What's so outrageous about Uplay?

puff ball

New member
Mar 14, 2011
167
0
0
edit: my bad i was confusing GFWL with uplay. the only problem ive had with it is when it deleted my assassins creed black flag save file witch is my worst and pretty much only experience with uplay
 

moggett88

New member
May 2, 2013
184
0
0
I've recently started playing Far Cry 3 too, and here's why I am not liking Uplay.
(1) You can't just run Uplay alone, you also have to run Steam to get the game to play. This is taking resources from my (severely limited) laptop that could be used to play Far Cry more smoothly.
(2) Although you are able to play in offline mode, it still keeps trying to connect to the servers, causing unnecessary waiting during what should be a fast paced game.
(3) Possibly due to the above issue with offline mode, the game occasionally froze during auto-saves as it was trying to save to the cloud. I couldn't stop the auto-save, or manually save, or fast travel in game because it was stuck trying to save to an online service, even though Uplay was set to offline mode. I only managed to resolve this by arbitrarily renaming one of the games resource files from "46" to "48" (no idea why that works, but thanks Google).

So, in summary, I dislike it because it's completely unnecessary, adds nothing, and takes away from my enjoyment of the game.
 

tangoprime

Renegade Interrupt
May 5, 2011
716
0
0
moggett88 said:
adds nothing
IDK about that, I kind of like spending my achievement points on new shiny stuff in new ubi games I get. They're the only who who've actually done something with achievements that's functional besides giving you the ability to show off a neat thumbnail and pithy title.

Case in point, AC Unity, had a ton of uplay points saved from previous games, instantly got myself a set of exclusive weapons and equipment at the onset thanks to uplay, was decent to start with not-basic equipment. Also got Far Cry 4, and found myself at the first weapons store with a shiny unlocked not-Robocop automatic pistol from Blood Dragon right from the get-go.

I like actually being able to spend my achievements, and it's even cross-platform. I have no problem with it, then again I never had to deal with it back when it was always-online-drm, which I'm not cool with at all. They changed it, and made it useful to me, so I'm cool with it.
 

Creator002

New member
Aug 30, 2010
1,590
0
0
My main gripe is that if you buy an Ubi game from Steam, you need Steam open to launch it, which then launches uPlay which then launches the game.

Doesn't bother me too much, since the only Ubisoft game I have is Assassin's Creed III and I don't plan on playing it again anytime soon.
 

someonehairy-ish

New member
Mar 15, 2009
1,949
0
0
The problem for me is that it doesn't fucking work half the time, so actually being able to play any ubisoft game is basically down to chance.
 

Th37thTrump3t

New member
Nov 12, 2009
882
0
0
I know a lot of people dislike it for its lack of stability during big game launches like Watch_Dogs and the like, and that some people have issues with it just randomly wiping your saves. Personally, I dislike Uplay because the program is completely and entirely redundant. DRM? Steam already does that. Achievements? Again, Steam does that too. Rewards for said achievements? Trading cards, which can be sold for store credit that you can use on anything on the Steam market.
 

hermes

New member
Mar 2, 2009
3,865
0
0
Because it makes playing a game more of a hassle, having to jump through different hops for Ubisoft games.

The people that complain about "not being Steam" are close to the mark, but this is not about fanboy support of one company over another. It is just that I am tired of all the redundant hoops: different friend lists, different logins, different achievement repositories, different wallets, different shortcuts for the overlay, etc.

And it is not like it works as standalone or adds anything by itself... Every time I try to play an Ubisoft game, it launches steam, which launches uplay and gives me a code, which I then have to redeem there. I had to install the game twice (one for the steam shortcut and one for the actual game). The reason for different overlays is that I am not just running the game, I am running it through uplay, which runs through steam. Say what you will about Origin, but at least I don't have to install their platform for EA games I buy outside of Origin.
 

Ishigami

New member
Sep 1, 2011
830
0
0
Nothing. People just love being monopolized by Steam because reasons that all can be summed up by "I like that company to have all the power more than this company and I'm lazy".
 

Guy from the 80's

New member
Mar 7, 2012
423
0
0
I had some serious issues with Uplay a while back. Got an error message when launching FarCry3. Then I realized I couldnt not play Anno 2070 either. No Ubi games would launch. Uninstalled all games but that didnt work, tried to reinstall Ubiplay but the installation ALSO failed. It was at this point I was getting frustrated.

After some minor troubleshoting I got it to work again, and it really wasnt THAT hard it only took me 10 or so minutes of googling but I asked myself whats the bloody point of it? Why does Ubisoft add these things, it should at least be optional.
 

EvilRoy

The face I make when I see unguarded pie.
Legacy
Jan 9, 2011
1,840
537
118
Johnny Novgorod said:
I'm not challenging anyone to convince me Ubisoft is or isn't the AntiChrist (spelling?), just let me know from your own experience what's so abominable about Uplay.
I think the major issue for me is that it's another thing on top of steam - but not separate from it. If I had to download UPlay and use it like steam or origin to play Ubisoft games, no problem. Far Cry 3 is good enough that I would put up with that without complaint. The issue was rather that I had to start Steam, then UPlay (if Steam DRM is running, why do I need UPlay?), then play, then shut down Far Cry, then shut down Uplay, then restart steam - because if I didn't and I wanted to start Uplay and FC3 again it would claim I was running multiple instances. Just silly and a little annoying.

I do have a funny story, but I want to disclaim ahead of time that this is more or less all on me. Some argument could be made that there should have been a higher barrier to me fucking myself over, but I'm still the one that did the fucking at the end of the day.

So I buy FC3 and set up a UP account. In the account creation screen I misspelt my email address (no confirmation step at that time), so it was like one character off. Eventually my password slipped my mind and I went to try to recover everything via the usual way. Of course the email went to a nonexistent account, and I couldn't read it - but you also couldn't change your email without logging in, and you couldn't access the help system to beg assistance without logging in. Lost the game after that, although I was basically done playing it and I bought it extremely cheap on sale anyway.
 

Binkan

New member
Oct 14, 2012
47
0
0
Yea, for me it was Anno 2070 that kept on crashing and all that. And whenever I buy a game through a platform such as steam then I want it to stay on the steam-client not forcing me to use another client for the game as well as the one I bought it from.
 

Doom972

New member
Dec 25, 2008
2,312
0
0
1) It takes forever to load compared to Steam/Origin.
2) Cloud save only means a lot of saves getting corrupted.
3) You have to use it even if you buy Ubisoft's games on other digital distribution platforms.

If so far you have no complaints, consider yourself lucky. I decided not to buy anymore games that use Uplay.
 

Cid Silverwing

Paladin of The Light
Jul 27, 2008
3,134
0
0
It's always-online DRM any way you slice it, it clogs your hard drive and CPU cycles. It takes up SPACE, and insists on interfering with your experience. When you buy something on Steam, Uplay shouldn't be packaged with it (or ever, for that matter).

In fact, there's a current problem running around that Uplay and/or Watch_Dogs on PC (one or the other, it's not really clear at the moment) will actually infect other games and cause your mouse to not work. This is happening repeatedly to a friend of mine when he wants to play Payday 2 after he's just played Watch_Dogs, and has to restart Steam just to temporarily clear the problem.

My first and last experience with it was when I tried to play Might and Magic Heroes 6. Uplay is part of the whole Dynasty Weapons gimmick, and unless I'm signed in, they're not usable, crippling a very proudly touted part of the game content. Also the netcode is a fucking joke but I never bothered to find out if that's just the game itself or Uplay erecting another wall between me and the multiplayer (context: all multiplayer matches crash inevitably at some point, and reloading a turn makes them crash unfailingly within 10 turns at most).
 

Doom972

New member
Dec 25, 2008
2,312
0
0
Ishigami said:
Nothing. People just love being monopolized by Steam because reasons that all can be summed up by "I like that company to have all the power more than this company and I'm lazy".
You don't hear people complain as much about Origin. That's because EA decided to have most of their games released exclusively on Origin. You buy the game on Origin and play it on Origin. No EA game on Steam will ever force you to use Origin on top of Steam. Uplay, however, is mandatory even for Ubisoft games bought on Steam/Origin. It will also make you run both the client you bought the game on in addition to Uplay, which is unacceptably messy and sometimes causes problems.

It's easy to assume everyone is just a Valve fanboy, but there's a reason Uplay gets a special amount of hate.
 

BakaSmurf

Elite Member
Dec 25, 2008
1,323
0
41
Johnny Novgorod said:
From what I've gathered listening to my PC Gaming Master Race friend's horror stories it depends entirely on which version of uPlay you're using, the console version, or the PC version.

As many have stated before me, the PC version seems to be almost deliberately coded to screw PC gamers as much as possible, whereas the console version is simply a neat little tertiary achievement system that provides optional in-game rewards for said achievements without flat-out breaking the game in many instances. For example, my copy of Assassin's Creed: Rogue couldn't connect to uPlay the first time I booted it up on my X360, at which point I proceeded to play the game unhindered without the optional uPlay DLC katana for a few hours, whereas for a PC gamer they'd be fucked out of the game entirely until Ubisoft's servers started functioning properly again.

Which to me brings up a fair bit of fridge logic; why bother with the facade at this point, Ubisoft?

I believe that it's abundantly clear that they don't want to develop for the PC anymore, so why they continue to do so in the most spiteful way possible is beyond me. The sheer amount of bad feedback they receive for their terribad ports and awful PC uPlay is astounding. At this point it seems like it would make sense for them to just go console-exclusive and be done with the charade. It isn't as though anyone would be upset by the decision by this point anyways, since basically everybody that's ever played any of their PC ports in recent history seems to hate them entirely due to the broken uPlay system, and console gamers like them well enough as although their releases tend to be hit-or-miss, when they hit they tend to hit it damn near out of the park while at worst their customers are uninterested and unhindered by uPlay and at best fond of the free DLC delivery service it provides.
 

Deathlok

New member
Jan 5, 2015
5
0
0
G00N3R7883 said:
I've got 6 games on Uplay - Far Cry 3, Blood Dragon, FC4 (literally just installed this), Splinter Cell Conviction, Blacklist and Watch Dogs.

Never had a problem of any kind with Uplay.

I also have around 4 games on Origin and over 150 on Steam, never had a problem with those either.

The only service I've had any problems with is GFWL, in multiple games (crashes, failed patch installs, laggy menus).

Agreed, I've never had a problem with Uplay/Unisoft games and playing. Granted, some of the ones that start in Steam, then Uplay and back are rather idiotic but as long as they function...

GFWL was/is a horrible system, I have a file drawer full of GFWL games that I could never get to run properly. Maybe it's just me...

+1 on Far Cry 4, I've put 52 hours into 3 and was hoping 4 would give me the same play time.
 

raeior

New member
Oct 18, 2013
214
0
0
Well from the top of my head:
They installed a browser plugin that had security problems without telling the user and patching it silently without saying that they had a plugin with a security hole installed on the pc.

I encountered massive problems with Uplay and Anno 2070. I had to reinstall Uplay multiple times because it just showed a "stopped working and has to restart" error message every single time. At some point Uplay "forgot" that Anno 2070 was actually installed and wanted to download the whole thing again even though I tried starting it using the Anno2070.exe.

The interface. Starting stuff directly via Uplay is just...ugh. Even if I try to directly start a game via it's exe it just launches Uplay and drops me into it's horrible interface to find the launch game button there. Why even put exe files in the game folder if it's just a link back to uplay..

Downtimes. The bloody thing had connection problems all the time. Also for stuff like Anno 2070 the "but they removed always online" argument is kinda wrong. It is correct that you can play while offline but you lose access to your ark which holds global bonus items for you. So as soon as you go offline you lose that 50% bonus energy from all your wind turbines and all your islands go black. Your ships lose speed, you lose production bonuses etc. pp.
 

Kolyarut

New member
Nov 19, 2012
116
0
0
Cid Silverwing said:
My first and last experience with it was when I tried to play Might and Magic Heroes 6. Uplay is part of the whole Dynasty Weapons gimmick, and unless I'm signed in, they're not usable, crippling a very proudly touted part of the game content. Also the netcode is a fucking joke but I never bothered to find out if that's just the game itself or Uplay erecting another wall between me and the multiplayer (context: all multiplayer matches crash inevitably at some point, and reloading a turn makes them crash unfailingly within 10 turns at most).
MMH6 is the main cause of my Uplay ire too. I didn't really object to the Always Online requirement, all the while their servers were online themselves (which they weren't for long stretches), but I did lose several hours of progress when it saved over my files, and multiplayer game desyncs are virtually an inevitability, which is why I eventually had to give up on it (and will be waiting for reviews and customer feedback or a hefty discount before purchasing Heroes 7, despite it being a franchise I've played since the beginning).

On the other hand, I do quite like starting a new game and immediately unlocking a bunch of cosmetic stuff with Uplay as a reward for being a repeat customer. That may be the game dev equivalent of a patronising pat on the head, but I still find it mildly uplifting enough not to mind the app, all the while it's working.

Also the plus side, Heroes of Might and Magic 3 HD is using Steamworks for multiplayer when it launches later this month, so maybe that's a good sign. Unless someone mods the expansions back in, though, that may be moot...
 

Deathlok

New member
Jan 5, 2015
5
0
0
What do/can you use the Uplay "coins" for anyway? I did unlock a thing in Far Cry 3 with them but- are they something you can use to buy games on Uplay, if you gather enough?
 

Sanunes

Senior Member
Mar 18, 2011
626
0
21
Here is my issues with uPlay. Now my personal experiences ended with Assassin's Creed 3 and I lived through a friends experiences with Watch_Dogs.

1) Double DRM, I don't want to need both Steam and uPlay running at the same time, causes many issues and its a poor management decision.

2) Haven't learned their lessons, every game I have first hand knowledge of with uPlay has not worked on release day because their servers cannot handle the load.

3) Online requirements, I have been kicked out of games because uPlay decided to lose its connection to the uPlay servers

4) Download speeds are horrible it took me days to download my last game from their servers because I couldn't connect faster then 100kb/s to their servers, but with both Steam and Origin I download at 2Mb/s.

Does that mean I won't use their service again, not at all, but I am definitely going to be wary of it and it will be my last choice.