So it seems Ubisoft isn't sitting on its laurels when it comes to bad PR moves as of yesterday the companies Online DRM/ gaming service Uplay has begun voiding keys purchased through 3rd party companies like Kinguin, allkeyshop, and intkeys.

Link to Ubisofts forums

That's one way to make people pirate Far Cry 5.

It's like they actively lament having customers.

If what this person is saying is true, the problem is as much Ubisoft retroactively voiding the purchases rather than pursuing the services themselves. It would still be shitty to deny customers caught in the middle of bullishit international pricing and currency stuff that these sites seem to be a relatively newfound solution but this is kinda crazy.

Again, if this account is true. I have no reason to suspect otherwise but I'd be curious to see if this gets a proper write up somewhere and possibly official comment from Ubisoft.

Man, Ubisoft really sucks horse shit.

I mean, if those sites are not authorized retailers and resellers, then Ubisoft has every right to void those keys. Sure, it's a shitty PR move, but who knows where those sites are actually getting their keys from and it is a risk the consumer knowingly takes when choosing to go outside of regular sale channels. I'm not really sure how those third party sites work exactly, but a site called allkeyshop sounds pretty sketchy to me.

This is only bad PR because of Ubisoft's recent loss of connection with its fanbase. If they were more fanbase focused, than this would be just another smart business move, but due to their recent history it's more than that.

If RedElectric did this with Witcher 3, it would be just them doing what's right.

Seems like a dumb thing to do. If these sellers do something illegal, persue them. Not the consumers. I agree allkeys sounds sketchy but www.kinguin.net looks legit.

First you say that its a risk the consumer knowingly takes and then you say that you dont know how these sites work, did you read read the post in the UBIsoft forum?

The way UBIsoft retracts these keys at a random point seems sketchy at best to me and and its undoubtedly bad PR and shitty customer relations.

Yeah, I said that. I don't see how either of my two points in that statement contradict each other... If you choose to buy your key from a website that is not officially authorized to be selling those keys by the original publisher, then you are knowingly taking a risk. Obviously the super legitimate sounding allkeyshop is not officially authorized by Ubisoft, otherwise they wouldn't be voiding the keys. Me saying that I don't know how the sites work, doesn't have anything to do with my first point. When all is said and done, those sites are obviously not authorized and at best are operating in a grey area.

As I understand it, they effectively just sidestep / take advantage of regional pricing differences by buying copies in cheap regions and then re-selling them & undercutting the 'official' price in more expensive regions. Not exactly wrong and probably not illegal, just against whatever bullshit rules Ubisoft have decided to make up and now enforce.

I'd think Ubisoft would need to be a bit careful with how they handle this, especially within the EU which is supposed to be a free trade zone and where the courts tend to frown on anti-consumer / anti-free-trade practices like this.

@liquidprince: Here's a question though, is there a way for customers to know if a retailer is officially authorized by a publisher or not? Say a typically authorized retailer isn't authorized for a random time period from a publisher and there's no news of it, how would the consumers know? Like, legitimately, is there a way?

That's a good question, and if it wasn't almost five in the morning, I might put in some energy into trying to find out how you can tell if a service is officially authorized. Off the top of my head though, the only ones that are officially authorized would be Steam, Origin, GoG and any of the stores that belong to the publishers themselves.

Couldn't that be blamed on UBI by not making keys region locked to areas not in the same price range? Like make a set of keys unlock the game for all regions of similar price range, while another set of keys does the same for another set of regions within a different price range, and so on and so forth.

With this mindset, wouldn't it be UBIs fault for overlooking this loophole?

@liquidprince: fyi allkeyshop is an site like pricerunner that collects the prices for alot of different stores and compares them. Its totaly legitimate and you find stores like gamestop, amazon, steam etc. in its search results. In addition to that there are litterary thousands of legitimate stores all around europe that sells games. In your small world Steam, GOG, origin and Uplay may be the only legitimate business but not in Europe from an Belgish dude living in Polands eyes

This is exactly what he meant by anti-consumer / anti-free-trade practices.

Think of it this way, if a customers buys a fully working official apple Iphone from an unlicensed dealer, apple shuts down their Iphone because they bought it from what they deem the wrong place. They punish the customer and not the dealer themselves. Be it the customers was aware or unaware.

It is much like drugs, the police do not send every drug users to jail for 4 years instead they wait and track a dealer from the user and onto the people who ship it. THEN they make the big bust and everyone else in the line depending on how important they are are shit out of luck in getting their illegal drugs.

Same thing here instead of busting the user bust the suppliers so they do not have any options. At Least easily available.

Also ontop of all this, the third party cd key sellers still get their cut, they go unpunished. If anything Ubisoft is making this act not just frowned to beyond that.

Here's the thing: Ubisoft isn't a fan of the sneaky Russian and Eastern Bloc websites selling those keys because they are making jack for money off of them.

Essentially, those websites are buying fully legit keys, but it's for literally a massive fraction of what they sell them for in the EU and US. This is because piracy is so prevalent there that the companies have to sell the keys stupid cheap. These websites buy a ton of keys, then resell them through a shady looking site for prices higher than they paid for them, but cheaper than what we pay for them.

The week that DmC: Devil May Cry came out, I bought that game for $20 through Direct2Play.com. That site looks shady as hell, but they are 100% legit. They don't screw you over, don't steal payment information, nothing. They are just there to offer a product and make a profit.

Ubisoft just doesn't like that they are being undercut by people who are already giving them money and reselling unused keys for a profit. It's bullshit.

Even the non-sketchy sites like Greenmangaming?

If the keys are illegal, too bad so sad.

If they're not, that's lame.

I can't tell what the truth is.

HOLD UP. Only illegitimate keys are being voided. I'd love to dump on Ubisoft just as much as anyone else but get your facts straight OP.

@thatonedudenick: They are not resellers of keys. Many sites work with publishers, much like a retail store would. The title is slightly misleading.

Any customer of theirs that loses their game because they bought it from them likely won't continue buying from them. Sure they get their cut now, but they likely lose future sales.

This is not Ubisoft's issue, if you bought an 'illegitimate key' from one those grey market sites and your key is voided your issue is with the retailer.

I know it's the current trend to shit on Ubi these days, but buyer beware, if it seems to good to be true, turns out it probably is.

I've bought plenty of keys from third parties over the years and never had one revoked after the fact, but I always knew the risks. I always considered myself lucky.

You play with fire, sometimes you get burned.

Well, this situation kind of sucks both ways.

If Ubisoft region lock keys, then the whole concept of buying cheap and selling high internationally goes out the window. For example, I wouldn't be able to buy Russian keys for Far Cry IV for cheap thanks to the ever-growing recession over there and then sell them for a euro / dollar profit to Western Europeans and Americans because Russian keys would only work in Russia. Problem solved... except consumers absolutely hate region locking. They'll be annoyed that Ubisoft enacted it, and they won't feel particularly grateful when the company removes the region locking after the Russian economy stabilizes and the ruble goes up in value enough to destroy any semblance of a "bargain." They'll just be pissed, and if they're savvy enough to seek out international software broker websites, they're probably also savvy enough to seek out software piracy websites. Then Ubisoft won't even make the small amount of money they'll making now. Not good.

However, riding the current currency exchange rates out and taking the hit also sucks. The ruble is so low compared to the euro and dollar that people being able to buy software this way does eat into the company bottom line, and Ubisoft has bills to pay, mouths to feed, and a need to keep up profits for shareholders. Who knows when Russia's currency will go back up anyway? Putin's boys are ramping up their land grabbing in East Ukraine and his propaganda machine is literally telling women to eschew French lingerie in favor of Russian-made cotton panties (I'm serious). He's girding for the long haul, hehe. For all Ubisoft knows, the sanctions against Putin's Russia are only going to get worse. If that happens, the ruble will be even more worthless and these international brokers will clean house. Eastern Europe had a lot of trade with Russia, and they're sinking a bit too. All those software keys, suddenly so cheap for Westerners to buy off the internet. It might be such a great season of deals for consumers that people normally too lazy to put this amount of effort into bargain hunting won't be able to justify waiting for Steam sales. It's always a Steam sale in Putin's Mother Russia, baby. :-P

I'm glad I don't have to deal with this from a business perspective. It sounds awful, and I'm not so sure that voiding keys bought in this fashion is the right course of action. I might have just taken the current hit and overtly region locked all new keys for a few years, citing currency exchange nightmares across the globe.

People try to pay less so they buy keys from "grey market" sellers and then complain when they get punished for it?

lol, people are being so silly. Either pay full price or wait for a sale, pc games go on sale all the time. If you really don't want to pay full price and get it at launch, just pirate it, better that than to support grey market resellers and possibly getting your steam or other account banned.

We don’t know how exactly these sites obtain their Steam keys. It seems likely that they were originally obtained from our store using stolen credit card information. Keys were then sold through a handful of questionable sites to people using legitimate credit cards. The owner of the stolen credit card ultimately disputed the charge and we lost the sale. In total, we lose ~$45 per transaction of this kind, due to the charge-back fee (~$22 fee + $25 game price). Meanwhile, the unauthorized key reseller kept the money from the player who ultimately received the bad key.

Ubisoft needs to set an example for this kind of scum. It might not hurt big publishers too much but think of the smaller, indie developers trying to run their own small business. If you buy a key from these shady sites, you are wilfully or unbeknownst part of the problem that needs to be dealt with. Go settle your dispute with the (3rd party) vendor and not Ubisoft.

Ah, so they're going after the credit card thieves eh? Doesn't sound like all the sites they are targeting are nefarious though. I'd imagine that a goodly chunk of keys on some of these are pretty legitimate, albeit a tad fishy for ethical reasons. Fun, complicated times.

Huh was just about to try and buy Farcry 4 from G2A...well there goes that idea guess will wait for steam sale not in any hurry..

@lazyimperial: No, this is the Modus Operandi on Natural Selection 2 resellers but it is an universal way of scamming any vendor.

Basically stolen credit cards are used to buy legitimate keys from legitimate 3rd party vendors or off the developers themselves. The buyers issue a charge-back but retain the key to sell through to other customers on their own shady 3rd party key selling website. The key is not always deactivated since it was never activated to begin with and can be sold in time to make profit off of it.

Another way of scamming developers off of keys was impersonating famous youtubers or videogame journalists to pry a key off of the developers hands. This was done by G2A, the prime suspect in this case with Ubisoft.

Thanks for posting this link as I was going to. UWE makes a smart move in that post, putting up a page of the authorized sellers of their game. If Ubisoft is voiding keys for this reason (and not region pricing or such), then I am totally with them. They have no way of knowing which store the keys came from. This is their only way to weed out the stores selling stolen keys. It sucks for the consumer, but if enough vendors did this, people would quickly learn which websites not to use. I wish there was a simpler way, but if a deal is too good to be true, it probably is. This applies to all forms of purchasing. I wish there was a better way to deal with this than only harming the consumer.

any chance to jump at ubi's throat, eh?

Yeah Ubisoft sucks but they aren't wrong here. The faux outrage makes you look ridiculous btw.

@liquidprince: Why would they take freedom of choice away? Not everyone can afford to shell out 60 (70 in Canada) for a new game. It's also a hell of a lot better than getting it for free.

DAN "TURNAROUND" TEASDALE WEIGHS IN:

If there's proof that a key has been illegally purchased with stolen credit card information then of course that's a different issue. I don't think you (or Ubisoft) can just assume that all key re-sellers are doing that though; most will be legally buying them in a cheap region and legally selling them on again at a profit, which is just standard commerce and only possible because of how Ubisoft choose to price their products in the first place.

Likewise I don't think you can just assume that Ubisoft has final say over who can and cannot resell their product. First sale doctrine laws basically say that they don't. They get to choose who they sell to in the first instance - after that it's out of their hands. Honestly it's kind of worrying that we've got to a point where so many people just take it as a given that a game company should / would have absolute control over what happens to a copy of their software even after they've sold it to another party.

Relevant from Wikipedia:

"In Europe, the European Court of Justice ruled on July 3, 2012 [UsedSoft v Oracle], that it is indeed permissible to resell software licenses even if the digital good has been downloaded directly from the Internet, and that the first-sale doctrine applied whenever software was originally sold to a customer for an unlimited amount of time, as such sale involves a transfer of ownership, thus prohibiting any software maker from preventing the resale of their software by any of their legitimate owners.^[4][5][6] The court requires that the previous owner must no longer be able to use the licensed software after the resale, but finds that the practical difficulties in enforcing this clause should not be an obstacle to authorizing resale, as they are also present for software which can be installed from physical supports, where the first-sale doctrine is in force."

Basically that ruling says that --within the EU-- whatever bullshit Ubisoft writes in its EULA doesn't really count for shit. Once they sell a copy (whether as a physical copy or a download) in the first instance, they also legally give up their right to oppose the resale of that copy. It's simply not their place to take steps to prevent one party from selling a legally purchased copy on to another party, because the court says it isn't. This idea that you need to be an 'authorised' seller (again, within the EU) to ever sell a copy of a Ubisoft game is fanciful.

Hate to break it to you but in the real world when you cant afford something then you cant have it. Full stop. Work harder, save up, or go without are your options.

You forgot 'buy it from somewhere cheaper if possible', which is a legitimate option for virtually everything, including copies of Ubisoft games.

That's a really dumb statement. Ever heard of something called options? I'm not speaking for myself btw, a man of assumptions over here!

They've been apparently also blocking keys acquired from PC game magazines like the Polish CD-Action - as in codes they have negotiated themselves to give out.

I'm going to need actual proof of this that isn't some random person saying something on a forum. What you are inferring is that they are voiding legal keys when in actuality they are probably doing something less malicious if I had to guess. But I need proof of these allegations before I believe it.

I'm not even sure why you think that's proof.

Or is this a "pirating is ok" thread? That's against the forum rules if that is what this thread is.

It's hard to tell since the OP has no discussion starter what the point of this thread is other than to make accusations with no actual proof.

@valjean9430: Ubisoft disapproving of it doesn't make it illegal, and them being able to revoke access doesn't mean they have the legal right to do so.

Also, proof of one key re-seller being involved with stolen credit cards wouldn't give them carte blanche to treat all key re-sellers as criminal enterprises. The act of software re-selling itself is not illegal within the EU, as the ECJ has explicitly ruled that it isn't.

I hope that it's only illegally obtained keys which are being pulled too. The only reason I suspect that isn't the case is because when this all started their stock response on their forum was about 'unauthorised sellers' rather than explicitly about criminal activity. I suspect they are seeking to conflate the two (very, very different) issues because it's in their interest to do so.

They obviously don't want people buying from a cheaper region, but unfortunately for them that just isn't their decision, no matter how much they try to mislead people into believing that it is. There's effectively no such thing as a 'Ubisoft authorised seller' in the EU because the law overrules them and 'authorises' everyone.

If they clarify their position and make it clear that it's exclusively about illegally obtained copies then fair enough. If they're pulling any keys simply due to coming from 'unauthorised sellers' as they first claimed then they're in the wrong and those affected have every right to complain.

I bought an AC Unity key a few weeks ago from an eBay seller - I know, I know. First and last time for that!

Key activated fine but when I checked Uplay today it had disappeared. Trying to input the key again gave me this:

Seller refunded me in 5 minutes flat saying that they were an honest seller and they'd be investigating with whoever sold him the key.

Luckily for me the game was shite and I can now spend the money on something legit...

Beware, duders.

@dave_tacitus: Good on the seller for refunding your money. It's eBay, I assume they could've just disappeared in the dead of night.