Ubisoft. Stop this.

 Trust me- you're gonna wanna keep kicking that can.

There is a hot button issue that all the software world has been putting off for so very long now. One that effects the single biggest entertainment market in the world right now, (albeit, perhaps not the sectors of it that generate those unbelievable revenue numbers) and has the potentiality to lead to the collapse of the good place it is if this get handled wrong. And note, I'm not coming in swinging on the side of the consumer or the developers or the studios in this matter; I am always on the side of the art and whatever gets us more spectacular, incredible and evocative games and let me tell you- if this confrontation goes south and trust is broken to the point where everyone goes their separate ways, we may never see a game to the size and scope of Baldur's Gate 3 or Starfield ever again and I am not over exaggerating. And the issue is: the way we deal with rights management.

Right now we have a eye-wateringly antiquated perception on how to handle digital rights, handed down to us by our ancestors. It's quite simple, those who publish the content go through the act of copyrighting it which gives them full rights over the distribution and defence of that software, which the company than uses to distribute temporary licences to customers. This means that for decades every piece of software you've purchased has, in reality, been an easily revokable licence to software that you maintain no ownership over whatsoever. All those billions that go into the video game industry every year? That's basically lease money to be allowed into the place where all the games are on the premise that you behave well, don't cause issues and pretend to be a full owner so we don't have to embark on a legal reshuffling that no one is ready to navigate.

There needs to be international revisions to law that create some vague sense of ownership so that us who spend all this money on software don't have to worry about some theoretical, theatrical future where some psychopathic CEO finally realises how much they could make extorting us for the software we've had for years already. And we've become stupidly close to that point over the years. Painfully close. All I've ever seen on the side of the consumers in the terms of 'movement' has been the vague promise from Gabe Newell that Steam does actually have some sort of fail-safe system built into it in a worst case scenario situation- and who knows what that means? I guess that could be anything from a single button that destroys all Steam DRM to a man in a tweed suit with a Neurolyser who goes door-to-door erasing the existence of the platform to all those who once downloaded it.

But that is a gigantic legal upheaval we're talking about. A fundamental rewriting of distributor's power over consumers that threatens the delicate balance of superiority they love to laud over us. We'd be looking at a legal battle of the ages that would be slapped down in court at the wrong time, or could topple the entire industry if picked up by the right social movements. It's a balancing act that everyone just persists with by kicking the can down the tracks hoping that no one ever stops to pick it up and observe the can of cesspool consuming worms inside. Everytime this issue is brought back into mainstream attention, the doomsday clock ticks ever closer to midnight for us all. Which is why, Ubisoft, you need to start checking yourselves pronto.

Recently the bottle was blown off it's lid when a user of Reddit posted their email they received from Ubisoft warning of an impending account closure for alleged inactivity; standard enough stuff I'm sure we're all used to. Here's the rub; Ubisoft in their grand avaricious plan to roughly insert themselves everywhere they're not wanted ensures that for every game you buy on a reputable platform you need to own it on Ubisoft's servers as well, and some Ubisoft games are unfortunate enough to have never been ported to real retailers at all! That means Ubisoft's accounts aren't just some limp forum access card, they're also game wallets- and Ubisoft are invoking their right to come snatching back that wallet at their discretion.

And I know what the obvious knee-jerk is: "Well of course they're not going to just keep some online account open indefinitely!" But this isn't your prototypical conversation about cleaning up server clutter, this comes down to a conversation of rights management. Those that brought games are now liable to have those purchased assets seized for the crime of not engaging without Ubisoft's pathetic relic of a launcher, robbing game access from customers. At the very least that should come with an automatic transfer of rights to Steam because otherwise that is dangerously close to theft. Not legal theft, but moral theft- and when you rile up people enough it isn't long before the cogs start turning to make that legal theft. Ubisoft haven't just summed this up as some antiquated automatic system either, the official Twitter account responded in support of this policy- Ubisoft really be setting themselves up for another public spanking!

But let's say that there is a big shift of the status quo in the shape of this revelation; without systemic reforms to the way that software rights are handled, what can we do? I know that there's a ridiculously fine line to walk here because if you just slap an 'ownership' label under purchasers than that complicates the legal responsibilities of storefronts as now legal indebted custodians- but this conversation needs to waged because otherwise, everyone loses. Otherwise people lose their faith in storefronts as an institution and piracy becomes the wide spread norm. It's already easy as pie to pirate week old games, that could blow up in a couple of months. And then the industry loses it's grip on the public, games stop being funded and the entire industry crumbles under it's own weight- this is serious business!

And at the centre of it all lies the absolute clowns at Ubisoft, stepping on landmines without any idea what it is they're hopping on. Of course, it would be Ubisoft igniting this conversation once more. Ownership is an issue that is going to become more and more hotbutton as the world blossoms out and technology enters the hands of more people. Perhaps an altogether separate sector of the industry needs to be formed to handle all this, like dedicated rights middle men that connect players and marketplaces. Or maybe this is all too much work and Ubisoft need to quietly scrap their unbelievable short-sighted policy in a very public announcement so we can all back to kicking that can a little bit further hoping that it never lands at our feet. Yeah, that should work. Afterall, it's worked for Climate Change all these years!