Honest opinions on Uplay?

[Mr Fixit]

I know Ubisoft is about as hated & reviled as EA & Uplay is considered to be pure evil by many, but I need some straight answers damn it!

So as someone that is quickly becoming more & more of a pc gamer I have to know just how bad is Uplay on pc? I do enjoy the occasional Assassin's Creed or Far Cry & I'm not sure I want to spend the money on a new console for just a few games. I've got Steam & Origin & both of those are fine to me, but I've no experience with Uplay on pc.

I've heard all the horror stories, but I'm really interested in the thoughts & opinions of people that currently have Uplay on their systems.

 

[Pseudonym]

It adds nothing but has so far not ruined anything for me either. It annoyingly takes up time starting when I try to start up rayman legends (which I bought on steam, damn it) but that's about it. I'd pay attention to reviews on a game to game basis to see if any of them have these particular horror stories associated to them. You can link it to your steam account apparently so that might be fixable as well. Maybe I'm one of the lucky ones but Uplay is merely a small nuisance, not a dealbreaker for me.

That said, it's existance adds nothing to my gaming experience and detracts something from it (2 minutes per play session and an extra password to know) so I'd be glad to see it go.

 

[DoPo]

Opinion? Mostly unneeded, yet peddled by Ubisoft as if actually does anything useful.

Experience? Yeah, that. I've not had "horror story" worthy experience but out of everything I've used, I've had the most problems with Uplay. Not big ones, not significant ones (mostly) but the sheer number of them makes it really annoying. At various points in time, I've had 1-3 of these affecting me.
- I've had Uplay stop syncing save games. Not that I needed the sync, but every time I exited a game, I was met with a popup that said that syncig failed
- I've had Uplay automatically downgrade itself.
- I've had Uplay lose all its translation keys,which meant that instead of OK and Cancel buttons you'd have some crap like Uplay.UI.Buttons.Confirmation.Label.OK which, however, doesn't fit in the actual button so you don't know which button is OK and which is Cancel
- I've had Uplay decide to not award me an achievement because who knows what. It's really stupid, too, since it was one of the story achievements in one of the AC games - it was one of the middle ones, so I had the achievement for playing the tutorial and the one for finishing the game, but not one of the ones in the middle.
- I've had Uplay decide to keep awarding me an achievement. Essentially, it was progress based in some fashion and every once in a while it reset its progress meter. After I had gotten the achievement in question. OK, to be fair, it might have been Heroes 6 itself, but I know it was using the Uplay integration. I'm not exactly sure which side of the integration was at fault. May have been both.
- I've had Uplay regularly being stuck unresponsive in the background for who know what reason.

It's a bad service as I've often had it not work and in some rather basic ways. I've almost not experienced anything that really hinders me using it but I tend to not use it for anything other than launching the game. It's also really annoying that if you launch the game through Steam, you only get Uplay pop up and you have to launch it from there, as well.

As I said, though, "almost". Ubisoft keep insisting on having an always online connection to various degrees in different games. Hoeroes 6 ultimately suffered for it. Sure, you can play it offline, but then you don't get Legacy artefacts which, while not strictly essential, are still a significant thing in the game. In short, they are weapons that are bound to your account and level up and get new abilities as your hero gains XP. In offline mode, you simply not have them at all. Until you go back online. Which brings up another problem - if you're online, and your connection drops, even if it's for a moment, then H6 booted you out immediately. No save, no warning, no wait and retry, no switching to offline mode during play. Even if you were in battle - you'd need to go and play through it again. Man other games on Uplay have a various severity of the same problem.

Overall, I try not to get any games on Uplay if it can't be helped. I'll still get them, if it's not possible otherwise - Heroes and Assassin's Creed, being examples, but I mostly bear with it.

EDIT:

Maybe I'm one of the lucky ones but Uplay is merely a small nuisance, not a dealbreaker for me.

That said, it's existance adds nothing to my gaming experience and detracts something from it (2 minutes per play session and an extra password to know) so I'd be glad to see it go.

Actually, yeah. That's also my thoughts on Uplay in a nutshell. I'd just like to amend "small nuisance" to "small but constant". As long as you are playing something on Uplay, that is.

 

[The Eupho Guy_v1legacy]

Its not terrible, but I try to avoid it where I can. Its more of a hassle than anything in my case. I already have a well established Steam library and a good number of contacts that I can play said games with. So why do I need to create another account with another supplier that requires its own contacts list and everything so that I can play 5 games? Doesn't make too much sense to me.

 

[Weaver]

I'm one of the "horror story people". I remember buying one of the first UPlay enabled titles and couldn't play it for 2 weeks because the servers were down.

There was also an issue with the HOMM VI expansion - Shades of Darkness - where steam would sell you the expansion but UPlay didn't think you actually owned it. Someone eventually found a work around [http://steamcommunity.com/app/48220/discussions/0/630800445624089091/?l=french] but the issue here is that Ubisoft didn't provide any support on this problem. They just pretended swathes of consumers confused that they didn't get the thing they just spend $30 was not a problem.

Maybe it's better now, but I'm never ever trying it again after my bad experience.

 

[Zhukov]

At best it's utterly useless but relatively easy to ignore.

At it's worst, it caused every Ubisoft game I bought to crash 100% of the time on the main menu. I was actually having to download cracks for legally purchased games just to get the damn things to work as intended.

For whatever reason that stopped when I got a new PC. Now it's back to just being a useless little speed bump between me and my games.

 

[CeeBod]

My experience is another of the horror story ones. I bought Assassin's Creed Revelations on Steam, and the details for Uplay seemed to auto-fill when I first set it up. Awesome thinks I, maybe this Uplay thing isn't as bad as I thought, it's taken my details from Steam and set up an account with those, cool. I played and enjoyed the game for a while, with no issues.

Later on I bought Anno 2070. After setting that up, I suddenly couldn't play Ass Creed any more - it wasn't registered to the same account, and it also wasn't registered to any of the same details as used in my Steam account - whatever it had used to auto-fill my details nobody knows! Surely this is just a small thing that can easily be resolved thinks I, after all I bought both games through Steam, and I have the license keys. - so I went onto Ubi's support website where it kept forwarding me to the Xbox form for submitting any problems, no matter what options I tried selecting to raise a ticket. It totally failed to recognise the existence of the PC games at all. I filled it in anyway, but I also logged the problem on the Ubi support forums, and I sent emails direct to Ubisoft. I included sceenshots showing the license keys for all of them, together with the huge raft of requirements they stated they needed for all support issues, whether they were relevant or not.

Not only did I get no resolution but I didn't receive even a single reply to any of my many varied attempts to ask for help, despite the fact that I did the above at least 15 times. After wasting many hours and getting absolutely nothing, I resolved to never give Ubi any money ever again. A bad product (like Uplay) I can forgive, but throw in their non-existant support for it and their total disregard for their customers, and they are now the only company I have a total blacklist on. I will never pay for anything they ever do - by comparison I dislike EA, but still tolerate them.

 

[Barbas]

Its best isn't very good and its worst is...well, I'm sure you've heard the horror stories. That's basically it; Ubisoft's bastard adds nothing to my life, so I haven't used it in ages.

 

[Dalisclock]

I nearly gave up on playing Assasins Creed: Revelations for good because of Uplay. I was about 7 hours in and for some reason, Uplay started acting up and I couldn't launch the game. So I figured to go through the Tried and True method of just reinstalling the damn thing.

Turns out, Uplay ties saved games to itself and by deleting Uplay all my saved games went with it. And apparently Uplay hadn't been auto-syncing like it was supposed to, so they were gone for good.

I stopped play right then and there. I didn't finish the game until over a year later when I did a marathon of the AC games. This time I'd learned my lesson and I would only have Uplay online when I first ran the game. As soon as it clicked with Uplay, I turned Uplay back to Off-line mode and played the rest of the game that way.

Haven't had any problems since. You know your service is crap when the best way to use it is to disable as much of it as possible. Too bad Ubisoft still hasn't realized this yet.

What makes it worse is that they keep trying to shoehorn it more and more into their games. AC:Unity apparently had special chests that could only be opened through Uplay and AC Black Flag's big strategy game required you to be online to play it(So yeah, I never played that bit of BF. I don't feel like I missed anything).

 

[visiblenoise]

Despite it never having caused problems for me, I still find myself deciding against buying games that I was interested in otherwise, after finding out that Uplay was required. The only reason I even have a Uplay account is because someone gave me Assassin's Creed.

SOMEONE FROM UBISOFT PLEASE READ THIS

 

[MysticSlayer]

At the very least, it is better than Games for Windows Live. It isn't very good, but it isn't the worst thing that has ever been made. Thankfully, I haven't had any true horror stories with it, and by that I mean that it has never locked me out of my library, which I have had happen with Steam before. However, I have had games pause on me mid-game in order to re-establish a connection, which is quite frustrating.

Overall, I don't particularly like UPlay, but I also haven't found it to be as bad as others. Then again, I don't use it much, so maybe I just haven't had enough time to see how bad it can really be.

 

[Mr Fixit]

Firstly I'd like to say thanks to everyone for the replies. I'm pretty forgiving when it comes to minor annoyances so I guess I'll give it try when I get around to buying AC: Syndicate. Thanks again.

 

[G00N3R7883]

There is nothing really wrong with it. Of course Steam is better because it has a bunch of useful community features and way more games. But if a game is tied to Uplay, there is no reason to not play it. I've played several Uplay games - Splinter Cell Conviction & Blacklist, Far Cry 3, 4 & Blood Dragon, Watch Dogs, Zombi - and never had any problems with Uplay. I encountered a game breaking bug in Zombi, but that was a problem with the game, not Uplay. The WiiU version had the same bug.

The most common complaint I've seen from other gamers about Uplay is when they buy an Ubisoft game on Steam, and whine about having to log in to both Steam and Uplay to play the game. Solution: don't buy Ubisoft games on Steam.

 

[Katherine Kerensky]

My honest, personal opinion?
It's a steaming pile of shite that has made me swear off of buying any new Ubisoft games.
Mainly because all but two games I've bought that force me to use that piece of shit don't work because of said PoS.
Yeah, I'm not happy with it. Uplay can go die in a fire.

 

[9tailedflame]

My opinion, it's awful.

The fact that it's offered on steam, but that it won't actually play on steam is just pointless! The client is slow and clunky, and it barely works half the time. I can't even play my old assassin's creed games, WHICH I BOUGHT WITH MONEY, because the uplay code that came with it doesn't work, so if you buy a game, redeem that code ASAP and pray it works. It's not nice on the processor either, since i have to keep both the steam and uplay clients open. I won't even buy new ubisoft games, since there's a good chance i won't even be able to play them. God forbid you try to play it on multiple computers, i suspect that would just straight up not work, since the code only works once.

It's not even the crappiness that gets to me, it's not as crappy as it could be, although still worlds behind steam in overall usability, but it's the fact that ubisoft insists on using an unnecessary client and the godawful DRM in the first place. It basically gives you once chance to play the game, and it your computer crashes, or you get a new computer or something, you're done, you no longer own the game.

 

[FPLOON]

Honestly, it's a thing... that I'd rather have on my Wii U than on my laptop or PS3, actually...

Other than that, it sometimes reminded me of Xbox Live in the points department... Got a few wallpapers in the process, I guess...

 

[Sassafrass]

I mean...

It's there. Like...Origin's there, so is uPlay. It doesn't get used too much, but it certainly hasn't done anything to make me hate it. Yeah, it kinda sucks when you buy a Ubi game from Steam and need uPlay, but apart from that.

EDIT: Plus it hasn't gone down as often as Steam has, which is now offline for the 3rd time tonight for me.

 

[DoPo]

Other than that, it sometimes reminded me of Xbox Live in the points department... Got a few wallpapers in the process, I guess...

The achievements thing is actually one of the most bizarre things about Uplay. OK, I get it - play games and you can get some actual rewards for it. The thing is, the rewards are a very mixed bag.

First, you have crap like wallpapers which Ubisoft, for some reason, think people should put effort in getting. I can, right now, go in Google and do an image search for " wallpaper" and I'll get hundreds, if not thousands of wallpapers from that game. Some of them may be the exact same ones that Ubi also give out, but I can guarantee that there would be a lot which are actually better.

Another type of reward is minor in-game bonus - one of the AC games (Brotherhood?) upgraded your max ammo from 6 to 10 or something. Maybe from 8 to 10. There were 2-3 of these bonuses you could get, if I recall. Thing is, they aren't actually meaningful enough. It's OK but you can do without it and when you get it, you won't really notice it. I'll give these rewards something at least - the wallpapers inherently cost nothing, yet Ubisoft put a price on them, while these minor improvements, would cost something. Overall, they end up just shy of worthless, though.

More major in-game bonuses and content. In one AC there were some missions that you could unlock using Ubi points and iin Heroes 6, you could buy a Legacy artefact, which is OK. The missions were an OK addition but ultimately just something like extra half an hour of AC, the artefact isn't really overpowered or underpowered to the rest - just...something extra. They are an OK reward to get with Ubi points and something you probably should do. Because, hey, it's just more of the game you like (you wouldn't be playing it and getting Ubi points otherwise). Only...why would you need to? You've got the game, you can only ever play it on Uplay. There is no incentive to play something on Uplay to get a Uplay reward for it, when you can only play it in Uplay anyway[footnote]I hope the repeating the word "Uplay" so many times, it starts to lose its meaning. Uplay, Uplay, Uplay. Yeah. This is actually a metaphor for how Uplay is meaningless[/footnote]. If I could play Heroes 6 through Origin, Steam, and Uplay, then it would make some sense for Ubisoft to push their own platform by offering you what would be loyalty bonuses. But I can't. I can only ever choose one of them, so all it ends up being is a bit of busywork. Surely, having the extra the extra content would be motivation enough for me to play the game, the need to play the game in order to play the game sort of loses its meaning. Just like Uplay.

 

[Snotnarok]

Difference between origin and uplay is simple.
Origin has improved, it's expanded it's options including streaming to twitch through it's software, offering good sales and straight up free games.

Uplay is useless, it's an irritating interface that's only topped by if you buy a game on steam and it's made by Ubisoft? It will launch (then update) Uplay before allowing you to launch your game. So it's 2 fold DRM for no reason. No EA games bothered with this brain dead tactic. Buy Mass Effect 2? It launches with steam only, however you CAN paste your serial number into origin and have it on their platform too.

Uplay is irritating, invasive and is just there to get in the way.

 

[EHKOS]

It's strange. I like the rewards you can get for use in-game, but it seems like a giant effort for a simple cheat code. Otherwise, I haven't seen it do anything good or bad. It's just there.