Ubisoft's CEO speaks on the Stop Killing Games petition
, by Thibaut
At the recent meeting between Ubisoft and its shareholders, Yves Guillemot, CEO of the French publisher, made a number of noteworthy speeches.
For example, he was asked about his position on the European citizens' initiative Stop Killing Games. Its aim is to create a law preventing companies from making their games inaccessible when their servers are shut down. Ubisoft is one of the main companies concerned, since the first The Crew is now unplayable and has even been removed from the user library.
The question was put rather "aggressively" to Guillemot, who then made his point. In his defense, he pointed out that a game's tools become obsolete over time. As for The Crew, he stated that the second game was offered for just €1 and that an offline mode will be deployed.
"As far as the petition is concerned, we operate in a market. And every time we release a game, we give it a lot of support. We also provide a number of services to ensure that the game is accessible and remains playable 24 hours a day, 7 days a week."
"We provide information about the game and its lifespan. Players and buyers are warned that the game may eventually be stopped. This is a problem we have had to deal with. But this kind of problem is not specific to Ubisoft. All video game publishers are confronted with it."
"You provide a service, but nothing is set in stone, and at some point the service may be interrupted. Nothing lasts forever. And we do our best to make sure things run smoothly for all players and buyers, because it's obvious that support for all games can't last forever. But it's something we're working on. The whole industry is working on it, to minimize the impact on gamers. But it's clear that it's an element that needs to be taken into account."
"The lifespan of software, whenever there is an online component, may eventually be interrupted, because the software may become obsolete over time. Many tools become obsolete after 10 or 15 years. They're no longer available. That's why we're releasing a new version. So we have version two, then version three. But it's clear that this is a big problem, and we're working on it."
Source: gamefile.news