No, Ubisoft's EULA clause ordering you to destroy your games isn't new, nor is it unique
Ubisoft isn't the only studio that orders you to destroy your games once support ends
And they wonder why people pirate games.
TL:DR;
Square Enix, Larian Studios, and Kinetic Games as well, according to the same article.
I am mad about how dumb we all are, and how easiy swayed by simple narratives that reinforce our biases.
From the Baldur's Gate 3 EULA:
This Pact shall remain in effect for as long as you use, operate or run the Game.
You may terminate the Pact at any time and for any reason by notifying Larian Studios that you intend to terminate the agreement. Upon termination all licenses granted to you in this Pact shall immediately terminate and you must immediately and permanently remove the Game from your device and destroy all copies of the Game in your possession.
This didn't cause any stir when it came out. That makes sense, right? Nobody reads these things.
Except everybody in the press read this one, because it went viral for being written in character as a D&D document and having a bunch of jokes in it.
Admittedly this is meant to apply to refunds and things like refusing the privacy agreement, but that's the point, it's fairly standard boilerplate for that reason.
Just because people don't read the agreements and didn't know about it doesn't mean they should have put it. Destroy physical copies is a dump clause and isn't enforcible.
Of course that doesn't stop companies from trying to enforce unenforceable clauses example: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/08/16/politics/arbitration-signing-away-rights-disney-plus-wrongful-death-lawsuit
For sure. There's plenty of unenforceable stuff in EULAs. For one thing a bunch of these are trying to apply globally across places with way different laws managing customer protections.
But if you don't mind that logic getting turned both ways, just because a EULA clause isn't enforceable doesn't mean you shouldn't add it.
If the idea is your lawyers think there's a risk of people buying a copy, refunding it and keeping it and you want to make sure that doesn't happen it makes some sense to add the clause. If a judge ever says that clause doesn't apply to a given situation you still mitigated the risk from the intended applicable situation.
That's why these license deals also tend to have boilerplate about how a clause being unenforceable or made illegal should not impact the rest of the clauses. It's a maximalist text, by design. It mostly exists like a big wet umbrella to keep companies out of the splash zone. Whatever ends up being used in practice is anybody's guess. The world of civil law and private deals is way less of a black and white exact science than most people getting their legal intuition from crime dramas tend to think.
So don’t buy Ubisoft. Got it.
Not what it says.
It's in the Baldur's Gate 3 EULA.
Read the article.
What they're saying is this is a relatively common temrination clause. It's meant to apply to, say, refunds.
The AC4 image is suitable, as I will, in fact, continue pirating the hell out of Ubi games I want to play, including Black Flag which I almost 100%-ed recently (haven't gone 100% on main missions yet).
Corporations want people to act like their EULAs are written in blood when they're just ramblings of an entitled child on the playground. What are you going to do? Ban them again?
Corpos abusing contract law and courts helping them
...and if I don't, do I get swatted? lol
It's not new, it's not unique, it's not legally enforceable.
The fact thay they eould ask is the fucked part.
Nor will I adhere to it.
Why are gamers still buying EA and Ubisoft? I thought we all banned them from civilized society ages ago. I mean, those stupid microtransactions, secondly, they force you to have another account and password, stupid extra launchers, and that crashing bullshit on PC... there were literally a million reasons these games sucked before the new complaints were popular. There are a bajillion games out there. Let's tell these losers to pound sand and collectively put them out of business already. We just have to make cookie cutter copies lame and out of fashioned and that would kill a lot of their business. Shun the non-believers who play Assassin's Creed!
