Over the weekend, online reports claims that Ubisoft was deactivating unused accounts and that it would delete any PC games associated with that account. Now, Ubisoft is doing some damage control, as it now says that it will not delete any of its accounts that include purchased games.
In a statement sent to The Verge, a Ubisoft spokesperson stated there are actually four things that need to happen before an account on its network 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.
So it would appear that your Ubisoft PC game library is safe, even if your account has not been signed into for a while. If there are no such games, Ubisoft will suspend your account if it"s not been active for four years or more, which is a long time.
Even if an account is suspended, Ubisoft says the publisher will send three emails to the person with that account "over a 30-day period offering to restore their account."
So why bother to suspend or delete any inactive accounts in the first place? Ubisoft says that"s due to the rules set up by the European Union"s GDPR. It added:
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.
The bottom line: If you haven"t accessed your Ubisoft account in a while, your games under that account should be safe, but you might want to go ahead and keep it active anyway.