Ubisoft now says it will not delete your games just because you didn’t sign in often enough. “Accounts that include purchased PC games are not eligible for deletion,” Ubisoft senior corporate communications manager Jessica Roache tells The Verge.
Last week, a tweeted screenshot of a Ubisoft email put gamers in something of a panic because it seemed like Ubisoft planned to delete inactive accounts — including all the games they’d purchased — just because they hadn’t signed in frequently enough.
When we asked Ubisoft whether it would delete accounts when users haven’t signed in for six months, as its terms of use still clearly say it can, this was the company’s full reply:
For many years now, we have implemented our account deletion process in compliance with the requirements of the GDPR (Article 5.1.e on the obligation to limit the data retention period). Our policies are aligned with legal requirements and with the standards of the industry. This measure also acts as a protection for our players against fraud.
Account deletion follows a very strict process. As such, we take into consideration the 4 following criteria before an account is deleted:
*The gaming activity of the account since its creation
*The account’s libraries: accounts that include purchased PC games are not eligible for deletion
*The duration of inactivity of the account, meaning the last login to our ecosystem (including from Ubisoft games on Steam and other platforms)
—In practice, as of today, we have never deleted accounts that have been inactive for less than 4 years
*The existence of an active subscription tied to the account.
In any case, before the deletion is permanent, three emails are sent to the player over a 30-day period offering to restore their account. In addition, if the user tries to log in during the 30-day window, they will automatically receive a warning and a link to reactivate their account.
Ubisoft, not The Verge, bolded the part about how “accounts that include purchased PC games are not eligible for deletion.” And it’s notable that logging into non-Ubisoft accounts like Steam can apparently save your account from deletion.
The statement as provided doesn’t quite fit with the company’s terms of use (ToU), which state that it will notify users their account is pending deletion after six months of inactivity. Ubisoft provided a very similar statement to ours to PC World in 2021. Roache reiterated to The Verge that while the company’s ToU “are meant to reflect every possibility, in practice, we have never deleted accounts that have been inactive for less than 4 years.”
The company did update a support page last week to reflect that accounts with PC games purchased from the Ubisoft store won’t be deleted, according to Roache, in an effort to “help clarify and correct some of the misinformation” surrounding account and game deletions.
I asked if the company’s policy not to delete accounts with purchased games is true in all cases, even when a gamer runs afoul of the company’s other terms or its code of conduct, and Ubisoft was unable to provide me with an answer about that.
In PC World’s story, a gamer who was inactive for two years found his account had been deleted when he finally logged in again. When the account was restored, hundreds of dollars of games were missing. In response to the story, Ubisoft said it would reach out to the gamer to rectify the situation.
We’ve asked Ubisoft what the resolution of that story was, but the company wasn’t able to speak to that as of our last update to this story.
Update July 25th, 2023, 5:13PM ET: Updated with additional answers from Ubisoft.