Ubisoft is being called out for a clause people have discovered in its licence agreement that orders owners of its games to destroy them should the studio choose to end service for those games. However, not only is the clause not new, as some have implied, but Ubisoft is far from the only studio that has it in its licence agreement.
Not only has that clause been in the Ubisoft EULA for a while, but the same sentiment can be found in EULAs you’ve agreed to before playing other games from an array of different studios. As highlighted by Amon274 on Reddit, the same clause can be found in the EULAs for various games on Steam, including Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Metaphor: ReFantazio, and Oblivion Remastered. A Phasmophobia dev also pointed to a similar clause in multiple agreements when the game was called out for the exact same thing two years ago.
Even your copies of Baldur’s Gate 3 have got to go if Larian Studios ever deems it so.
It’s boilerplate meant to clarify that if you refund the game you can’t keep a copy (and that you need to accept the eula and if you don’t you can’t keep a copy either).
Notably a lot of the games in that list are strictly single player.
Also, the same line shows up in all sorts of private contracts. It’s probably in your work contract if you work from home.
Online discourse is broken. It doesn’t help that everything else is also dumb.