For years there has been a great controversy around digital games since, despite the fact that we buy and pay for them, the players are not the ones who really own them, but they continue to belong to the companies and platforms in which we buy them such as Valve, PlayStation, Microsoft, Nintendo, or Ubisoft, among many others.
In fact, the latter has just returned to star in a new controversy, by further fueling this debate after having eliminated the Ubisoft Connect account along with all the games of a user in Norway, according to the player, after just a year of inactivity. According to Ubisoft, the reason behind this movement is related to its interpretation of article 5.1e of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) established in the European Union, which refers to how long companies must keep the personal data of the users, although it is not clear why this regulation would support the deprivation of access to games legitimately purchased by the user.
For his part, as explained by the user, he was forced to sell his PC in 2020 to avoid gaming addiction, and a year later, when he wanted to resume his hobby with greater responsibility and moderation, he discovered that it was impossible to access your account. However, after trying to reset his password or reactivate the account to no avail, he tried to contact the company.
Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for him to receive the worst news, as Ubisoft assured him that he would not be able to get his account back and that his hundreds of dollars invested in games were gone. And it is that in the terms of service of Ubisoft it can be read that the company reserves the right to eliminate any inactive account after six months.
Even so, as they have shared from PCWorld after contacting Ubisoft, the company assures that they usually send three notices before proceeding to take further measures and that they have never deleted an account with less than four years of inactivity, ensuring that they will contact I contacted this Norwegian user to try to fix his problem and get his games back.
What is clear is that, with a happy ending or not, the debate and problems about the absence of ownership of digital games compared to physical games continue to exist. And you, do you think it is okay that players are not the total owners of the digital games they buy? Or do you think it is an abusive practice?
