Since the Stop Killing Games consumer rights campaign in the EU has been picking up quite a bit of steam, recently having crossed the 1.4 million signatures mark, companies in the industry have begun to take notice. Speaking to shareholders, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot spoke about the petition – which is set to hit its deadline at the end of the month – and how it’s an industry-wide issue.
“Regarding the petition, we operate in a market,” Guillemot said when asked for his thoughts about the petition (via Game File). “And, whenever we release a game, we provide a lot of support for that game. We also provide a lot of services to make sure that the game is accessible and remains playable 24/7.”
Guillemot also went on to explain that, according to its terms of service, “Ubisoft may cancel access to one or more specific online features upon a 30-day prior notice.” He also mentioned that the company provides plenty of “information regarding the game and how long the game can be played”. Curiously, he also brought up the fact that The Crew 2 was put on a massive discount when servers for the original The Crew were being shut down, calling it “a one-Euro fee proposed to all buyers of the game. For just one Euro they got to buy the next version.”
“It’s not a whole lot of money to be able to continue playing a game,” he said.
“But this kind of issue is not specific to Ubisoft,” continued Guillemot. “All video game publishers are faced with that issue. You provide a service, but nothing is written in stone and at some point the service may be discontinued. Nothing is eternal. And we are doing our best to make sure that things go well for all players and buyers, because obviously support for all games cannot last forever.”
Guillemot also spoke about how software typically changes and evolves, since older software is often left behind because it becomes obsolete or non-compatible with contemporary hardware. He noted that this is why new versions of the software are created.
“The lifespan of a piece of software, whenever there’s a service component, eventually services may be discontinued, because eventually the software may become obsolete over time,” he explained. “A lot of tools become obsolete 10 or 15 years down the line. They’re no longer available. And that is why we release a new version. And so we have version two and then version three. But clearly this is a far-reaching issue, and we’re working on it.”
Along with more recently having to deal with the Stop Killing Games initiative, Ubisoft has been the target of a lawsuit regarding its shutting down of the servers for The Crew. As part of this lawsuit, a lawyer for Ubisoft had argued that players had never gotten ownership of The Crew in order to dismiss their argument. For more details, check out our coverage from back in April.
In the meantime, Ubisoft has been working on introducing an offline mode to The Crew 2 in order to ensure that the game works even if the plug is eventually pulled on its servers.
