No, Ubisoft won’t delete your game-filled accounts, it claims

Ubisoft now says it will not delete your games just because you didn’t sign in often enough. “Accounts that include purchased PC games are not eligible for deletion,” Ubisoft senior corporate communications manager Jessica Roache tells The Verge.

Last week, a tweeted screenshot of a Ubisoft email put gamers in something of a panic because it seemed like Ubisoft planned to delete inactive accounts — including all the games they’d purchased — just because they hadn’t signed in frequently enough.

When we asked Ubisoft whether it would delete accounts when users haven’t signed in for six months, as its terms of use still clearly say it can, this was the company’s full reply:

For many years now, we have implemented our account deletion process in compliance with the requirements of the GDPR (Article 5.1.e on the obligation to limit the data retention period). Our policies are aligned with legal requirements and with the standards of the industry. This measure also acts as a protection for our players against fraud.

Account deletion follows a very strict process. As such, we take into consideration the 4 following criteria before an account is deleted:

*The gaming activity of the account since its creation

*The account’s libraries: accounts that include purchased PC games are not eligible for deletion

*The duration of inactivity of the account, meaning the last login to our ecosystem (including from Ubisoft games on Steam and other platforms)

—In practice, as of today, we have never deleted accounts that have been inactive for less than 4 years

*The existence of an active subscription tied to the account.

In any case, before the deletion is permanent, three emails are sent to the player over a 30-day period offering to restore their account. In addition, if the user tries to log in during the 30-day window, they will automatically receive a warning and a link to reactivate their account.

Ubisoft, not The Verge, bolded the part about how “accounts that include purchased PC games are not eligible for deletion.” And it’s notable that logging into non-Ubisoft accounts like Steam can apparently save your account from deletion.

The statement as provided doesn’t quite fit with the company’s terms of use, which state that it will notify users their account is pending deletion after six months of inactivity. Ubisoft provided a very similar statement to ours to PC World in 2021, so it’s odd that the company hasn’t updated its terms of use to reflect those facts, at least as far as we’ve been able to see.

In PC World’s story, a gamer who was inactive for two years found his account had been deleted when he finally logged in again. When the account was restored, hundreds of dollars of games were missing. In response to the story, Ubisoft said it would reach out to the gamer to rectify the situation.

We’ve asked Ubisoft whether it did restore those games, whether there are any exceptions that would let Ubisoft delete an account with purchased PC games, and about the discrepancy between Ubisoft’s statement today and its terms of use.