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Ubisoft is cracking down on cheap CD keys bought from sites like G2A and Kinguin by revoking copies of Far Cry 4 from UPlay accounts. Ubisoft didn't give any warning or indication that it was planning to do this, most of this news comes in the way of angry forum and Reddit posts.
In reply to customer complaints, Ubisoft has been advising customers to contact the sellers, indicating that these sellers may have either sold stolen keys or had their banks reverse the charge for the keys in the first place. This isn't anything new, Valve has been cracking down on key resellers with new region locking rules and limitations to game trading on Steam.
Additionally, last year many Sniper Elite III CD Keys were revoked, the developer at the time stated that the keys were stolen and sold on fraudulently.
G2A in particular is a popular store and is often advertised by Twitch Streamers who may not know just how dodgy these resellers can be. Ubisoft has yet to officially comment on these code revokes but it sounds like it may be best to start moving away from reselling sites.
Discuss on our Facebook page, HERE.
KitGuru Says: It is not surprising that more publishers are starting to fight back against key resellers and those who try to get games cheaper by using Russian codes. How many of you guys buy from key reselling sites? Do stories like this make you hesitant?
This is entirely out of order.
Not sure how I feel about this. There may be some “legitimate” resellers, but it still seems to me to be largely an immoral thing to do, if not an outright illegal one.
So, are all G2A keys getting revoked ? :S
If they’re illegal, it sure is fine that they are banned – should however be taken further and taking the resellers out of business. It is not alright for the customer, if you buy the game in good faith, how am I to know, if they are stolen or not, when I buy it, no matter the price?
Kitguru… most of the keys aren’t even Russian. I get almost all my steam keys from G2A but none of them are Russian because I’m don’t live in Russia. They’re just cheaper.
Why are they punishing the consumers ? They paid in good faith for their product and if anyone should be “punished” because of fraudulent keys it should be the reseller.
None of the keys I’ve bought from G2A have been revoked. Seems to mostly be effecting Far Cry 4 and Assassin’s Creed Unity.
pewdiepie uses G2A in the advertisements why i dont know hes made millions he seems to get them free anyway from youtube i dont buy ubisoft games no more sadly even thoe i do like farcry i wont be it due to there treatment of gamers anyway f…em
If they dont want me to buy it cheap, i guess ill just have to torrent it.. their loss.
that’s why I will keep downloading pirated games lol fuck Ubisoft and G2A scammers.
This is just another case of Usbisoft’s “screw the consumer we want all the money” moments.
Immoral is to pay 60€ a game…. 30€ is a much fairer price…. and no, is not illegal.. Those are just keys that cost less because those prices are intended for less wealthy markets like the Indian one… So those keys (NOT region locked —-> perfectly legal) are just sold in Europe and USA where the games costs double or more…. THAT is immoral….
I recently bought an ESO key from G2A, which didn’t work, contacted customer support, no help, made a dispute on PayPal, waited 3 days, no response, turned into a Claim, no response at all during claim period, claim ends on the 29th… I guess we will see what happens…
It’s the same with anything in life though. If you happen to buy a car off someone who had stolen it, you might not know about it but you have the stolen property in your possession so it will be taken from you. You then need to contact the person you bought it off to try and get your money back. There isn’t a lot that Ubisoft can do about this apart from what they are doing unfortunately. It’s annoying, but that’s the law. I bought a copy of FarCry 4 off G2A at christmas and I am yet to see if the copy has been revoked or not yet :/
You could always call PayPal…they usually solved it right then for me
I might try that, thanks ^.^
What loss? The vast majority of these resellers hand out pirated/stolen codes, Ubisoft doesn’t get a penny from them and neither do all the other game devs, for that matter. The whole “altruist anti-capitalist” bullshit kinda loses its charm when people charge you for it. Ubisoft are a bunch of assholes and hacks, yeah, but I sure as hell won’t cry because they stop some shady chinese or russian site from making money. You can’t play anymore? Too fucking bad. Maybe you should’ve thought for a second before you bought a brand new game at 70% off. At least if you pirate it, you don’t lose money.
I used G2A a several times, then a week ago someone used my PayPal to buy things from G2A marketplace. The whole marketplace is so shady. I called PayPal and they opened a claim for me. Few days later they have been found that it indeed was an unauthorized transaction and sent my money back. After that G2A banned my account. So I will never buy anything from them again. But untill this incident I had no problem with G2A.
They’re also banning AC: Unity.
I personally buy from G2A simply because the game prices on Steam are Ridiculous now, I buy from Steam though don’t get me wrong I love Steam, It’s just from the likes of Ubisoft and others that think their games are worth £40+ When statistically if they sold a million copies of let’s say Far Cry 4 on Steam for £40 that’s £40 Million asdjkalsd Really? That’ll continue to grow for as long as we live because the likes of these companies aren’t going anywhere. They take our money for only hours of game play and I feel it’s unfair, why not just sell games cheaper, £20 for example because that price is much more appealing, more people would feel they wouldn’t mind buying it, they would win over the customer and they would feel happier about a purchase. Ubisoft is only doing this because they broke Unity and need some way to make more money on I’d say the only just about working game they’ve made recently. C’mon Ubisoft y u do dis.
If you flied to India, bought some games, came back and sold them, it’d be called smuggling. But it happens on the internet so let’s just unleash the keyboard warriors and ignore all the issues that this kind of shitty practices cause for the people who should’ve bought the “cheap” games. Either the prices will rise or digital games will end up banned in those countries, just so you can pretend that you didn’t pirate the game.
No, that’s not immoral at all. Paying the set price for a product is the exact opposite of immoral. You say it’s a fairer price, but a fairer price for whom? For the company selling the product? Absolutely not. For you? Of course you would say it’s a fairer price, if it benefits you.
Don’t like the price? Don’t pay it. Don’t get the product. Nobody is forcing you to, and if enough people do this, the producer of the product may become more competitive and set prices lower. That’s how the free market works.
What’s immoral is taking advantage of currency valuations to “cheat” the producer out of the full cost of their product. People do this with taxes all the time – they move their companies’ residences to more tax favourable countries in order to pay less. For some reason, however, this is widely considered to be immoral, whereas the *exact same thing* but from a consumer standpoint is… completely moral?
It’s also worth noting that this original article includes mention of Russia, which *was* Steam region-locked, purely due to the reason you stated. It’s cheaper there to account for the local market, and Valve didn’t want people scumming them out by – and yes, this is what it is – playing the international market, despite express wishes by the producer of the product not to do that. It’s perfectly understandable that producers don’t wish to see consumers trying to undercut legitimate business by cheating them out of money.
Again, if you don’t like the original prices, don’t pay them. Nobody is forcing you against your will to spend 60€ on a game. You don’t have the inherent human right to play Far Cry 4 free of charge, but Ubisoft have a right to crack down on people who are trying to loophole their way through paying the set price against their will.
Exactly! The very same practice that’s illegal in the physical world somehow becomes okay on the internet, because there’s no tangible feeling of *doing* anything wrong. All you’re doing is clicking a button from the comfort of your own home, so it’s all okay then, isn’t it?
Well, no. It isn’t. You’re still stealing profits through immoral and/or illegal means. You’re still smuggling. There are still real, actual losses involved. Then the very same people who would pirate a game for free *anyway* turn around and throw a temper tantrum when the producer finally stamps down and makes it so that they can’t continue their illegal practices?
Like. You’re breaking the law. You don’t get to whine when the people you’re scamming take action against you. If you don’t want to be punished for smuggling… Don’t smuggle. It’s as simple as that. If you buy a legitimate code from a legitimate retailer, this doesn’t even concern you.
I had a Watchdogs copy revoked as well. Doesn’t bother me though, I only paid £5 and I knew full well I was taking the risk. Problem is, I could buy that particular game roughly 8 times over before I’d have met the full RRP. When you look at it that way, having a key revoked isn’t even that big of a deal… It’s all risk reward though which is why I still buy about 90% of my games legitimately rather than through key-sellers. I’ll only buy the really good deals.
You do know that the only reason games cost as much as they are, is because the cost to produce cartridges back in the day was quite high. (They’re basically custom flash drives) when games switched to discs, which are very cheap to produce, they didn’t lower the price.
And that kids, is why video games are expensive.
Yes but it’s not a physical object, so them taking it back is more of a dick move than anything else.
By taking away the copy from a customer that tried to buy the game, they’re simply just taking it away from the people. I doubt many of the people that lose their copies will go back and buy the game at full price, at best they’ll likely just pirate it since they’ve already paid for the game once.
The keys are bought in Russia (where games are VERY cheap) and are sold elsewhere.
They key itself isn’t Russian, and the fact that you aren’t Russian means nothing.
I have a question. G2A sells games, and resellers in G2A sells games too. I mean, the keys that G2A sells by theirselves, are revoked like the keys that the resellers sells?
excuse me mister fancy-pants asshole who can buy everything , i for example live in a not so rich country ….. i mean our lowest salary is 250 euros …… with that you buy games at full price and also live for a month ….
Yes, because the game cost is purely in the cost of the disc, and has nothing to do with the cost of hiring the staff (including coders, bug-testers, marketers, design leaders, concept artists, voice actors, etc.), the cost of actually licensing the hardware and software required to make and produce all of these things (such as the computers that the company works on, the recording equipment, the programmes that the artists use, etc.), then the actual cost of distribution and arranging the profit margins with the retailers…
I could go on, but I presume you’ve gathered my obvious point here, in that saying “games are actually cheap to make because discs are cheap!” is not only disingenuous, but also incorrect in every single way.
Even without all of this, it doesn’t matter. The end price is the end price. That is the price that the producer set, and that is the price you pay if you want the product. Again, if you don’t want to pay that amount, then don’t buy the product. You’re not obligated to.
But you don’t get to keep a smuggled car when the authorities realise it’s smuggled. They take it from you. Why should that be any different with digital goods that have been smuggled?
What you’re essentially saying is that “people who illegally smuggled a product, when faced with the recriminations of that act, will go on to commit further illegal acts by stealing instead of purchasing the product legitimately”.
If they wanted an untouched legitimate product, perhaps they should have purchased it legitimately. I have no sympathy for them.
You don’t have the right to play Far Cry 4. Nowhere in all of ethics does it state that “every individual person has the natural inborn right to play Far Cry 4”. You pay for the privilege to own a copy. If you can’t pay, you don’t play. It’s that simple. Ubisoft isn’t obligated to give away copies of their product for free.
I’m sick of this sense of commercial entitlement. Oh no, you can’t afford to play a video game! What a hard life you lead.
It is the world upside down. THEY want to earn more money because people in Western countries have more money and milk ‘m like cows. When e.g. a German guy lives in Russia because of his work, and after that he is posted in the US or sent back to Germany, the games he bought in Russia cannot be played in the US anymore. The other way around DOES work (you can use a US key in Russia). So it definately IS a money-thing, got nothing to do with “stolen keys” or so. The real thiefs are companies like Steam and Ubisoft. Just imagine, does this apply to physical products as well? So when you buy a book in Russia, will it be automatically whiped and give white pages when you move to another country. Or does your car stops working the moment you move from HongKong to France??
There’s no big Jumbo Rulebook of Ethics dude. It doesn’t work that way. There are, however, certain rules of the market, one of which is that if you out-price certain sects of the market, and then you shut down legal and profitable ways of pricing them in, while leaving illegitimate and illegal ways, they’re going to go the illegal ways. There are two ways to prevent this: create a really bad series of products that lower the demand and kill off the company, or provide a cheaper means of obtaining it for the lower end of the market.
I haven’t bought a brand new game since Hitman Absolution 2 years ago, and before that it was Skyrim. And even then, I never paid full-price since I know the stores are making a fat margin on our backs (I worked in one, part of the huuuuuge Gamestop empire). I own many games because I wait until they get a nice discount on Steam or Amazon or get included in a Bundle or whatever, I don’t give two shits about playing every game right when it’s released. You know why? Because spending so much money on a single piece of entertainment isn’t something I can afford. So yes, woe is me, everyone’s playing Far Cry 4 when I just bought Far Cry 3 for 5 bucks on Steam, truly I feel miserable for not being able to share the same experience as everyone else. You really wanna play the game but don’t have the cash? Then pirate it if you want, that’s your own responsiblity and moral choice. But giving money to these assholes is basically rewarding them for making the current situation even worse.
If a seller sells you a stolen car and is found accountable, i.e. they can be sued, then you get your money back. It’s not the case that you automatically don’t get it back, that’s only if they can’t be found. And they only take the product away because it is someone else’s property that is now missing, and to leave you with it would be depriving them of it. That’s a very different situation. If they aren’t upfront about telling you you’re buying a car that’s got finance on it, for instance, then they are breaking the law and they have to pay the cost, not you. That’s more comparable, because although you were negligent in not getting a check just like with a stolen car, the person who originally sold it to you is the one who broke the law, and in this case there is a third independent party with whom they can treat: so you’re left out of the picture. In this case, removing the item is legally problematic, given that it was bought in good faith, and it’s malicious, which is not at all supposed to be the intent in cases like these.
Rights are the domain of ethics and politics. The right to own Far Cry 4 free of charge isn’t stated anywhere within those realms. You want it? You pay the asking price, which is near-standard amongst triple-A titles. Stealing is unethical and immoral, by nearly all debated ethical standards.
We agree that it isn’t lawful to smuggle goods, but it’s beyond unreasonable to expect the producers of those goods to lower their prices to meet the costs that illegal methods of obtaining it have. People can always obtain the product for free, through stealing, after all, and you can’t sell for cheaper than free. For that reason, “rules of the market” aren’t governed primarily by illegality such as theft.
I’m unsure as to what you mean to imply by your last sentence. You seem to suggest the only solutions are to simply allow people to steal their product or to offer it for free, when there is absolutely a third ground taken here – create a good final product whilst punishing those who obtain that product illegally.
All these comments have simply been people whining that they can’t continue illegal activities and are therefore going to pirate. Which doesn’t hit Ubisoft’s profits at all, because reselling most likely doesn’t give Ubisoft profits anyway, due to the fact that the large majority of the products were obtained through illegal means, hence why the reseller can afford to sell at such an astonishingly low price.
I agree with Grumpytrooper..Why punish the consumer? Is it because you (UBISOFT) can’t get at G2A or even punish them? What a terrible president to set. Shame on you UBISOFT!
Maybe the consumers can do a class-action lawsuit on G2A for their losses.
If a game is too expensive say in the $40.00 U.S.+ range, I will just wait a while..and the price will fall like a stone.
I remember Quake 4 coming out and it was something like $50.00 or so and I waited, and lo-and behold I see Quake 4 at Big Lots for $8.00 U.S. just two years after it is released. It was still a lot of fun to play, even though it was a couple of years old.
Actually, I think it is better my way as I wanted so bad to get World of Warcraft only to find out much later that it is a role playing game and I would have never played it, as I’m a 1st person shooter guy and WoW would just bore me to death like all the other turn based games…not enough action.
I think Dev’s need to be paid for their efforts and should not see their valuable work on the black market.
This is why the games are so expensive, as they know that the popularity of ANY game will be short lived si they get what they can while they can, whatever the market will bear.
If you don’t like the price of a game, just wait a while…. the price will inevitably fall
I DID pay full price for Duke Nukem Forever though. 🙂
It costs around $20-50m to develop a AAA game, and at least 2/3 of that is spent on marketing. They have to market heavily in order to guarantee higher sales at that price; they would need much less if the market weren’t based on such high prices, and hadn’t created a culture of marketing. So, the actual games cost around a max of $20m to develop, including reasonable marketing – and bear in mind that this is the sort of budget that a GTA or a Halo would get. Far Cry 4 is expecting 6 million sales -that’s a return of $180,000,000 if the game were sold at the quite nice price of $30 – it’s a return of $360m at their current price of $60. So, even on their current budget, a profit of, let’s say, $300m – and again, their budget even including their current marketing was likely less than this. If they sold at $30, they’d get many more sales, but assuming the market somehow broke and they didn’t, *and* they still spent a pointlessly large amount on marketing, they’d be looking at a profit of $120m.
They could easily afford to sell at a decent price, which would massively cut down on long term piracy, *and* not crack down on piracy at all, and they’d still make a *huge* profit.
This is an excellent point. People who bemoan how ~every game is £40~ are assuming brand new on-launch prices, when constant sales and holiday deals – through legitimate retailers, nonetheless – are ever-pervasive in our society.
I recently bought the whole Saints Row backlog on Steam for about £10, or something close to it. Perfectly legitimately. All of the comments about how Ubisoft doesn’t “respect the gamers” are from people who have chosen to not respect the business first, by choosing to knowingly buy smuggled or stolen goods.
Like you said, pirate if you want, but accept that the producer of the product has every right to restrict your access to it, because you did *not* obtain it legally or legitimately. You can’t throw a childish fit because the companies you’re scamming aren’t bending over backwards to accommodate the illegality of your behaviour. Tough shit. Maybe you should have thought about the consequences of your actions before you decided to cheat people out of their money.
WoW would bore you to death like any other turn based game -.- *facepalms*
Actually, the absolute rule of stealing being unethical is far from undisputed. Take, for instance, the example of the poor man stealing bread for his children.
See my comment in the other thread on the other issues.
My point is that it’s basic economics to understand that there are different sects of the market, and when there’s a demand then someone will fill that. My final sentence is meant to imply what it says: that it is the responsibility of a company to cater to the demands of the customer, not ‘becoz ethics’, but because a healthy market will brutalise them for failure to do so. Take steam. Most games that sell on steam offer periodic sales for significant amounts. That means that rich people can buy new games for the, say, £35 that they sell for new on steam, and poorer people have to wait for the sales. They *could* pirate it, but they know there’s a risk, and they also know they can get a reliable and legit low effort one if they wait. It’s about incentives.
Punishing people who obtain digital products illegal might be considered moral or ethical. You feel free to argue about that as much as you like. I’m not the fire and brimstone type, I don’t really care if everyone who’s ever stolen a penny sweet gets *brought to justice*. What I *do* know is that the more you punish pirates, the more piracy seems to appear. And remember that in this case most of the customers won’t actually be buying in bad faith, so it’s completely different to piracy. It’s *especially* unwise to be punishing these people, because they don’t even think of themselves as doing anything wrong, and it’s very likely to push them into actual piracy. It is basically economically unwise.
Do you have sources for those figures at all?
Also, you make several statements that need examination on your part:
1) You say they have to “market heavily”, but wouldn’t need to do that if there weren’t such heavy prices. How much do you think the cost of reserving advertising actually costs? Or the production of those advertisements? Do you imagine that the marketing costs come purely from the fact that games are expensive, or is it that marketing itself is expensive? It seems odd that they would decide the price of the game, and then the marketing costs would adapt to fit that price, rather than the price of the game being determined by needing to cover the costs of the marketing.
2) When you say there is a “culture of marketing”, what do you refer to? Do you refer to the fact that marketing is important? Because I can tell you now, marketing has been present since the times of the ancient Roman Republic, where senators would spend inordinate amounts of money canvassing for votes, through building monuments or public works in their name, In other words, marketing themselves as candidates. There has always been a culture of marketing, because there has been a need to stand out amongst your competitors. I find it staggeringly naive, in both a general and economic sense, that you would even suggest such a thing.
3) What is “reasonable” marketing?
4) A “huge” profit is relative. It’s “huge” to you, but would it be “huge” to them? And why would they choose to arbitrarily sell at a lower price, when they could sell at a higher one and get even higher returns? They are a business, not a charity. They’re out to *maximise* profits, not simply to *attain* them.
You’re missing the point that Ubisoft don’t actually do what you’re saying. Their games rarely go on sale, and they persist in releasing broken products; they’ve moved many games over to uplay, and up the price of the DLC (which is basically part of the full game), to cover sales. You also, again, have incorrectly assumed that people have ‘knowingly’ bought these products illegally. That’s just not the case. You and I might know these companies are illegitimate, but it’s not the case for most people, I suspect.
No. Stealing in that situation is still unethical, because you are still depriving the original producer of his goods without adequate compensation. It is, however, an understandable action, and perhaps justifiable. I trust you’re not comparing a man trying to feed his starving family to people complaining that they can’t buy Far Cry 4 on launch and thus just HAVE to steal it. Oh, how Kant weeps at their plight!
“Basic economics” isn’t counting thieves as market sects, because they’re not market sects. They’re outliers. You don’t market to thieves, because thieves will never purchase your goods in the first place, due to their nature as thieves. They’re a danger to be safeguarded against, not a demographic to be targeted.
“Catering to the consumer” isn’t “providing everything for free”, either. Again, I’m not sure where you’re going for this, aside from “make everything cheap and then maybe we won’t steal your stuff!” Companies won’t make things cheaper because a minority of the market pirate games; they’ll find ways to punish the pirates instead. That’s how they work.
And, to your final point, they aren’t buying in good faith, because they’re buying illegitimately. They know that those sites aren’t endorsed by the producers, and they buy it there anyway, because they don’t want to “pirate”, but they also don’t want to purchase it legitimately, either through waiting for a sale via Steam or another legitimate retailer, or through waiting for an organic price drop. They want their game on-launch, now, and they’ll pay a slight amount (that Ubisoft probably won’t even get) towards a dodgy reseller peddling stolen or pirated codes so they won’t feel guilty about it, but they’re still not actually acquiring it legally, whether they pay for it or not.
I doubt that you have a background in business or economics, based on your posts. It doesn’t come across that way to me.
As some one whom tries to find the cheapest keys this is fucking outrageous. I currently Do not own any games on my Uplay account and With this move I will never be Purchasing a game from Ubi-soft that to say even if they created the Best game in the world that every gamer Must play I am out. Enjoy your Half asses Assassin’s Creeds and other just play terrible games from this obviously Greedy ass company
Their games often go on sale. I’ve seen them cheap on PSN, Live, and through Steam and other (legitimate! :o) online retailers.
If you purchase a game through a reselling site that’s offering near 70% discount or something like that on-launch, it’s fair to say… You should probably do some research, especially when the site itself advertises itself as a “reseller”, which raises all kinds of alarm bells about the legitimacy of it. Be it on your own head that you didn’t educate yourself in an obviously shady situation.
Of course, the reseller themselves should face far more stringent repercussions depending on how intentionally misleading they were in their reselling, but unfortunately, that’s far more difficult to enforce. Perhaps this will make consumers a bit more sensible about where they’re purchasing from. I almost fell for it myself, but a simple Google prevented this from happening to me.
I’m an ancient historian friend, so you’re unwise to quote the ancient world at me. The various cultural and political structures involved in the processes you’re talking about, particularly that of patronage, make the Roman world a completely different economic structure. In this case, you’ll have to take my word that it’s an inappropriate comparison, because it would take an unreasonable amount of time to explain why. The only thing I’ll comment on is that you should probably understand the economics of that process as the equivalent of ‘development costs’ – in that the ‘product’ was the image, as opposed to modern games where that would be very unhealthy. I will say, though, that I was talking about *healthy* markets. A culture of marketing is not necessarily bad, in a regulated market, but as the cigarette industry demonstrates nicely, regulation of marketing is a positive thing. The bloating of marketing is usually indicative of a bloated system, and the need for regulation. I certainly didn’t ‘suggest’ (that’s a very imprecise use of that term) or even imply (which is presumably what you meant) that marketing was a new thing.
It’s very difficult to estimate the amount spent on games, so I was conservative and overestimated. This is one of the places I looked: http://kotaku.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-make-a-big-video-game-1501413649
This is also interesting, as an example of the most bloated: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop
This is also good, especially on bloating of budgets: http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/09/economist-explains-15
Those are the places I looked, but I’m sure there are more.
Again, the cost of marketing rising with the price of the product compared to the market is a basic of economics.
A 100%+ profit is huge. I doubt that anyone would or could really disagree. If you disagree then that’s up to you, but given that many businesses work on a sustainable 1% profit or less, this would be weird.
I have a background in ancient history, which requires a basic knowledge of economics, though my specialism is religion, ethics, and philosophy. In marketing terms, they aren’t thieves because most won’t consider themselves such. You can market to these people because they still consider themselves to be legitimate consumers, regardless of whether or not they actually are. You can claim that all of them knew they were stealing, but that makes very little sense. Why wouldn’t they just pirate? I didn’t compare the two, I used an example of why stealing is not an undisputed ethical problem. You have a very imprecise approach. This is going around in circles.
Also, don’t say things like ‘how Kant weeps at their plight’. Yes, we’re aware you know who Kant was, for what that means – it doesn’t provide anything to your argument, and it doesn’t make you look smart. I could write my entire reply in ancient Greek, or made up of a series of ancient quotations, but again, that would just make me look like a dick-bag, and not contribute anything to the strength of argumentation. An undergraduate might be intimidated by some peripheral knowledge, but that’s a scummy way to approach things.
I’m an ancient historian too, moron, and if you are as well, you should know that I wasn’t talking about patronage, and that patronage is a completely different system that has tangential relation to the practice of canvassing senators providing public works and public events in order to encourage the citizens to vote for them.
I’m not going to reply to you anymore, though, because it’s becoming increasingly clear that neither of us are going to get anywhere with this, and tbf I’m quite bored of talking with someone who hasn’t done anything more to understand economics than glancing at an inaccurate wikipedia page.
Have a nice day.
I suppose it costs nothing to claim things on the internet. Somehow I’m sceptical, if you don’t know that patronage was absolutely crucial to the process of ‘canvassing’, and that in fact, I *could* have been talking about municipal patronage – though I wasn’t, as that’s a different issue altogether. I guess you could be an undergraduate. If so, I’d suggest you brush up on your Roman history: for instance, you should really know that the Senate was an unelected body, even if you’re only a first year in your second semester, and especially if you’re a second or third year. That aside, you should principally work on your argumentation and try to cut out the flamboyance, because it won’t get you anywhere (outside of Oxonian debating societies), and particularly make sure you make a concerted attempt at being more precise in the way you read and the way you write. I should also say that being honest is a great place to start, and being conservative. I didn’t say I was an economist: I said that I have some basic training of that type. I actually have interests above that, but I didn’t say that because it’s better to undersell yourself than oversell and disappoint.
Note that I said “canvassing senators”, and not “politicians canvassing for election into the senate”.
Yes, and my initial reaction was to assume imprecision of writing, but I re-read and noticed you also said ‘encourage the citizens to vote for them’. Re-reading is another useful skill, but it really comes under the heading of precision.
Magistracies are elected positions, voted for by the people. I was using the term “senator” for both an easy to understand term and also because I don’t particularly care for this conversation and thought it was obvious what meaning I intended.
My point was that politicians have been marketing themselves for thousands of years, and what I said adequately communicated that, all pedantry aside. Municipal patronage is hardly called marketing in that day, but that’s essentially what it was. You’re spending money on the people, and instead of advertising personal goods for profit, you’re advertising yourself for votes.
This is such BS. I paid $50 for a full copy of the game (NOT a pirated or stolen version) and I just get my game removed completely from my library without any notification whatsoever? Yeah, no. I mean, they could’ve at least sent out an email notification so I didn’t have to go looking around for several days with no idea what was happening to see why a buggy game I paid $50 for was missing from my library… I think I’m done with Ubisoft for now.
I purchased Far Cry 4, in good faith, from G2A.com and it was deleted. I called Ubisoft support and they said I should have done research on the site first. RESEARCH? Do I have to research sites like Humble Bundle, Indiegala and Gamestop too? What’s the next game to be deleted? The game I got on sale at Gamestop too? Seriously, Ubisoft? I trusted Ubisoft this one time only because buying Far Cry 3 on Steam caused Uplay client to download and install without my permission. There was no way to play the game otherwise. So from now on, I think Ubisoft and I are breaking up.
It would have been nice of Ubisoft to warn people which vendors they allow. Instead, their tech support put the blame on me for not researching G2A first. Should I research Walmart before purchasing a Uplay game too? That’s pretty ridiculous. Valve made pirating games stupid and now Ubisoft has made pirating look pretty good. The guys who pirated the games in my Steam Gamers group aren’t out money like I am now. I purchased EVERY one of my games legit. Ubisoft sucks.
G2A.com is huge. A lot of people purchase through that site and it has been awesome. They have helped make pirating a thing of the past. Now, Ubisoft has made pirating a new thing. I lost money for a game I purchased, in complete good faith, from G2A. I have never had this issue with Steam games ever.
If you buy a car from a huge reseller, like Walmart, Amazon, Humble Bundle – or in this case G2A.com, then how the hell are you suppose to know it? Ubisoft support told me I “should research every website first.” So I now have to RESEARCH sites like Humble Bundle and indiegala before DARING to purchase an Ubisoft game? No thanks. That’s pretty ridiculous. I’ll stick to Steam and Ubisoft can seriously f-off.
Get this, I called their support and the guy told me I “should research ever reseller before purchasing.” Are you kidding me? So now I have to research Walmart, Gamestop, Humble Bundle, Indiegala and Steam BEFORE I purchase an Ubisoft game. WTF! That’s absolutely ridiculous! I have NO pirated games whatsoever. NONE. I paid for all my games legit. Far Cry 4 cost me big money and now they think they can delete it because they don’t like G2A. Sites like G2A have completely killed piracy. Now Ubisoft wants piracy to be a thing again. Pfff.
That’s bs, dude. Ubisoft tech support told me we have to research every reseller first. G2A is huge and who’s going to think it’s not legit? I lost the game that I PAID for. I paid for every game I own. Not one of them is pirated but Far Cry 4 was deleted all because Ubisoft has decided they don’t LIKE that vendor. A Vendor who is not selling stolen codes, they are simply getting codes cheaply and Ubisoft leaders merely want more of the money at the expense of innocent people.
Two things:
1- I don’t give a fuck about smuggling. Never have, never will. It just seems like smart business, buy real low – sell much lower than your competition. I don’t care how you got it, as long as it wasn’t stolen from someone.
2- Again, a car is a physical object, there is money that was put into the creation of that object, and it can be moved about physically and not copied without the creation or extreme manipulation of matter (which is not possible, currently). A game, more specifically they key to allow the download of one, is but a small bit of text. There is no cost to create it, you could make billions of them for the same cost of making one or two. Ubi isn’t gaining any money back by disabling these keys, and they aren’t going to. Chances are none of the people they screwed over (the paying customers, mind you) are going to be satisfied with having something they bought get taken away, and they are likely to not buy another Ubisoft product in the future. Being unfair to their customers isn’t something that they need right now, they’re already detested by a large number of people, enough so that EA has kind of moved into a more pleasant light.
But maybe it won’t even effect them at all, maybe they just don’t care. But don’t give me any bullshit about them losing anything by screwing over their paying customers, regardless of who actually gets the money.
Damn, you beat me to it! I totally agree, but feel the need to add that these people buying the game cheap are potentially people that wouldn’t buy the game otherwise. You can say things about them not deserving it until you’re blue in the face, but that doesn’t change the fact that an otherwise non-customer purchasing cheaper because they find the price to be more reasonable can be nothing but good for business. Companies like G2A are never going to overtake “legitimate” retailers because they rely on the goodwill of the developers, which they pass on to a new market. Case in point, i purchased Diablo 3 at launch for £33. It is for sale digitally on the Blizzard store for £32.99, almost 3 years after launch. The expansion pack, literally 1/4 of the content of the base game, is the exact same price. SO, i got a box and a disc, it was shipped to the store, the store stocked it on the shelf, yet to purchase a download of the game is the same price? I just checked G2A; the base game is £16 and the expansion is £15, so you can get the base game AND expansion for less than the price of just the base game.
Publishers are outright far too damned greedy and we as consumers allowed them to get there. At the end of the day, the only way to defend what Ubisoft are doing it to go from a purely capitalist point of view and say “hey, well they’re a company, they are about maximising their profit, if they can sucker you into paying £50 for a game then good for them!”. Well, that doesn’t sit with me, and there’s not a damned thing that can be said to dissuade me from my views: If you deserve £50 then i’ll give you £50, if you take the piss then i have no incentive to buy from you and will look elsewhere. I won’t miss out on a game simply because a publisher is too greedy, i got Assassins Creed Unity for £18, less than half retail value, because with such a terrible product launch, they made it clearly obvious that they thought they could get away with it. On the other hand i bought Dark Souls 2 at full price for my Xbox 360, AND bought it full price on my PC, AND i’m going to buy it full price on my PS4 along with Bloodborne, because as a company they have excelled and deserve every penny of it IMO.
Here is an idea. Ask for a refund from Ubisoft for every game you ever bought from them. That might inspire them to have more respect for their customers.
Look man these are official game keys. They would not authenticate on Ubisofts servers if they were not. Simple as.
What they are is discounted. Bought in markets where people would never be able to pay full price.
So instead of changing thier server to prevent this, they decided to stick one to PC gamers again. Use gamers (Thier customers) as cannon fodder so they can stick it to those companies that took advantage of these loop holes.
There is nothing immoral about getting the best deal. Ubisoft did get paid, not as much as they wanted to gouge from us at full price. I am out 70 euro, for 2 games (My xmas presents). There is no way for me to get our money back, We used ebay. Sellers are long gone. The Story is Ubisoft have my money. They then took my games off me.
Please note that Ubisoft in Europe put 10 Euro’s on prices this holiday season, naturally people looked around for the best deals.
Anyway, I will never buy another Ubisoft game again. Ever.
I will now check to see if my torrent program has finished downloading.
If these company would sell them at the same price all over the planet …. it would be great. I mean … get on G2A and look at RU cd-key …. they are so cheap i just cant understand why. New release game for 20 bucks, kinda unfair for us lol
If you bought in good faith, the problem is on resellers end and they are to give you a new or your money back 🙂
If Ubisoft revoke my key I WILL pirate the game and I will never buy their stuff again. If they want to stop resellers, they need to lower their prices dramatically.
Edit: My game is still on my account. For now.
Ubisoft really want to ruin their reputation, don’t they?
Yar avast me hearties, I see a bountiful booty. Looks like you just gave people who don’t normally pirate games a reason to! Well played boob-isoft. You are royal morons
I got scammed twice by G2A, luckily they were too cheap games, first one they didnt send me any code, second I bought the same game, they sent me invalid code, their complaint department not helping at all, they are full of arab, indian scammers.
You can honestly eat a bag of dicks, Erika. You don’t know for a fact that G2A.com and Kinguin.net are selling illegitimate keys. At all. All you have are Ubisoft’s word on the matter. It seems more likely that they’re not impressed with people buying the Gold Edition of the game for half the price. Simple as that.
The gamers buying the cheap games are NOT thieves, they’re NOT scammers and they have every right to be annoyed with Ubisoft for removing their games. The keys were legitimate, because otherwise, they wouldn’t activate. The same key cannot be used twice. They are Ubisoft keys. Provided/generated by Ubisoft.
If anything untoward happened between the buyers of the keys and Ubisoft, that’s not the gamer’s fault. That’s not my fault, or your fault. All this is going to do is tarnish Ubisoft’s already extremely strained relationship with the PC market.
When Origin had a loophole that allowed any game under £20 to be free, multiple times. EA swallowed it. They said “enjoy the free games”.
The difference here is that gamers paid money in good faith.
It was immoral for them to remove the games from peoples accounts. Most definitely. Terrible decision by them.
It’s not immoral to buy cheaper at all.
Also, one thing I note below is you’re talking about the price point a lot. Digital games were supposed to be cheaper. This is something we were told. Ubisoft were/are asking for the same price as retail on consoles, for digital PC games. They’re not the only ones, though. I suspect there’s agreements with brick and mortar stores. But, yeah, sorry, but seeking out cheaper prices isn’t immoral. Especially when it’s a huge website sponsored by gamers like Pewdiepie. You have to assume they’re legit at that point.
you really dont know what you are talking about… If a site like G2A is advertising so loudly about its games then they should be legal.. if they are not its not my fault for buying them.. but ubisofts and law enforcement services not doing a proper work/job..
a reseller selling at a disscount means nothing! he could have purchased it at a discount and then sold it to gain money (thats the point of market). Its not my place to ask him where he got his goods, and even if i ask i will probably get lied to.. WHATS THE POINT? what is this BL crap of researching before buying!? if a law enforcement agency is not saying that its illegal then i wont believe rumors or what another site is saying (especially an other selling site that doesn’t want the competition)
and last about pirating, high demand and high prices do lead to piracy.. the only one that gets butt hurt from this acts is Ubisof so yes they are responsible. Especially if they are not doing anything for the low end market, especially if they are targeting them as well.
as for the topic of this page resellers are a way to ease the high demand-high prices market.. they can be helping one another instead of fighting.. but as usually one company gets greedy, and f***s the consumers at the end.. well we all know how this always ends…
@Erika Gsus again with the car story. This is not about a car, it is about the game. It is not the same as a car is it? Stay on the subject? What is the subject? Ubisoft revoking keys bought from somewhere else, resellers yeah? Now how fair is it that a customer needs to suffer from this? You know, it is a cash grab bs that they do this. They just want more money, they are greedy as FrUitCaKe.
bought plenty of games, no problem. Don’t know what you are on about.
surly ubi would know what keys are stolen or whatever and should just block the key from working in the 1st place rather than let people sell them then ban the keys after an unknowing customer brought the keys. not sure where the thievery is happening but at the moment ubi is just a s guilty of stealing as are the people with the keys on G2A.
Lol, and Ubisoft honestly wonders why their name is getting worse and worse among gamers. Seriously, I would have LOVED to be a fly on the wall in the corporate meeting room where this decision was made. I cannot comprehend how any suit at Ubisoft thought it was a good idea to punish the legit consumer like this. People are calling and being told to “research every seller before you buy from them” like it’s some back alley parking lot out of some guys trunk deal. Just keep on diggin’ and diggin’ Ubi. Steam made piracy a thing of the past. You seem to be on the express lane to wanting it back.
Ahhhhh a swing and a miss! You were correct up until this part: “People do this with taxes all the time”. In some countries (gonna use America as an example here), the taxation of the public is actually technically illegal and has never gone through the proper government branches to be turned into law. Once again, you were SO CLOSE, and I was really digging your whole free market pro-capitalist vibe because I believe a lot of the same things you do. Shame you fell short.
In some countries, yes, but not all. There are still some legal (even technically legal) taxation laws that individuals shirk.
If you can’t research before buying online, I’m afraid that really is your own fault. Researching the legitimacy of online retailers, where it’s incredibly easy to deal in fraudulent goods without the consumer knowing they’re fraudulent, is common sense. You wouldn’t go to a back alleyway in a shady neighbourhood and then purchase from a man selling cheap televisions from the back of his van, would you?
Ubisoft revoke stolen keys when they discover they’re stolen. They have that right. When you purchase from resellers, you accept the risk that they may be obtained illegally and may potentially be revoked. It’s the fault of the reseller for defrauding you, not Ubisoft’s fault for regulating their stolen goods, so take it up with the reseller.
Seeking out cheaper prices isn’t immoral, no, but buying from sites that have a high probability of dealing in smuggled or stolen goods absolutely is.
By all means, seek out a deal! Steam offer them regularly, as do Live and PSN. Find one of those, or wait until the price drops. Don’t confuse shopping around with illegal activity.
But you didn’t pay for it legitimately, through legitimate sources. You can’t blame Ubisoft for your own lack of common sense in refusing to research the places you buy from. Just because they have money to throw around on advertising doesn’t make them legit.
So, you have some proof that there’s a “high probability” that it’s stolen goods? Outside of the “good word” of publishers, who ahve a vested interest in that being the image these places get.
I think the only thing that’s high is you, on your own self worth.
Keys can be, and often are, region locked. If Publishers don’t region lock keys, then it’s not “smuggling”.
I doubt Ubisoft would randomly revoke access keys based purely on location of purchase. Some of my friends have also bought from those sites, (mostly Kinguin) and their keys haven’t been revoked, which implies theirs were legit.
It’s similar to buying a television from a man selling them on the cheap, using the back of his van as a venue. Some of those televisions won’t be stolen, but it’s obvious that there’s a definite probability that some will be.
No, I’m saying Publishers can stop a key from activating based on location. Region locking a key to a particular region of the globe.
But that wouldn’t solve fraudulently obtained keys from activating, though. Often it takes time for people to notice abnormalities in data pools that large, with sales of millions, and the investigation itself will take time to execute as well.
Like I’ve said, I don’t blame Ubisoft for this. I blame the resellers.
so you think is right for everyone to take law in its own hands? why is Ubisoft entitled to revoke your key if its not stolen by you? i am perfectly fine if my key was confiscated by a law agency until this hole thing is resolved but not the way its done now.. i am not buying a tv from a back alley but a key from an operational (and from most) trusted site. if we have to think the way you think we would have to research even about the bananas from my local groceries store if they where planted with or without any illegal chemical components..think about that..do you do that kind of research on all your purchased items? is it logical to do so? do i even have to research Ubisoft if its paying its employees according to law if i want to buy the game they made?
You agreed to Ubisoft having the right to revoke the keys at any time. It’s in their terms and conditions.
Reselling sites aren’t to know where all the keys come from. Some of them offer them as a marketplace from users.
I still blame Ubisoft for suspending keys and removing games from peoples accounts (at the least, without notice). At the VERY least Ubisoft could’ve announced the issue, and offered a discount to those that were affected. Instead, they removed the keys without informing the users affected and left it up to media outlets to spread the word. Very, very shady of them.
I just found out my key was affected. The site (Kinguin) offered me an NVidia key and refunded me the difference it cost me to rebuy the Season Pass from Uplay. You can’t help but feel this wasn’t some ploy to force more people onto the overpriced UPlay store.
Like I’ve said in other comments, you should at the very least research the seller beforehand, whether that’s an individual user or whether it’s more general. That’s why sites like eBay and Amazon have buyer and seller ratings, and a failsafe for marketplace transactions. There needs to be checks and regulation, and in the absence of that, promised guarantees so that the person who’s selling things to you can’t sell you a defective product. That applies no less to digital game keys than it does to physically manufactured items.
I’ve never bought from a reselling site because I just wasn’t willing to take the obvious risk, which was that some of the merchandise offered there wouldn’t be viable. My friends have, however, chosen to take that risk, and some of them are affected by this key disabling while others aren’t.
Again, there was a warning for this type of thing when Valve suspended Sniper Elite III keys from resale sites, again without prior notice. A quick Google would’ve brought that up. It’s weird how people are so quick to defend Valve and so quick to condemn Ubisoft for what’s essentially the same action, only iirc only Ubisoft actually deigned to offer an explanation for why they did what they did, whereas Valve didn’t. Suggests to me that people are just determined to shit on Ubisoft.
Having said all of this, I am glad, though, that the resellers themselves are taking responsibility for what something that is their fault, and offering discounts and/or full refunds.
“What loss? The vast majority of these resellers hand out pirated/stolen codes” LOL – Another stupid american.
They are not selling stolen keys, if they were, those keys would not even activate.
They are selling keys from countries where the game is sold for a cheaper price, and those keys are 100% legit.
What happened in this case was those keys were bought using a stolen credit card, and Ubisoft deactivated those.
It’s extremely rare for this to happen, in fact I bought a Far Cry 4 cd-key from G2A two weeks ago and everything is fine… And if it weren’t, they would refund the money I paid for it right away (like they have been doing to all affected customers).
All in all, Ubisoft stupidity is something else. It’s THEIR problem they were paid with a stolen credit card. THEY are the ones who have TO MAKE SURE they are being paid with legal means, ESPECIALLY because they are selling those keys to Russia and other high risk markets. They have to make sure they receive the funds and they are valid before handing over the keys, THEY have to establish proper channels to sell keys over there, IF they don’t, IT’S THEIR FAULT.
Placing the onus on the customer is really laughable, especially for a large corporation like Ubisoft.
Don’t you understand Ubisoft sell the game in Eastern Europe and Russian for less than half of the full price you dumb fuck? Those cd-keys come from those countries.
It’s not possible to research the sellers on these sites. You’ve said that repeatedly, but it’s simply not possible. In my experience, Kinguin and G2A have been great in the past. That’s my research, they’ve sold me reliable products that have worked. In the light of this, and other cases (see below) they’ve always made it right. That’s all the research I need to do.
I’ve been buying from these sites for years, and Sniper Elite III was the first time I’ve known of this happening. I shit on Valve, verbally, back then too. Same for the publisher of that game.
It seems suspicious to me that this has happened twice in under 12 months, at a time when these sites have exploded in popularity in response to an increase in PC game prices. I think it highly probable that these are related. I also think that perhaps some customers of these sites will go to the publisher directly, the rest will either continue chancing it, or go back to/start pirating.
And Valve has region-locked keys from those places for that exact reason. Taking advantage of currency valuation to buy cheap in one country so that you move to another and sell it more expensively (without paying tariffs) is smuggling. Which, again, is illegal.
Then that’s a fault of the site, again, not a fault of Ubisoft’s or Valve’s. There should be a way to research individual sellers before purchasing from them, in a system similar to that of eBay’s or Amazon’s. You say yourself that there are individual users operating on a marketplace separate from the site itself, and if you have no way to verify the legitimacy of their products, you take a risk in purchasing them. Which these people with their keys revoked have done, and unfortunately, the risk did not play out the way they wanted. Once more, that’s their own fault. All Ubisoft are doing is revoking the keys that were fraudulently obtained.
If you want a legit key, you make sure you’re purchasing from a legit source. If you can’t do that, then you at least make sure you’re purchasing with a guarantee that you will be refunded/compensated for your loss.
The fact of the matter is, if you don’t confirm the legitimacy of your product, you run the risk of it not being legit. Either accept that gracefully as you buy Far Cry 4 at release for £5, or don’t buy when there’s any risk at all.
As regards to your last point – the more people who are aware of Kinguin/G2A/etc., the more users who will be on there. The more users on there, the more likely it will become that some of those users will be obtaining fraudulent keys. It’s also more likely that those fraudulent keys, which may have gone unpurchased before, will now be purchased, since there are more users to be catered to. It’s not suspicious at all, and is in fact precisely the opposite. Correlation does not equal causation.
actually i didn’t agree if you get what i mean 🙂 but the thought still remains
You could only get more full of yourself if you were a “self fulfilling” hermaphrodite.
CD Key sites are legitimate sources.
OOOOObviously not, because they peddle fraudulent goods.
Then all they’re doing is blocking off keys they know to be fraudulently obtained, so you don’t get access to them. That’s hardly “taking the law into their own hands”, which would be punishing you for it, rather than just depriving you of access to the product. Which you should’ve never had in the first place.
Ooooooobviously because something happens twice, that means it happens all the time.
And you said yourself, some of your friends bought form Kinguin, and didn’t get their stuff revoked. So, clearly, reseller sites offer legitimate keys. This is the first time it’s happened to me in as many years of using these places.
I buy from these sites and I would buy the game otherwise, I’d just wait for it to become super cheap.
Ubisoft priced the base game at £49.99, which is way, way above what I would expect for a PC game, let alone a DIGITAL PC game. That price is £5 cheaper than the console versions.
That alone, the fact it was barely cheaper than a console game, is what pissed me off the most. Console games have licence fees levied by Microsoft and Sony. IIRC, they’re about £10, which is why PC Games are usually £10 cheaper, at least.
I ended up getting the “Gold” edition on Kinguin for £35, only because it was about £7-10 more expensive for that version, other the “Limited Edition” version (which is bullshit, because like all Ltd Ed games, there’s nothing Limited about them).
At the end of the day, I’d’ve paid Ubisoft directly up to £30 for the base game, which I did for FC3, but instead they priced it £20 over and above the usual price, out of pure greed.
Publishers need to compete with these key sites, not try to shut them down.
But it’s clear that the site can’t be considered a legitimate source, because they don’t offer all legitimate keys, or even regulate their user market.
But it happened twice, and both times to a significant number of people. Just because some of the keys are legitimate doesn’t mean the source is legitimate, because this doesn’t happen with a legitimate source. There is no risk at all of this happening with Steam or PSN or Live or Uplay, whereas it’s a clear and prevalent risk on these sites.
“Some” of the keys? You mean “most”, right? Most keys sold on the site are legit.
Well, I’d agree with you, but then we’d both be wrong.
first of..they might know that the keys where stolen but i didn’t, i paid for that. second, they are punishing me by blocking off my key so yes the law is at their hands. in their terms there’s nothing about me having to buy the product at their fixed price, and i technically bought that product, i didn’t steal it.. they punished ME because they didn’t like the price i bought my game ?????? wtf :S (dont get me wrong we are all accounted for these terms and conditions, if we where to say something instead of just accepting them)in these terms you actually say fuck my rights just do whatever you please ubisoft, and with a smile 🙂
What? Did you forget to mention that every Russian key on steam is region locked or something? You’re right, the fact that I’m not Russian means nothing.
Hello,
Here at G2A we are constantly developing new and innovative ways to ensure our Sellers only offer valid and legally-obtained keys. Currently we can ensure 98.9% of our auctions are verified and definitely obtained legally. Unfortunately, as with all cases of human-related business, we take human error and human nature into consideration and this is why we offer protection against issues like the one reported in the article. We always encourage our Customers to protect their purchases with our Shield service, which will allow us to ensure the fastest resolution of the problem available.
If you have any further questions or doubts, keep in mind that you can always find additional information on G2A’s FAQ or by contacting us on live chat or ticket. Our consultants are there for you 24/7.
See you again at G2A
Peter
G2A Team
I agree with your points, but fuck off with bandwagon hate train that is hating on America. I’d like to know what your IQ is, mines 149 so i’m considered a genius, and I’m American.