Ubisoft Wants You To Be Comfortable Not Owning Your Games

With the pre-release of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown started, Ubisoft has chosen this week to rebrand its Ubisoft+ subscription services, and introduce a PC version of the 'Classics' tier at a lower price. And a big part of this, says the publisher's director of subscriptions, Philippe Tremblay, is getting players 'comfortable' with not owning their games. Kotaku: It's hard to keep up with how often Ubisoft has rebranded its online portals for its games, with Uplay, Ubisoft Game Launcher, Ubisoft Connect, Uplay+, Uplay Passport, Ubisoft Club, and now Ubisoft+ Premium and Ubisoft+ Classics, all names used over the last decade or so. It's also seemed faintly bewildering why there's a demand for any of them, given Ubisoft released only five non-mobile games last year.

However, a demand there apparently is, says Tremblay in an interview with GI.biz. He claims the company's subscription service had its biggest ever month October 2023, and that the service has had 'millions' of subscribers, and 'over half a billion hours' played. What's more chilling about all this, however, is when Tremblay moves on to how Ubisoft wishes to see a 'consumer shift,' similar to that of the market for CDs and DVDs, where people have moved over to Spotify and Netflix, instead of buying physical media to keep on their own shelves. Given that most people, while being a part of the problem (hello), also think of this as a problem, it's so weird to see it phrased as if some faulty thinking in the company's audience.

He said: 'One of the things we saw is that gamers are used to, a little bit like DVD, having and owning their games. That's the consumer shift that needs to happen. They got comfortable not owning their CD collection or DVD collection. That's a transformation that's been a bit slower to happen [in games]. As gamers grow comfortable in that aspect... you don't lose your progress. If you resume your game at another time, your progress file is still there. That's not been deleted. You don't lose what you've built in the game or your engagement with the game. So it's about feeling comfortable with not owning your game.'

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