I love the Assassin’s Creed games. I’m not as big on the Rabbids ones, but I’ve played my fair share of them over the years. So it was a bit of a shock to see a tweet from the official Ubisoft Support account that seemed to imply the publisher would delete accounts with games on them if they were inactive.
“Ubisoft does not close accounts with games on them,” the company now states. “However, if a player has not logged into their account for an extended period of time, the system may close the account automatically after multiple warning emails.”
The official Ubisoft Twitter account did not deny the allegations when asked about them directly. However, the company’s website does state that “if you haven’t played any games on your account for a long time, it may be closed to protect your games and prevent fraud.”
Now, in a statement provided to PC Game Spotlight, Ubisoft says it does not delete accounts with games on them. The company says it follows strict criteria when it comes to account deletions, which are “an important part of our overall protection against fraud.”
“Our policies are compliant with GDPR and industry standards,” the company continues. “Our deletion process acts as a protection against fraud, where the system closes the account of a player who has not played any game on the account for an extended period of time. This process reflects our legitimate interest to protect our games and the accounts of our players.”
The company then says it “sends three emails to the player before permanently deleting their accounts.” If you click on the provided link, the company says, you can “easily reactivate your account.”
You can find the full statement from Ubisoft below:
Statement from Ubisoft:
The whole thing started when anti-DRM advocate and author Cory Doctorow shared an account deletion notice on Twitter. It was captioned “Ubisoft is deleting inactive accounts that have games on them,” and the tweet was shared over 29,000 times.
It’s easy to see how people might get the impression that Ubisoft deletes inactive accounts with games on them, since the company’s processes weren’t immediately clear. But now we know for sure that the publisher doesn’t do this.
