Ubisoft is a company with a penchant for controversy, and seeing that it gets into puddles more often than is usual for a company in its line of business, one might think that it even likes it, especially when we see the latest misunderstandings, some of their games have been published on Steam.

A Twitter user named @Nors3 posted an image with a warning indicating this Assassin’s Creed Liberation HD would no longer be available on Steam as of September 1st. It wouldn’t be the first time a game has been pulled from Valve’s platform, so what was really annoying, according to the screenshot posted by the aforementioned user, was the content it wouldn’t even be available to those who bought it that day.

Obviously, this immediately started generating negative reactions from users who started a negative review campaign against Assassin’s Creed Liberation HD on Steam.

Ubisoft is setting a precedent on Steam as Assassin’s Creed Liberation HD will not be accessible after September 1, 2022. Even if you’ve already bought it, it’s a new bar for consumers. pic.twitter.com/hRmmb2yM3w

— Nors3.eth (@Nors3) July 10, 2022

Ubisoft apparently originally intended to remove some games and DLC content from Steam so that even those who paid at the time could not access them. Due to the buzz surrounding Assassin’s Creed Liberation HD, the company decided to reach out to Forbes and share the following:

“As stated in our support article, the upcoming outage will only affect DLC and online features. Current owners of these games will still be able to access, play and re-download them. Our teams are working with our partners to update this information across all stores, as well as evaluating all options available to players affected by the September 1, 2022 deactivation of online services. It’s always been our intention to do everything we can to allow these older titles to remain available to players under the best possible conditions, and we’re working on that.” Assassin’s Creed Liberation HD’s Steam tab currently shows this message:

Misunderstanding or correction? Everyone can believe what they want here, but in the screenshot posted by @ Nors3 you can read perfectly that “please note that this title will not be available from September 1st, 2022” under the download mark from the Steam catalog.

On digital platforms, the games you buy are not yours

Aside from Ubisoft’s tendency to get into puddles, this misunderstanding makes it clear games purchased through a digital platform do not actually belong to the user, but to the platform and the publisher. In the event that the platform disappears or is removed by the publisher or developer, the user will lose the content if he failed to back it up (on GOG it is very easy, but on other platforms not so much due to the use of DRM) .

However, even though the digital platforms have been a significant loss for users, and considering the convenience they offer, the physical format is not much better, seeing the trend in the industry of releasing more and more unfinished video games, so in the end it , what players get on many occasions are beta versions rather than finished products. This makes it necessary to support patches where possible in order to enjoy the full and true experience, even on today’s video game consoles.