B's are appreciating & consuming A's media, the financial losses begin to add up after A put so much work, effort, training, time, passion & resources into it, only to not get paid for all that effort.
  How would you feel if you worked your ass off at work then didn't get paid because your employer felt invisible & untraceable and felt like they could get away with not paying you?
  
  How would I feel if I produced a lot of value and my employer gave me only part of it while keeping the rest for themselves because they can get away with it?
  Like 99% of people
  
  The only thing media producers [Party A] is deprived of is a little bit of money
  No, the media producers aren't deprived of money, they're deprived of control. They often do use that control to make money.
  If hundreds & thousands of B’s are appreciating & consuming A’s media, the financial losses begin to add up
  There are no losses. There may be missed opportunities to make sales, but that isn't the same thing as losses.
  A put so much work, effort, training, time, passion
  Sure, "passion". I'm sure that a lot of people pirate things passionately too.
  As for how I'd feel? I'd probably feel bad if I depended on the current crooked copyright system to make money and then I wasn't making as much money as I hoped. But, that doesn't make the current crooked copyright system right. Similarly, if I were a manor lord in the middle ages and depended on peasants to work my land and the peasants ran away, I'd feel like I was being cheated. That doesn't mean that that was a good system either.

I fully agree with the general message, but this particular anecdote doesn't really make sense to me and can easily be waved off by anyone who disagrees with it.
If buying isn't owning, that means it's renting or borrowing.
If you pirate it, they get no money and therefore cannot rent it out to you. You cannot just steal a movie from the movie rental store or a car from a car rental place. That's stealing.
Sure, it's infinitely reproducible but that's not what this meme says. That's an unrelated argument for piracy. It draws a direct connection between the 2 relationships of buying + owning and pirating + stealing. However, one has nothing to do with the other.
When someone owns something, they are allowed to rent it out and take it back at any time. It's always been that way and that's valid.
The real argument should be "if there was no intention to buy in the first place, then piracy isn't stealing" or something like that.
Let me rephrase. I agree that piracy isn't stealing, but the fact that buying isn't owning does NOT prove that at all, nor does it have anything to do with it. It's a reason people pirate, sure, but it in no way proves that piracy isn't stealing. The phrase is an if;then statement. If one thing is true, it MEANS the other is true, which just isn't the case. Both can be true sure, but proving the first half does not prove the second half. Making one true does not instantly make the other true.
This will not make anyone at ubisoft mad. In fact, they will be glad that such a poorly crafted argument is being used against them, since it's 0 effort to disprove and dismiss it. We should raise other arguments that are logically sound if we want to convince anyone - friends, family, lawmakers - of anything.
Am I completely missing the point or is this analogy completely nonsensical?
On a side note, I condone piracy and nobody should ever give money to large media corporations. But if we use stupid arguments like this it makes us easier to dismiss.
Edit: I'm looking for discussion here. If you're going to downvote me, at least tell me why you think my argument is wrong. I'm here to learn.
- It's about them missrepresenting the transaction. If you go to the store and rent a movie then it's an agreement that it's temporary. If you buy it then they can't take it back, what they are doing is fraud and complaining that we don't want to deal with them.
  
  I agree with everything you said, however that has nothing to do with piracy. It's a shitty thing they're doing that we should be mad at, but it in no way sets the definition of piracy, which is what they're going to try to defend against in any argument.
  What we should demand is that they properly define buying, owning, and renting so that we own our products. Piracy is piracy no matter what the definition of owning is. Only the reasons change. One reason is that they treat buying as renting, but it does not change the definition of piracy, no matter what we think the definition is.
- That phrase means "if you will make an enemy out of me and won't let me buy the kind of ownership I want, I'll take it and ignore paying you".
  But notice that the full explanation is longer? That phrase captures perfectly well the antagonizing perspective, and nobody goes around making sure they pay fairly the people that treat them as enemies. It also fails to capture any other bit of the logic, but it's ok, the logic is simple and automatic once the antagonism is explicitated.
  
  "You disrespect me when you use the word BUY when you mean RENT, I'll show you the same disrespect by denying you any monetary gain that you normally get from ghosting your customers"
  Sometimes I wish I could have the skills to hack these websites - change every "Buy" to "Rent", add a " Why am I seeing this?" and then explain that the transaction is for "Digital key revocable at any time by (insert scummy corporate here)".
  Then I'll happily laugh and watch their profits drop , while they try to publish a statement defending their position.
  
  I can see that, that's a good point. However, it's so easy to misconstrue that phrase into an objective statement of "the relationship between buying and owning directly creates the relationship between piracy and stealing" and the average person, lawmaker, etc can easily get confused when the "ones who own all the content" try to disprove that statement even though it's not the statement we're trying to make.
  What is literally said in the meme is incorrect, even if it means something completely different. We need to say what we mean, not make a catchy analogy that's technically incorrect and easily used against us.
- basically if you get to be a scumbag so do I
  2 wrongs don't make a right, this phrase just points out how piracy is a service issue
  
  I agree that it's a good reason to pirate, but the meme/phrase is ostensibly trying to use the definition of owning to change the definition of stealing.
  It doesn't prove anything, it just gives a good reason why people are pirating, when it looks like it's trying to prove some logical relationship of the concepts.
- my opinion: it's not stealing in the Classic sense because if you copy something you don't take it away from its owner. it might be against the law because intellectual property is a concept.
  
  What's the aversion to calling it stealing. It feels like stealing any other thing. You would steal games for the same reasons you might steal a physical good.
  Do we just want a separate word that means digital theft?
  
  Right, I agree with that, but "because if you copy something, you don't take it away from its owner" is a valid reason, and completely unrelated to the fact that buying isn't owning. Even if buying WAS owning in all situations, your comment would still be true. That's my point, the analogy in the meme is useless, and arguments like yours should be the main talking point.
- I find interesting that I remember buying a game in Brazil in 1995 (the 11th hour, sequel to The 7th Guest) and in the receipt it was written “license to use”. So, even back then we were already told that it was a permission, not ownership.
  
  Exactly. This has always been a problem to some extent, but back then no company ever revoked that license or even cared what people did with it unless they sold pirated copies. So it wasn't a problem for us either.
- I know what you mean and I agree. It's always seemed to not really make logical sense when I hear it. It isn't quite right. Like you, I also agree with the actually message behind it though.

I have 2TB of music and 7TB of videos but I rarely pirate a game.
Almost never, sometimes I'm extremely interested in something but want to try it out first. Games are such time sinks that if I can't shell out $20, then I have bigger problems and probably shouldn't be playing it.
That said, I get a lot of content isn't available in some countries and piracy is the only way some people can experience something, so, different strokes.

I'm not pirating, I'm merely copying data without involving license transfers and subscription platforms.

I can see the other argument though I don't agree with it.
Paying is obtaining a license to use a product. You own the license for as long as that payment is valid. If the validity of the license expires for some reason, you no longer have rights to use the product, whether you physically have it or not.
The difference is in licensing. Having a license to use a product that someone else created.
This is becoming a much more prevalent theme especially in computing. With physical goods, for the most part, ownership/possession of the item implies that you own the required rights to operate, use, or otherwise possess that item. Usually a license doesn't physically exist, it's more of a concept that is inexorably tied to the thing. With software however, the idea of license keys exists. If you have a license key for software, you can use the software regardless of where you got it from. Since the software can be copied, moved, duplicated, etc. The source of the actual bits the compose the software that runs doesn't matter. As long as you have a valid license key, you "own" a valid license to use the software which you paid for.
With online platforms, including, but not limited to, steam, epic Games store, Ubisoft connect, whatever.... They manage your licenses, and coordinate downloads for you, etc. The one thing I'm aware of with steam that's a benefit here is that you can get your product keys from the program and store them separately if you wish.
The problem is that not all platforms support the same format of product keys, especially for games. There's no universal licensing standard. This makes it tricky to have a product key that works where you want it to.
There's layers to this, and bluntly, unless there's wording in the license agreement that it can be revoked, terminated, invalidated, or otherwise made non-functional at the discretion of the developer that issued it, they actually can't revoke your ownership of a game, or at least the license for that game.
Application piracy (specifically for games), is when you play something without a license to do so.
They've stacked the entire system against you. Using wording in their license agreements that allows them to invalidate your license whenever they want to, and gives you no means to appeal that decision. Setting you up for litigation for piracy by using a software that you paid for when that license is revoked.
It's an insane thing to happen in my mind and there should be legislation put in place that obligates companies to offer a permanent, and irrevocable, license to software (looking at you Adobe), and also makes it much harder for companies to revoke that license. In addition, there should be a standardized licensing system, owned and operated independently from the license issuers, which manages and oversees the distribution, authentication and authorization of those licenses for them and you, something like humble bundle's system or something, where you can get license keys compatible with various platforms which can supply the software that constitutes the game you have a license for.
It should go beyond gaming.
Until such a time that the legal part of this is figured out, we'll be left with an unfair playing field, legally speaking, and piracy will be a way to have the software without a license (which is arguably illegal).
I don't like this system. I didn't ask for it. I think it should change. But legally, piracy is still illegal. The system is consumer hostile, and unfair. That fact, in and of itself, should merit something to be done about it. So far, nothing has even been proposed by governments. I'm hoping the EU makes the first move on this, and everyone follows suit. I can see them doing it too.
- Or we just go back to the old way; where a company sells a product and consumers just own it. Why does a static piece of software/video require a license? Updates used to be optional, but then company's started selling broken stuff and writing out exclusions until we had no other options.
  
  I'm not opposed to the idea, but license keys for software have existed for a very long time.
  License keys also don't always represent an application or software, they extend the rights of use beyond the initial purchase.
  As a simple example, you can get license keys for Windows that do not change what version of Windows is installed or how it operates. I work in IT, and when setting up remote access systems, we need to buy remote desktop license keys to allow users to connect. You're not getting anything you couldn't otherwise, but you're allowed to have more people connected at a time while the system is running.
  There's similar examples across the board, this is just one that's pretty fresh in my mind right now. One of my clients is hitting the limit of their RD licensing.
  For less complex software, like games, there used to be a physical component, usually an installer disk or something that would need to be validated when the game launches (though disk burning made this ineffective). With digital resources it's nearly impossible to validate someone has a licence without some kind of license key system in place.
  I'll say again, I see their argument here. I don't necessarily agree with any of it.
  IMO, it's a challenging subject, and one that we the people, via our elected representatives, should be pushing for legal representation on, by implementing laws that govern how all this works and limiting how much companies like Ubisoft can fuck us over because it's Tuesday, and that made them mad.
  
  Because the makers aren’t selling you the software or the video. They are selling you the rights to consume it. The reason for that is that software, movies and books can be easily copied and redistributed.
  When that stuff was on a physical medium it was also sold with the same license. You would own the disc/tape/book with the license but you wouldn’t own the movie, software or literary work. You can sell the disc with the license but you can’t take the content of the disc and sell it separately since that is technically copying and you don’t own the copyright.
  
  The old way was that you owned a disc or cartridge (or cassette tape) with an instance of the program on it. That's going to need a new definition that everyone can agree on.
- I think the point of the saying is that they don't recognize the licensing a consumer product as a valid exchange of money for goods or services.

why did i think pic 2 would say "adobe ceos"?

Stream is the one now forced to label change if you've missed recent events

Okay, but if I send you an unsolicited dick pick, who owns the rights?

"No your honour, I liberated it"

Try to pirate the Crew. Or Steep. You can't, since they rely on a central server.
- I actually tried steep a while ago (maybe 6 months?) and refunded it because I couldn't play offline. I was looking to scratch that SSX Tricky itch and it definitely did not do it for me. Ended up just emulating Tricky, but damn I want a remake or sequel.
  
  Ssx 3 via emulator is pretty good. Different though but I like the open world idea.
- The Crew server side is being reverse engineered so you can eventually play it in the future.
  
  How many games like this will receive such a server emulator. Piracy won't stop games from being killed. Policy will.

Why does Steam does the same thing but nobody cares? Steam also takes 30% of the price just because. Ubisoft has 100x more employees but always gets hate.
- Steam is a reseller, it’s not the license holder
  
  Sure, but Steam sells the licenses and holds them for you in your account, so it does not quite answer the question. To me they still have all the same issues other platforms that deal in licensing have. Steam just has better PR and is not overtly a dick the way others have been.

Yeah but... No.

Sovcit gamer edition

Pirating is copyright infringement. Best option is to play different games
- Lemmy will remember that

155 comments