In short, this is only partly true. They only delete accounts that have no purchase history and are inactive for a long period of time.

Background

On the 20th of July, Ubisoft posted a reply to a tweet complaining that they were deleting inactive accounts. The tweet can be seen here.

A series of tweets: @PC_Enjoyer: UBISOFT closes your account if you haven’t logged in for some time. You will lose all your games purchased forever. @UbisoftSupport: Hey there. We just wanted to chime in that you can avoid the account closure by logging into your account within the 30 days (since receiving the email pictured) and selecting the Cancel Account Closure link contained in the email. We certainly do not want you to lose access to your games or account so if you have any difficulties logging in then please create a support case with us.

The top tweet lacks some key information. It does not say how long the account have been inactive for, so it could have been anything from six months to six YEARS. Also, the phrase “some time” could mean anything, and is vague by design. It could mean days, months, years…

Needless to say, Gamers™ got very angry like they usually do, spreading the narrative that Ubisoft is going out to take away all of your digitally purchased games. I mean, they already hate Ubisoft to death so why wouldn’t they? But there’s always more beyond the headlines.

The Truth

I decided to do some extra research, and found a link that took me to this Ubisoft Help article. A screenshot can be seen below.

Ubisoft Support article that reads the following: Closure of inactive Ubisoft accounts Inactive Ubisoft accounts, with no PC purchases or active subscriptions tied to them, may be closed in order to comply with data protection laws after long periods of inactivity. Accounts tied to an active Ubisoft subscription, or PC games that have been purchased from the Ubisoft store, are not eligible for deletion. We may close long-term inactive accounts to maintain our database. You will be notified by email if we begin the process of closing your inactive account. If your Ubisoft account was flagged as inactive and you would like to keep using it, you can cancel the account closure. You can find the cancellation link in the Ubisoft email that was sent to the email address attached to you account. If you are unable to locate this email, please check your spam folder. If you believe you have received an account closure email in error, please contact us. Please note that in rare instances we may immediately close inactive accounts to comply with local data protection legislation, as part of our Terms of Use. This is only if we have strong reasons to believe that the account in question will remain unused.

Notice that the article reads the following:

Accounts tied to an active Ubisoft subscription, or PC games that have been purchased from the Ubisoft store, are not eligible for deletion.

That’s right; Ubisoft will not delete your account if you have purchased game on the Ubisoft Store with your account or if you subscribe to Ubisoft+ etc. In their words, they will not arbitarily take your games away from you. They only delete accounts that have no purchases made with them, have no active subscriptions (Ubisoft+ etc), and have not been used for a long period of time.

Potentially they could be doing this because they do not want to store personal information for accounts whose owners clearly are not interesting in using, as doing so not only clutters their databases with useless data, but could be a GDPR nightmare as it states that data should only be stored for as long as is necessary.

While Ubisoft states in their Terms of Use that they will terminate accounts themselves that have “been inactive for more than six months”, there is no definitive length of time that needs to pass before they do so. Even then, this is not new. For example, Microsoft states in their Services Agreement that they close accounts that have no sign-ins for 2 years.

Hopefully this clears things up for anyone who is confused. I also hope you realise that misinformation can easily spread on the internet, often without proper research being done. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below.