What's so outrageous about Uplay?

visiblenoise

New member
Jul 2, 2014
395
0
0
I also don't think it's the worst thing in the world either, but it's really annoying and makes me want to exclaim "d'awwww, widdle wubisoft wants me to stop using Steam, doesn't it?" It's like Origin but worse. And I never remember my damn password.
 

Vivi22

New member
Aug 22, 2010
2,300
0
0
CrystalShadow said:
So it is in fact possible to get past an initial horrible impression, but it doesn't seem to be easy.
It does help that Steam was on the scene literally years before anyone else thought to even try and compete with them (there was GOG, but I don't really count them as direct competition since they focus so heavily on classic games. They compete, but they largely serve two completely different market segments and complement each other more than anything). And by the time anyone decided to take them on their service was already running smoothly, and had essentially become the largest seller of PC games in the market. Plus every other service (GOG aside of course) is run by companies with a well documented history of deliberately trying to fuck over their customers, employees, the industry, etc.

It's really hard to catch on when your competition works, has more games, and isn't mustache twirlingly evil.

Anywho, I don't like Uplay myself. And I won't say it's because it doesn't work or anything because my experience with it has been extremely minimal. I just don't like that it seems to offer me no real value as a consumer, is redundant at best when you consider it's required in addition to things like Steam or the Playstation Network, and I really don't like every single game or developer telling me I need a login and password for every game. I want to deal with two or three services tops. Not a half dozen or more. It's unnecessary and annoying as hell.
 

Dalisclock

Making lemons combustible again
Legacy
Escapist +
Feb 9, 2008
11,228
7,007
118
A Barrel In the Marketplace
Country
Eagleland
Gender
Male
I hate it for all the same reasons mentioned above, not to mention not being able to finish AC:Revelations and losing 7 hours of playtime(with most of my assasins leveled up to master and almost all of the dens captured). Basically the game stopped working for me, so I uninstalled and installed it again. While that fixed the problem, my saves disappeared. Because apparently uninstalling my game deleted all my saved games and none of my progress saved to the cloud. The Ubisoft Customer service Rep told me I was SOL because their service is shitty(My words, not theirs).

So seven hours lost. Fuck you, Uplay.
 

MHR

New member
Apr 3, 2010
939
0
0
The only good reason I don't like it is because I bought the game on steam, and then it just reroutes through Uplay for me to play it, with their junky features and all the achievements being unlocked there instead of on steam where the rest of the achievements and my friends are. It's terribly redundant. Why would I like it?

If one is good, does that mean two is better? No.
 

mad825

New member
Mar 28, 2010
3,379
0
0
How about this, no-one asked for a Steam clone. No-one even asked for GFWL, Uplay, Origin and no-one almost certainly never asked for the Battle.net client.

Steam has a plague of problems as it is without all the corporate publishers trying to cash it in. Hell, so far I'm boycotting Ubisoft and Blizzard.
 
Sep 24, 2008
2,461
0
0
New laptop last year.

I got the bells and whistles on Black Friday, and with my new Nvida card, I received Black Flag and Far Cry 3 for free.

Problem Number One: The connection causes problems.
My net is stable. I game online without a problem, and at that time I was using ethernet cable to go directly into my router. Everything was lightning fast.

so when I plugged in my code, I was trying to figure out why it was taking so long to load. After ten minutes, uPlay told me the connection lagged out. I had to try again. So I did.

Or, I tried. Uplay wouldn't even load it's own store. And again, I just downloaded my entire steam library again seconds before without a hitch. youtube videos were tested at the time I was trying to load the store again, and they were fine. Uplay wasn't working.

But lo and behold, I finally got it working again. I plug in the code again.

"This Code was redeemed".

Oh. Ok. So I'll go into my games library and download it there.

"No games found"

I got the computer a day before christmas, so I will figure that in. But Uplay wouldn't give me the game. One week it took for someone to message me back via email. And they just said "Send a copy of your receipt". Did that. A week later, I got a code to try downloading Black Flag again. It worked this time. Hurrah!

It still wouldn't download. Peak download hours or some bullshit. Servers busy. It took two more days to actually download black flag. And even then, the thing was going at like 100 kb. That took all night and all day. But finally, finally it worked. so I press play and try to see what it's all about.

Patches. 4 separate patches. Each going at 50 kb. And I had to manually do things. When Steam patches, it's just patching on it's own. I had to agree to each patch, press play again, and then a new patch would come up and say I couldn't play the game until I install this one too.

So, so far, we have a bad system that if it lags out on its own side, it will eat your codes... a bad server farm the likes of which I remembered back in the ye ole days of the 90's... a horrible patching system... and lastly, for some reason it always eats up more memory than Origin and Steam combined.

I don't like it.
 

Ishigami

New member
Sep 1, 2011
830
0
0
Doom972 said:
You don't hear people complain as much about Origin.
In what kind of parallel universe do you live? - Seems to be a better one than mine... I envy you somewhat.
In my dimension people complain about Origin precisely because EA decided to bundle and only offer their games with and on Origin. People nag and complain that they are forced to use Origin besides Steam and that Origin does not have the same functionality as Steam and that it is in fact not Steam.
They complain that the store is not as well filled as Steams and not as fast as Steam and generally made by EA.

Do you get a pattern there? Yea my universe sucks? be happy in yours.
 

Hagi

New member
Apr 10, 2011
2,741
0
0
Bought the Settlers 7 on Steam.

Clicked play.

Got a long registration process, no game. Completed it.

Clicked play again.

Couldn't connect to servers, couldn't play my single-player game.

Clicked play again a day later.

It worked! Started playing.

Clicked play again a day later.

Save files corrupted and lost. Couldn't continue yesterday's game.

Uninstalled the Settlers and have never bought another Ubisoft game since.

UPlay is the main reason I consider Ubisoft the single worst publisher out there and the only one whose games I don't buy at all.
 

fenrizz

New member
Feb 7, 2009
2,790
0
0
BakaSmurf said:
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.
Wait...
Do you have to install UPlay on consoles too?
Or is it optional?
 

RhombusHatesYou

Surreal Estate Agent
Mar 21, 2010
7,595
1,910
118
Between There and There.
Country
The Wide, Brown One.
Hagi said:
UPlay is the main reason I consider Ubisoft the single worst publisher out there and the only one whose games I don't buy at all.
I avoided UPlay being an issue because I'd already decided Ubisoft wasn't getting money from me due to their continued poor attitude toward PC gaming. Score 1 for 'sheer bloody mindedness'.
 

Hairless Mammoth

New member
Jan 23, 2013
1,595
0
0
I made the mistake of buying Blood Dragon on Steam. (I didn't know at the time every Ubi game on Steam would force feed Uplay to whatever orifice it could find.) I had to make another account for their stupid service for one game. From Steam, it took a while to launch the damned client, then the game. It also never saved at all. After much headache trying to fix the problem, knowing what others went through and still are dealing with (and remembering how they treated PC players back in 2011), I gave up and swore off anything that requires Uplay. It's the new GFWL.

EA at least keeps all of their games requiring Origin on Origin (and from what I hear it's now on par with Steam, except the size of the library). Ubisoft, however, wishes to trick you into using their crappy service and doubling the DRM clients running in the background. I might gladly join Origin someday (if EA ever does anything worth buying), but Ubisoft can shove it.
 

Kyrian007

Nemo saltat sobrius
Legacy
Mar 9, 2010
2,564
646
118
Kansas
Country
U.S.A.
Gender
Male
The thing is it's not just a cheevo system... it's Ubisoft's DRM. Maybe console players don't notice it, but for us PC gamers it just isn't necessary. Watch Dogs had some fun multiplayer stuff, and for the first time ever I purchased Watch Dogs thru uPlay instead of Steam. So I don't have to start Steam, then uPlay, THEN Watch Dogs. And it's worked well for me. So the experience isn't ALWAYS a terrible one, even on PC. The problems with uPlay are 1: it used to be "always on" DRM and requiring a connection to play single player games is indeed bullshit and gamers have a long memory, and 2: it's redundant considering Steam has DRM and Ubisoft could just be satisfied with that.
 

Sight Unseen

The North Remembers
Nov 18, 2009
1,064
0
0
Johnny Novgorod said:
I'm asking because I'm playing Far Cry 3 and only just now do I fully understand what Uplay is and is for (I played a bunch of Assassin's Creeds before but never paid much attention).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but basically it's a glorified trophy/achievement system, right? You collect Ubi-whatevers in Ubisoft games and exchange them for silly DLC like wallpaper or a weapon/skin for a game? And also you have to sign up whenever you install a game? Is that it? I'm asking earnestly. What's so awful about it? I've read posts from people who make it out to be some sort of third-world dictatorship, and it turns out it's just 1) logging in once to install a game and 2) trade Monopoly money for DLC, if you want.

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.
Im still angry at it because it had cloud saves turned on my default and they didn't work and swallowed a bunch of my progress in Splinter Cell: Blacklist.

Also it frequently doesnt work, is incredibly slow, and insists on being piled on top of Steam DRM.
 

Gunner 51

New member
Jun 21, 2009
1,218
0
0
Yowsers, it looks like you PC crowd have it far worse than us console players do.

But me, on the other hand have a burning hatred of U-play for a different reason. I hate the fact that it shoe-horns itself into every game that I buy from Ubisoft. I paid full whack for Farcry 4, and an screen will always come up every time I load the game if I want to sign up to U-play.

While this alone is kind of irritating, I pop into the in-game shops and it closes off a few items because I didn't choose to sign up to U-play. As if to say "You didn't download U-play or give us your e-mail address, well no AJM pistol or painted elephants for you, deadbeat!"

But I think in order to remedy this situation, there should be a little "never ask me this again" button when being asked if you want U-play. Furthermore, if folks have paid for their game be it first or second hand, they are entitled to everything on the disk seeing how they paid for it.
 

jklinders

New member
Sep 21, 2010
945
0
0
Steam more or less works invisibly to me. If I launch a title on Steam from the start menu I never see a storefront or that Steam is working. Same applies to Origin and any other online distribution platform with the exception of the (now dead I think ) Games for Windows Live, which hold the title for worst distribution system ever.

Uplay shoves it's store right into my face every time I launch a game regardless of how I launch it. Updates take forever and are forced. The "rewards" for putting up with the bloatware that is Uplay are a joke compared to the performance loss and often insane load times.

It's tolerable, but I don't like it. I see it as an extra barrier between me and a legally purchased game. With it running on all Ubi games regardless of where they are purchased from there is a good chance that it will conflict with any other DRM that may be lumped in with where it came from. Getting physical copies of games is nearly impossible these days what with the brick and mortar stores gift wrapping and handing the market over to Steam, then whining about that years later.

One DRM at a time. If you don't want to trust someone else's DRM, then don't see through them. Be a big boy and take the hit. I don't mind several of these things installed on my machine but I draw the line at actually being forced to have them running all at once.

I realize that they are offering these perks to "give a better service than hacker", but it has fallen flat for me. I just don't want their shit any more. Uplay is not the only reason for that, but it's not helping at all.
 

BakaSmurf

Elite Member
Dec 25, 2008
1,323
0
41
fenrizz said:
BakaSmurf said:
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.
Wait...
Do you have to install UPlay on consoles too?
Or is it optional?
No, you don't have to install it on consoles, it comes as an optional service built into every Ubisoft game. A rather unobtrusive one I might add, unless you're a whiner. "Press X to sign into uPlay" floating in the corner of the start-up screen is hardly as annoying as I've heard several people claim it to be. The sign-in wait can get a little lengthy (up to a minute on my shit boonies internet connection), but it's far from an inconvenience considering the game works just fine even if the Ubisoft servers are down.
 
Sep 14, 2009
9,073
0
0
Laggyteabag said:
The original complaints usually stemmed from Ubisoft's terrible DRM that locked you out of your games if you were not connected to the internet, or if the Uplay servers were down (which happened a lot more often than it should have), and even if you were playing your games when this happened, it would kick you off it. I never really had any of these issues, however, because I never really had a burning desire to play an Ubisoft game when my internet pooped out, but it was still a horrible DRM practice. I've heard that it might be fixed now, but i'm not really sure.

My issues with the service come from the horrible download speeds that would slowly tick down to 0b/s if you were not tabbed into Uplay, and the fact that Uplay games would have to launch through the service no matter how you buy your games. ie, if you bought a Ubisoft game through Steam, you could download it through Steam, but when you played it, it would then open up Uplay, then launch the game through that too so you would end up with both Steam and Uplay open (the latter of which ended up being a huge performance hog), and the game would shut down if you closed either. The service also wouldn't update your game unless you try to play it, so you never know if there is going to be an update until you really feel like playing that game, which can be somewhat problematic if you are into the multiplayer (not that Ubisoft games have ever had a great multiplayer anyway).

The storefront was also absolutely useless too as search results would constantly show up what seemed like everything but what you were searching for. You want Assassin's Creed 4? Well let me show you all the console versions of the game, all of the special editions, all of the other games in the frachise, and all of the expensive statues that you can get (which are also all sold out, but we'll keep them up on the storefront anyway.). That being said though, the storefront is strangely absent from Uplay now, and whenever I click on a game that I don't own, it now redirects me to the Steam store, so I guess that is a better way of handling it than having their own shitty store that downloads things at a snail's pace. You still have to redeem codes through Uplay though.
completely this.

I have no problem with uplay existing as competition to steam and origin...but dear god, the thing is a mess when you have bought a game through steam, then uplay insists on being run at the same time, and getting the game to run in offline mode is a nightmare as it constantly is trying to reconnect to servers and run in the background unnecessarily.

I don't mind it having its own achievement tracker, that's not a bad deal for consoles either, but man is it more of a pain in the ass then it's worth, so until it for sure gets rid of its headaches, I'm not touching anymore ubisoft games that require uplay.

(note: I don't have a problem with origin either, it's ironed out most of its problems and has become pretty much as functional as steam is)
 

DoPo

"You're not cleared for that."
Jan 30, 2012
8,665
0
0
My experience with Uplay comes from Assassin's Creed 2, Brotherhood, Revelations, and Heroes 6. And I've never had it be "smooth", although it hasn't been catastrophic, either - mostly a lot of small annoyances most times I have to use it, here is a list:

- it's slow. You start Steam, you start the game, that starts Uplay, it loads for a while, then it gives you a "play this game" button and then you wait for the actual game to load.
- it's mostly useless - as described above, it does exactly the same as Steam (you launch it, you start a game) but it's after you've done it anyway.
- it has achievements...which are shit. You get awards for completing some of the achievements in the form of U coins (I think that's what they were called). And, of course, the achievements you need to complete are the shittiest ones, they are roughly 1. At about 10% progress in the game (a bit after you start - go through the tutorial and start the main quest) 2. at about 50% progress 3. at about 75% progress. 4. when you finish the game. Yeah, they are that lame. Some times one of them may require actual effort (as in, it's not something you just get from playing the game) but not really that much. For each game, I've only ever seen 4 that give you awards.
- the rewards you can buy with the U coins are shit, too. Most of them, at least. Some are OK - slightly more ammo for the pistol in AC2, for example - a small boost in the game but it's good - you go from 6 to 10 bullets (if I remember correctly) which is not game-breaking but welcome. Some give you an extra cosmetic option which is OK, but some are shit like wallpapers. Why the fuck would I want to spend some currency on wallpapers when I can google " wallpaper" and get more and better ones? Overall, some of the rewards are meh but OK, others are meh, others still are not worth it and every once in a while you get something that's good which just raises the question, why didn't they have more like those.
- the achievements don't work sometimes. See, it's all well and good that they give you awards...aside from when they don't. It was AC2, I believe where I didn't get any of the 4 awards at all...and they were all progression based. And yes, I've completed the game.
- Uplay is buggy. Let's see:
-- I've seen it downgrade itself - it got updated with new UI and everything, then few days after it went back for some unknown reason;
-- several times it managed to forget my login, even if I had played the previous day (and I always tick the "Remember login" because I don't want to keep filling them in);
-- for a while it didn't quit properly and I had to kill the process, otherwise it hang around and I couldn't relaunch the game otherwise;
-- amazingly, sometimes it failed to connect to the Internet until it was relaunched (that was relatively rare, though, but frequent enough to not be written off as a complete accident);
-- it managed to somehow obliterate itself once and I had to reinstall it, for bonus points, it didn't even know it was obliterated as the executable and the registry keys were there, just some of the other vital files were gone so it would try to start, then silently fail[footnote]I think it might have tried to update itself and failed miserably. Possibly becuase if it did try to update itself, it would have been in the background without my knowledge, and I might have restarted the PC or something while it was going. It's the most logical explanation I have, as I hadn't done anything with Uplay for a while and then tried to launch it only for it to suddenly not work, without me doing anything to stop it from working in the mean time[/footnote];
-- for a while it was consistently failing to sync stuff to the cloud;
-- I've seen it fuck up the translations and never bothering to correct itself - as in, all labels, names and so on in its UI would be set to the actual translation keys (stuff like "main.button.play" or "popup.button.ok") instead of the proper words (so, "Play" and "OK" respectively). And since the translation key is not even supposed to be there, if it doesn't fit in its container you only get what does fit. And when you get a popup with two buttons but they both say "popup.butto" because the key doesn't fit either and you you have no clue what each is supposed to be, it's annoying. And the content of the popup is another translation key where you can't even guess what it refers to;
- maybe, sort of not exactly Uplay related but I think it fits the banner - even if the games there could be played offline that doesn't mean that you're safe. In Heroes 6, in particular if you play online and your connection drops, even for a moment, you're immediately booted out of the game. Even if you're currently in battle. And no, there is no saving either - you only get your last save, whenever that was.
- the achievement system inside Heroes 6 itself was hanging off Uplay and it was pretty much more of it. More of the useless stuff and the broken stuff.
-- I've completed one particular achievement there maybe, like, half a dozen times because it randomly decides to reset itself. I'm not complaining, as it kept giving me whatever the achievement currency was, but it is still broken.
-- Another achievement was mostly stuck.
-- Few were random and arbitrary for no good reason.
-- The rewards you can get with the achievement points, are terrible, anyway. You can get a bunch of portraits which are completely useless, or you can get the in-game ability to regain movement when you spot an enemy hero. Guess which one makes more sense to be picked up. The cosmetic rewards aren't really...rewarding, the functional are either useless or too good to pass up.
-- And (at least when I played the game), the achievement points you can get are limited (barring exploiting bugs like the bug I had forced on me) so you can't even get everything.
-- Oh, and the damn Legacy artefacts don't gain XP from quick combat, which is either a bug or a really, really annoying feature. I'm dumping it here as I think it deserves a mention.

Overall, it's a lot of annoyances that keep me questioning why Ubisoft think it should exist. Don't get me wrong, it's never been obnoxious or unbearable for me, but as I said, it's a lot of small and constant annoyances. The fact that I hardly ever used it and it still seen enough to write all that text above, still serves to show that Uplay is problematic. And those are not the entirety of the problems I've had. Heck, my problems aren't even the entirety of problems most people have had - I've seen mentions of lots more - some you can find in this thread - obliterated or corrupted saves, problems with games due to Uplay itself, various problems with using it and so on. It all serves to show that it's problematic. And the fact that Uplay isn't really new and has had issues for a while various ones, a lot of them, spanning across years and people, some related to the very thing it's trying to be - an achievement system, a gaming platform, a DD service - it has tried its hand all and it has failed in each at various points in various ways. All of this does suggest it's not a really good service. Whatever the hell it's actually trying to do, as that's another downfall of it - it's wants to to juggle several roles but at best it performs tolerably but nothing worth writing home about, occasionally a mixed bag of something above average and a lot of blandness, and a lot of times it's sub par to various degrees. Again, all of this suggests it's not a really good service.