Ubisoft Takes Stance Against Third-party Game Code Sellers, Punishes Users In The Process

There’s no company in the game industry right now that’s in greater need of a generous helping of good PR than Ubisoft. But despite that being the case, it seems as though that is the last thing the company cares about, something proven once again this past weekend.

Last Friday, many Far Cry 4 owners logged onto their Uplay accounts to see their game missing – an odd thing, to be sure, given that these were purchased copies. As it turns out, Ubisoft was a bit miffed at how these copies were procured, which is through gaming services that sell games with heavily discounted prices. Yup – it seems there’s a catch to those, after all.

I am not going to link to any service directly, but you’ve no doubt stumbled on one in the past; they offer game codes with big discounts. This is obviously very unusual, because legitimate services like Steam, Origin, and so forth, all sell the games at their SRPs. So how is it services like those manage to give such deals?

I admit that at one point, I figured a lot of these services used key generators to provide the codes, but in reality, they simply buy codes en masse from a part of the world that has steep discounts on its software and games, and then turn around to sell them at marked-up but still discounted prices to gamers elsewhere.

It probably shouldn’t strike anyone as a surprise that Ubisoft’s displeased about someone being able to score one of its games for a meager $20 or so when the price in the US or Canada is about three times that. It’s hard to disagree, honestly. Companies like Ubisoft sell their games at normalized prices, which is fairer to those in poorer countries.

What’s all wrong about this, though, is that Ubisoft decided to target its own customers rather than the companies responsible. This is a massive PR hit, and accomplishes nothing at all. It’s not as though these same customers are going to turn around and purchase a new copy at a normal price, not after a stunt like this.

While I do believe that some caution should be taken when purchasing a game at a hugely discounted price, it could be that most people didn’t realize why it was cheaper. They’re still paying money for a real product, and in effect, are using a legal product.

What Ubisoft should have done here was leave these copies alone, and then explain to its customers that these codes would no longer be accepted. If Ubisoft was able to remove copies en masse from customer accounts, it knows where they came from, and as such, are able to put mechanics in place to prevent people from using codes that were purchased elsewhere. Then it’d be a done deal, and people would understand Ubisoft’s side of things.

Instead, the company removed games from people’s accounts without warning, and on a weekend, no less. I mean, come on. It’s barely been two months since the last big debacle.

What a stupid situation.