Ubisoft takes measures to kill off the used games market
Ryan Martin / 13 years ago
On Friday Ubisoft revealed a program known as “Uplay passport” and it is designed in its entirety to protect each game to one use only. Each game will be shipped with a Serial code which can be redeemed only once, on redemption the user gets access to unique content and features but once redeemed it cannot be redeemed again without reactivating it for a fee of $9.99.
Therefore essentially if a Ubisoft game owner would want to resell their game it would be financially pointless. Since the buyer will be aware of the $9.99 cost to reactivate it so if the used sale price + $9.99 isn’t cheap enough then essentially it probably won’t ever get sold. The first game to get this new feature will be the San Francisco Driver release.
Although not immediately obvious, this method is simply a way of regaining revenue lost in the used games market, it will probably succeed since after the price of the new game comes down the incentive to buying a new one is much higher than buying a used one since they will be around the same price with the activation fee.
