Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Ubisoft Failwin

Some of you may know, last Friday, Ubisoft had a bunch of games on their Australian online store marked with a 100% discount. If you did not know, don't waste your time looking now - you won't find any free games. It ended a few hours after I saw it. These games were marked as a "promo" on the site itself.

I nabbed 22 games from this.

Yesterday, I received an email from the Ubisoft shop. The text follows, unedited.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
TO OUR UBISHOP CUSTOMERS
Last week, the Australian Ubishop site was showing that nearly all of its games were available for a 100% discount. This was obviously a systems error that has now been fixed.
As you were quick enough to act on this error, we would like to advise that Ubisoft will honour this sale at the full discount. We hope that you enjoy the games, and invite you to visit our website again to view our upcoming PC lineup, and our regular promotions. Admittedly, they probably won’t be quite as generous as the one you have just taken advantage of...
Best regards,
The Ubishop team
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I find this:
a) Hilarious
b) Awesome

Ubisoft is far from being one of my favourite game publishers. They began their downhill slide (in my mind) by over-hyping a game to the point where I was legitimately excited and really wanted it. I then convinced my parents to get me it for present, in lieu of anything else. (At the time, I was a Maccas worker, and not exactly able to afford every awesome game that came out)
I then played this abomination - finding it to be the biggest steaming pile of repetition I have ever encountered. Everything unique in the game was covered within the first hour of play, and the rest simply repeated it. A lot.
I am, of course, referring to Assassin's Creed.

Aside from that, their reputation lowered even further in my mind when they introduced their utterly draconian DRM system, where PC gamers who legitimately bought the software are required to remain online while playing the game that they paid for. Router dies while playing? Too bad, now you can't play the game at all.
I have just read that this system has been removed, but the fact that they implemented it in the first place (or that this got through into the "let's build it" phase in the first place) is a huge black mark from me.

On the other hand, one would expect such a company - one willing to piss off every legitimately paying gamer in order to attempt to protect their property (and in the process providing the people who pirated their games with superior game experiences due to, well, not being cut off from an offline game when their Internet died) to recall every digital copy. How exactly do you do this? By invalidating the CD keys that were generated during that time period when you do your online authentication (which they still do, its just not every 5 minutes any more).

Bravo Ubisoft, for at least doing something right. Now release some games worth playing and we'll talk :P

1 comment:

  1. Believe it or not, if they hadn't have honoured that sale, you could have sued them. As in, legitimately sued. They made an 'invitation to treat', you made an offer of a 100% discount, they accepted, and you paid your 100% discount. Contract completed. If they then say, "Well, our computer boned up, so we're not going to give you your goods", it would be like you paying for your groceries at Safeway (or Woolworths to the New South Welsh amongst us) and then the cashier saying, "Actually, no, you can't have your stuff."

    So, in a way, you could view that e-mail as Ubisoft saying, "Actually, yes you can have what you're legally permitted to have, but we're going to make it look as though we were in control the entire time."

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