The big news in potential rage-inducing fit throwing is about Ubisoft's plans to expand their (terrible) new Uplay digital distribution store to include third-party support. You may have seen Uplay in the news every once in a while since its big update and almost none of it was good news. Ubisoft is hoping to change that image by gathering up support from additional publishers.
In an interview with MCVUK [via PC Gamer] at the digital games showcase in Paris, France, Ubisoft's Stephanie Perotti stated that...
“Right now, we’re starting the service with our own games, but as we go forward, we plan to potentially add other titles.”...”The plan for UPlay goes beyond digital distribution,” … “We continue to evolve the service across all platforms, including PC, console and mobile. The more Ubisoft games you play, the more rewards you can get, as well as several online services that players would expect.”
The quote is already being met with a lot of groans, disappointment and in some cases consumer hostility. I completely understand.
The problem here is that you have a company who has used some of the most disdainful tactics imaginable for blockading paying consumers from playing the products they paid for. This same company refuses, for the longest, to change their methods...enabling pirates to steal games with nary a hassle but legit consumers have to deal with intrusive and obstructive security measures. What's worse is that this same company goes out of their way to continually insult an entire demographic of gamer by calling them “pirates” and “thieves” and “whiny”. And now they want to milk this same gamer with a digital distribution service? You have to have some LSD quality Stockholm Syndrome to be all right with that.
If a corporation makes it known that they couldn't give a rat's hairy anus about you or the product they service to you, then what makes them think we should care about their new service?
Now, this new and not-so-improved Uplay still has a lot of work ahead of it even with their $1 game giveaway promotions. It works worse now than it did a few years ago when it originally launched. It's a bigger, badder, puberty-stricken service where it seems as if it's having a hard time filling out its own shoes. That's not to mention that several times throughout the year the server downtime prevented gamers from even playing any of their Ubisoft games on PC, and then there was that whole rootkit issue that I'm not even going to talk about.
I'd like to hope that Ubisoft gets their act together, make it so that their DRM-ridden digital distribution service makes it easier to download and play games than it is to pirate them (and right now, for convenience purposes, it's easier and more efficient to download and pirate games than use Uplay). In simple terms, Ubisoft needs to fix their crap and make it rewarding for paying consumers as a service before adding third-party games.
We'll keep you posted on if any other publishers or developers decide to jump on board and offer their games on Ubisoft's Uplay the way they do with Steam and Origin. You can learn more about Uplay by visiting the Official Website.
(Main image courtesy of Kotaku)
