Ubisoft is sending out emails to anyone who’s not used their account in four years, warning that they’ve been suspended.
UPDATE: 25/7/23 Ubisoft has clarified, via IGN, that “accounts that include purchased PC games are not eligible for deletion”. So if you’ve bought PC games via Ubisoft Connect, your account should be exempt from suspension/deletion.
According to the email, a copy of which has been posted on Twitter, if you’ve not used your Ubisoft account for that period of time you’ll be suspended. You have have 30 days to click on the “cancel” button in the email. But Ubisoft will be deleting the accounts of anyone who doesn’t.
That means that any games you’ve purchased will be gone too. And, going by Ubisoft’s terms and conditions, there’s no way to get them back either. However, while the t+cs do state this may happen, this appears to be the first time Ubisoft have actively done this.
The moment we heard about this email, we started wondering. Have we used our personal, non-GameSpew accounts in four years? We’ve got a few Ubisoft games on there, such as Far Cry 5. But with Steam, Epic and so forth, we’re not sure when we last used Ubisoft Connect, the company’s game distribution service. If you’re not sure, it could be a good idea to log in.
So, is this a case of Ubisoft being wilfully terrible? Actually, no. It’s down to data protection laws such as the European General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR. The GDPR, for example, puts storage limitations on data. It states:
- You may only store personally identifying data for as long as necessary for the specified purpose.
Yes, it seems ridiculous that you can lose games you’ve purchased just for not logging in. But failing to delete these accounts could result in Ubisoft falling foul of the law. Valve has, as far as we know, yet to implement a similar action with Steam. But we’d wager that most people log into Steam much more frequently than Ubisoft Connect.
