I Want To Sue Ubisoft and Game Publishers... 

Check out Accursed Farms video here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-w70Xc9CStoE.html

I absolutely hate when they not only delist a game but now they are stealing it from us. Erasing my purchase. For shame.

Remember guys: if buying isnt owning, piracy isnt stealing. 1000% applies to delisted games.

For Brazil is a bit easier since there we have really good consumers laws, companies there have a hard time trying to scam people, as an example, Apple and Samsung when they decided to stop providing charger bricks with their phones most consumers just had to open an online complain with the consumer protection board and they forced those companies to provide the bricks free of charge, no need to ask representatives, change any laws or go to court, you pay for the product you get what you paid for. Now in Canada and US is really scary how they let companies do whatever they want, you have such basic consumers laws that the only way to protect yourself is going to court, but even that is expensive and time consuming… is pretty much a system that negates you to fight for your rights unless you have money and time to go through legal matters.

ECSTATIC to see Ross' message getting signal boosted. I've been on board with his case from the start, but I'm just one man who's already selective about what I buy. I really hope people can get behind this message and just STOP buying games that are going to vanish, for their own sake as much as everyone else's. Now I'm digging up that petition site.

"It's insane that you actually have to break the law to actually play older titles" I have no words because of how true this statement is.

I hate that we lost splitscreen. Sleepovers with boys, defending screen peaker allegations in Cod or Halo, or even coop with my brother in Portal. There is no substitute for it

Was *really* hoping you'd mention City of Heroes during the video. It has an amazing story which goes to show how important games can be for people. The short short version for those that don't know, City of Heroes was an MMO owned by NCSoft that shut down, had the server code stolen, rebuilt by fans who ran private servers for years, the private servers were discovered (by other fans), the server code was released for all to install, then the largest private servers released publicly *with improvements and expansion of the original game* to wide praise, and eventually one of these private servers inked a deal with NCSoft to officially allow themselves to keep running. The latest numbers I've seen is they have 44,000 users on a server cluster paid for by donations.

Glad people are finally mentioning this. I’ve had games removed from my PlayStation thanks to some digital only purchases. It’s complete bs. It’s what made me purchase physical copies only today.

Thanks a bunch for the mention! At the rate we're going, I think we're almost certainly going to get answers on this one one way or the other. We can still use more complaints filed though, especially in France, Germany, and Australia. I'm going crazy that the petitions still aren't open, apparently submitting them 3 weeks in advance wasn't enough. I'll have updates on them as soon as they do!

So, fun fact... Ubisoft patched the PC edition of Splinter Cell Conviction to require their activation servers to validate if you own the DLCs instead of letting steam do the validation. They also patched it to require INTERNET ACCESS for LAN co-op. Clicking that menu will boot you back to the menu saying they couldn't access Ubi's servers. You can still buy the DLCs and everything on steam, but they will not work and people that have previously purchased the game also cannot access their DLCs or play the co-op campaign at all anymore because of their forced online patches, and guess what? Those online servers have been taken down and the forced online patches have not been reverted. The same thing happened with Splinter Cell Blacklist, where you also cannot access their online servers to validate what you own, with Ghost Recon Future Soldier, where the game kicks you out of singleplayer because it cannot validate that you actually own the copy as their servers are dead, and the list goes on and on... This is not exclusive to the crew, this is almost every old Ubisoft game, they keep doing this and they keep getting away with it somehow and they will keep doing it until we start suing them for taking what we bought away from us. Edit: Woah this got seen. Also, I could be wrong but I think there's a paragraph in Steam's TOS that a vendor cannot do what Ubisoft is doing where they basically revoke access to content previously bought... Not that Ubi cares, clearly. Also worth keeping in mind, most of these issues seem to happen to people that have activated keys post their uplay changes that seemingly happened before 2020, not everyone will have the same issues but if you visit these games' steam pages and look at the reviews (especially with the case of the DLCs) you will be able to see people complaining about how things are not working and how their keys simply do not register or are recognized by the system anymore.

The problem with not really owning anything is not just with games but almost everything today: software, music, films, everything is a subscription, you pay like crazy for years and don't own anything, It's a really frustrating situation for the consumer,

I have been following this action since february and have already done my part. Thank you a lot for spreading this too.

If I've said it once, I've said it a quintillion times: if you pay money for digital goods and the people you got those goods from want to or have to take away those goods for any reason, they should be legally required to give you a full refund + 15%, turning all revocation of digital goods into a legally mandated net loss

“it’s fun to goon with others but sometimes you should have the right to goon by yourself” Mutahar-2024

Preach, dude. I’m so, so happy you’re helping Ross and getting the word out on this. I think most creators are too scared to brooch this topic, and there needs to be a shift in gamer culture that is more protective of these kinds of games. I’ve been watching you since you did creepypasta readings, and Ross since he made Freeman’s Mind back on Machinima. Ross’s Game Dungeon is one of the best game review series on RU-vid. It’s great to see two legends banding together like this to fight these publishers. Please have him on for an interview when he gets to the next phase!

This reminds me of the whole RuneScape situation. The "Old School" RuneScape of my childhood is lost to me forever even though it was the one they brought back and relaunched because they keep changing it and messing it up. Constant updates to games like Dont Starve are also a huge blight. I wish I could just boot up the vanilla versions of games sometimes, but I don't really own many of them. It's crazy anymore.

Suebisoft

It's really frustrating that game companies can just take away games which we've paid hard-earned money for. Video game preservation is indeed crucial. Gamers put a lot of time and effort into these games, we should definitely own any game we purchase. Companies should for sure guarantee access and not just remove purchases whenever it suits them.

Thank you so much for making this video. I’ve never seen your channel before today, but I’m glad to know others are behind Ross.

4:32 “Last I check playing with myself. I didn’t need to have people with me. It’s fun to goon with others but sometimes you should have the right to goon by yourself” 😢 inspirational

This is why piracy exists and tbh we can't say anything about it, if big companies have such shady practices then I m happy with piracy

"It's fun to goon with others, but sometimes you should have the right to goon by yourself" is a life lesson that I live by every day.

Muta using his voice and platform for the greater good of all of us. Thank you!

Tell people to imagine a game like a book. A whole library of stories to tell. But some of them can never be opened again later. Lost to time, not by a fire or destruction but simply because "why would anyone read an old book"

Going to my local retro store and buying a couple of PS2 games, it makes me realise how much we've lost and how far back we've gotten.

Please God, set some precedent for us to hold these companies accountable At All.

In the context of this i would love to have laws rougly like: - As soon as a game is not available and playable on modern platforms (different OS etc.), they should count as abandonware and abandonware games/media would then be free to download/copy - (close to the accursed farms one) The license holders a liable to keep games available to be playable for people that paid money for the game or ingame transactions. Either by keeping it properly playable with online services or by allowing players to play all content 100% Else they would get monetary fines or something. I can imagine there would be a lot of loopholes and ways to circumvent this, but i think it would be a step in the right direction.

YEEEES, big channels covering what Accursed Farms is doing, this could be good!

Im glad muta is covering this more. These corporations are getting far to greedy with the games we buy. Its amazing how much the gaming landscape has changed for worse.

Honestly the fact that everything’s starting to shift to online does worry me, mainly with the fact that if companies are targeting emulators, people may not be able to experience the same things we have and that does make me sad

You are a absolute legend for helping Ross spread the word about this man, thank you very much. These gaming companies have got away with this long enough, it's time for us to take action.

There has been some talk about finding a hidden offline mode for the crew, if so hope the modding comunity can get it working would love to play again

If buying is not owning then pirating is not stealing.

2:55 They don't even need to make an offline mode because it ALREADY EXISTS - people found it in the files but the game hasn't been updated to make the mode accessible.

One other little "nugget" about live service games is that even in campaigns or in solo mode they have to constantly sync. So it introduces desync issues where natively ran games had zero issues with.

For AAA game titles like COD there should also be a option to transfer skins from older title or like actually linked to your account, there are people who have put money into skins or have unlocked some legendarys, in older title thy should also have access in newer title, it does sounds a bit of more work but those old skins will just rot away nost likely never to be used or seen after few more years, best example is COLDWAR skins to be transferred or used in mw3

This is such an important topic, so many games servers get switched off , online games completely shutdown, digital games removed from storefronts. I hope people keep purchasing physical media and wanting offline modes.

New Dexerto article reads, " RU-vidr thinks its ok to kidnap someone to play splitscreen co-op Multiplayer."

I love how Muta checks his phone mid video without skipping a beat

For some reason i like the phone sounds on the background. I think I'll like any changes to Muta's sound since I've been listening to his videos for so long.

Just to be clear. This campaign isn't about being able to buy games legally and indefinitely. This is about being able to access a game you've already purchased. The former is a separate preservation issue. I doubt any government is going to force a company to sell all their products indefinitely. Thankfully emulators and archival efforts are doing an alright job so far, but even they often can't restore access to a game that never got offline support.

They crippled Black Flag too. It requires a sign-in now, despite the online portion being disabled... sloppily. Unless you look really hard for a goofy workaround, Kenway's Fleet doesn't work and blocks some progression... and the mod that fixes it can get you banned from your Ubisoft Connect account, which signing into is required to even launch the game now... which wasn't the case a few years ago. It worked fine entirely offline and being offline simply skipped the online (now defunct) Kenway's Fleet stuff instead of soft locking your progression when that part comes up, as it tries to connect to shutdown servers... Screw Ubisoft.

A very niche game I loved was happy dungeons. A fun chibi style dungeon crawler. Was online only and get shutdown a while ago. Best part was it was split screen, and I barely played it "online" anyway.

If I can’t hold it I don’t want it. It’s that simple. These are only wants not needs.

One of the craziest things related to this is Destiny 2, where they actively removed parts of the game that you have paid for while simultaneously pumping out new content because the old stuff is "hard to maintain". The entire base storyline that you paid for when the game released is now gone

I remember discovering Ross through his "Games-as-a-Service is Fraud" video a few years back, and him explicitly saying UbiSoft was going to memoryhole The Crew sooner or later in his review of it. I'm glad he's built up to this campaign.

if you own the steam/pc version of FF7 (original '97) there is a mod manager system called 7th heaven. can get 4k textures, 60fps, change character models, and even have voice acting put in. it's pretty great.

I remember MGS4, so excited to get home and play. Pop the disc in..... multiple hour install. And that's my MGS4 experience

I don't think we, gamers should settle with a crap warning, we paid for a game, f big companies, if a game has the structure to run offline it should be OBLIGATED to have an offline patch at the end of it's life time

We really need to raise awareness about this kind of shit. the fact I have friends unaware to how easy publishers can take away their digital products in an instant compared to owning a disc copy of the game - this future of gaming looks so pale.

Thanks for covering this. I have been following accursed farms since the beginning of this campaign.

I still have the dvd/case the Riddick game came out with. It's an absolute fave of mine

I got the digital copy of the new Prince of Persia. And thought I could go play it at the park while my kid was doing his own thing. Nope, how to have a live Internet connection to start the game up on my switch so I ended up having to Connect to my phones hotspot just to play a handheld purely single player game with zero online content and that is absolutely criminal. It makes me worried that I will not be able to play that game in 10 years that they will pull it from my switch.

This is why Piracy will ABSOLUTELY NEVER DIE.

I think the other problem is just game companies shutting down their marketplaces because those platforms they shut down still have a big community who is dedicated to keeping the consoles alive no just the game.

Loving the parallel between yours and Charlie's introduction to this topic "You will own nothing and be happy".

People had the too-early released Stellar Blade demo literally removed from their account. The repercussions and implications of this are terrifying. It means they can practically revoke any license you have *on the fly* as long as you're connected to the internet. They could technically also implement features so you're *required* to have an active internet connection even for disc-based games; they could also remove the offline/primary console features. You play due to their good will, which could change for any reason and at any moment. While the actual occurance is practically highly unlikely, the feeling that this is possible and has been applied already in a few rare instances is alarming. This can't occur when you play on older original hardware or via emulator.

im so happy you're bringing awareness to this, accursed farms has been trying to get this looked at for ages

I was shaking my head and agreement and nodding 14:58 through the video, until the last 60 seconds where he uttered the words “like bloodborne”… We have to put an end to this threat immediately😶

crew motorfest or whatever its called basically crew 3 was the 1st crew i played for over an hour and actually enjoyed it, problem is everytime i went to the bathroom or left the room or checked my messages, i would be kicked off server for being idle and get disconnected and booted to main menu and when id reload id be acorss the map in the starting zone and fast travel is not good in that game so id have to waste a lot of time driving back to where i was long story short, i liked it, glad i got to play on free weekend trial and wouldnt buy it or any game that makes me need to be constantly connected to an online server like assassinc reed mirage which disconnected me everytime i paused the game to check something or send a message.

I remember reading a forum post over 5 years ago that mentioned something about the rights and entitlements we as customers have when buying games, and my memory is a little hazy so I'm not sure if a company rep. replied another user but I remember reading that when you buy a game, what you're paying for is a license to access the game, but you don't "OWN" any rights to the game. and when some people spoke out about this, other people went as far as to defend the companies and berate anyone who thought they were "entitled" to a game that they PAID for with their hard earned money. This was upsetting.

Fairly older example but when Overwatch 2 came out and they deleted Overwatch 1 I felt cheated out of a game. Sure it was an online FPS game but it was a game I payed full price for. What about the people that still want to play 6v6 overwatch 1 on a LAN or private server? That's when blizzard just gives you the middle finger and says "No you're having this and you're going to be happy about it". I have not touched that game in years at this point. Sad to say that no one will probably be able to play that game ever again unless someone cracks / pirates an old copy and creates their own servers...

piracy is the solution

So glad yours speaking out about this and supporting ross!!!

The sad part is that this isn't the first time Ubisoft delisted a game before. One of my favourite games Driver San Francisco got delisted with little to no warning at around 2016 with the only way of playing it by either buying a physical copy for consoles or to emulate it.

We need a law that states: If you can't legally buy you can pirate it.

Not surprised. I've been saying this for years regarding digital games, but always told I was wrong or overflowing it.

Whenever we talk about preserving video games i always remember "Evolve" even if it was a massive flop, i had a absolute blast with my pals playing it. It could be played off line and you could host it if i'm not terrebly mistaken. Now it's gone forever So sad

the other day EA servers had a bug where players lost 1000s of hrs of progress and 1000s of dollars of cosmetics (was resolved and reset mostly by the following day) but for 24hrs, Apex players were reminded that it could all disappear tomorrow and our only resolve to experience that same game again would be to lean on the private/modded client versions.

Thank you so much to bringing attention to Ross’s cause! Very respectable. He needs the support to make this happen! Share the video y’all !

💯 absolutely why are ppl ok with this bs of just “borrowing”

A few fact checks from the beginning, Music and Movies are going this same direction. Music is going this way fast, where albums are released exclusively on spotify or apple music and getting published on these platforms is not as straightforward as you’d expect. A lot of publishers charge monthly for content to be maintained on the various streaming services, so if an artist passes away or stops caring, the publisher isn’t able to bill a credit card and it gets pulled down.

If I had it my way, abandonware should be a recognized term by the legal system where games that aren't being sold anymore should be exempted from piracy laws because there wouldn't be any legal way to play the games. Sure local businesses that do retro games is fine and all and I do support them but not everyone has one where they live

Protectionism and copyright laws are main reason why anti ownership is growing honestly we the people have right to mod and pirate the game as long the game is expired license/abandoned

Another game that suffered the same fate is Wolfenstein 2009. That game was absolutely amazing, the developers worked so hard on it and now you can’t buy it anywhere. It’s just sad.

I was so mad when they shut down the crew servers because I as a child spent over a hundred dollars on that game’s currency to get my favourite cars. I still go back from time to time to do a cross country trip or do some campaign missions but not anymore i guess. All that money just down the drain

Not only keeping the game in an offline state but providing a framework that at least keeps some of the multiplayer functionality working by allowing self hosting to some extent

I want to sue Activision, 6 months of cod not launching on my PC and support being born yesterday feeding me bullshit script answers

There also need to be a statue of limitation in terms of copyright that's very strict for video games, movies, music etc than it is for books for example. Someone that just so happens to work or own shares in a company that 10 years ago released something, even though most of those artists/devs are no longer employed by said company, should not be allowed to own the product in any capacity, period!

I worry about this a lot with quite a few games, but in discussion of Ubisoft, specifically The Division 2. I still enjoy playing through the campaign and its expansions from start to finish from time to time because I just really enjoy the core shooting, loot game, and mission design. Not to mention, game modes like Summit are a lot of fun as a replayable mode with friends.

0:14 “I believe that game preservation is super important.” *ROM intensifies*

Speaking of Grand Theft Auto V and removing content, there was an update last month that removed the Rockstar Editor from the PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game in order for them to fit more updates. These publishers can add or remove anything, at any point, from their games. Truly the "you will own nothing and be happy" future they all want. Do not let them.

I’ve seen companies handle a live service shutdown 2 ways this is specifically in reference to F2P games with micro transactions either you at minimum get the money you spent on the game back or they just quietly shut everything down without a word.

You’re so right about this I’m going to have to upgrade my Xbox from the digital version to the series x because I want to preserve a gta 6 disc doesn’t deserve to be downloaded

Mario Maker 1 is on the brink of death because of the consequences of Nintendo removing the internet functionality of the entirety of the Wii U. This in terms makes the game 99% unplayable except for the up to 120 levels you managed to save before they take down the internet. This change is occurring on April 8th. So basically all 10.6 million levels created in the game will not be preserved, and there will not be a way to access the hard work and level designs many creators spent their time and love on. The game basically becomes a glorified paperweight in just a few days. This also means that someday in the distant future, Mario Maker 2 will suffer the same fate on the Nintendo Switch. We are talking about a game that was a top ten best seller for the entire platform here, that still has quite a few active players to this day. A game that isn't even a decade old. A full priced game at the time as well. There needs to be a better system in place to preserve these titles as they are a part of video game history. And don't even get me started with what they did to Super Mario Bros 35 or Pac-Man 99. While the latter has some singleplayer functionality, the former doesn't even ALLOW us to play the SINGLE-PLAYER practice mode. For whatever reason, you are required to be online for that, so we can't even enjoy the nostalgia of the SMB35 unique game specific physics. And of course both games are inaccessible in the eshop.

Ive been following Ross' content for a good number of years, glad to see you sharing it with your audience

YESSS lets do it! Thanks for spreading the word

A story of preservation that you will enjoy: City of Heroes/City of Villains. A pair of comic book MMORPGs that were very popular in the 2000's. Like most MMOs, it had a rise and fall, multiple expansions, and eventually closed the servers down. Years later, CoH: Homecoming was born. A bunch of fans got together, re--built the games, hosted it themselves, and made it fully free to play. In fact, they not only included all the content ever released for free, they *added even more content*. And then, at the beginning of this year. NCSoft, the originator of CoH, officially granted CoH: Homecoming license to host the game and continue making content. There's no manpower or financial support from NCSoft, and naturally they have to remain free to play (supported by donations), but they were given the legal right to keep that game going. So sometimes there is a win out there.

True digital is downloading the ROM.

As someone who played The Crew 1, its disgusting to see my copy of the game, with the entire game inside the disc, not work because it requires internet connection to servers.

Sad to see all those Tales games on the delisted website! They are so good, especially Graces!

This practice of "always online" and then completely abandoning the game with no offline support has to be the biggest scam in media, period. Can you imagine what would happen if you go into a restaurant and buy your meal, only for the restaurant to take it away and throw it in the garbage if you take longer than half an hour?

There should be a bigger movement regarding this!

One of the major things that get in the way of stuff like this is corporations unbarred abuse of the lobbying system. I can absolutely see major game companies like Ubisoft and EA using this to get in the way of digital ownership laws in the US.

even games with heavy online components could be switched to allow peer to peer matchmaking or self hosted servers

A few nights ago I was attempting to get as many “the crew” trophies as I could. I had to complete two story missions with a platinum medal to get the trophy. All of a sudden I was kicked and I couldn’t join back in. That was that. The end. I have to live with an in-completed trophy and a game I can’t play anymore forever. So sad. I hope a law passes that they HAVE to provide an offline patch.

This has been happening over and over in the background for years and no one talks about it. Game called "H1z1 Just Survive", you bought the game, developers shut down the servers, you can no longer access it in any way shape of form. It wasnt even an old game or a dead game they just decided to go all in on their battle royale game because the genre was trending at the time. No refunds from the dev company or steam were issued. Its literally theft. You cant sell someone a car and then remotely deactivate it (yet) that is essentially what this is.

Yes this is a concern that many of us have, i did actually get the free pre-order forza horizon 5 with the ultimate game pass then bought the upgrade package but still ended up purchasing the base game just to actually have purchased it and it still worries me that when it's done online they will just shutdown the site/game and everything I've done and purchased will be lost

YES! You are giving our man Ross some love! Thank you, Muta!