The situation is still not entirely clear, but some communications sent by ubisoft to some users they seem to indicate the possibility that the company plans to deactivate accounts That they are not used for a period of time, cutting buyers out of their games as a result. This has obviously sparked considerable controversy, which for once also makes a certain sense: it is true that the terms are not yet very clear and it is probably too early to be scandalized, but the principle according to which one must demonstrate that one has to keep the account active on pain of removing the regularly purchased games seems a rather draconian and rather unfair solution towards the consumer. However, it must also be said that it is a risk that we will probably have to accept to take in view of an increasingly digital future.
The fact is that, with the transformation taking place in the organization of the market and of the distribution systems, it is also necessary to reckon with a general revision of the possession concept, and this is now a fact. The advance of subscription services has accustomed us to thinking of the payment associated with a usufruct, rather than the actual possession of a purchased good, but the question is broader in a more general way as regards the digital market. In fact, even a product regularly purchased in this way can rarely be considered 100% ours, as it is always connected to some online security, activation and management system through some platform and always and in any case connected to a specific account. If the latter decays, we no longer have anything in hand.
This is perhaps the only truly problematic aspect of the digital market, which has many advantages on its side: the DRM management it varies from platform to platform and may be more or less fair in terms of the buyer’s rights, but in general it all boils down to control over the account making the purchases and if this is too stringent we can find ourselves faced with cases such as that of Ubisoft. It is a question of seeing how the various companies intend to manage the data, because that of the Assassin’s Creed house, at the moment, would seem to be a rather negative example of digital rights management, even if we are waiting to understand the extent of the problem of deleting inactive accounts and the regularity with which such solutions are taken by the publisher. The further clarification that came later, which also includes Steam games in the list of deleted titles with the possible cancellation of the Ubisoft account, does not bode well for the company.
The dematerialization of assets necessarily entails this negative consequence, which would perhaps go regulated better from a legal point of view. This is perhaps still a relatively recent area, but there should be greater attention to the rights of the digital consumer, perhaps with a shared regulation (at least for geographical macro-areas) which guarantees a minimum of security on the maintenance of the rights on the digital products purchased and perhaps even the possibility of transferring them to other users, in the event that one is unable to use them. Some stores and services already allow similar solutions, but a common ground should probably be found on which to act to make the digital market more of a real evolution of the physical one and less of a trap for inattentive or uninformed users.
Let’s talk about it is a daily opinion column that offers a starting point for discussion around the news of the day, a small editorial written by a member of the editorial staff but which is not necessarily representative of the editorial line of Multiplayer.it.
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