Steep free on Ubisoft!

Steep free

Sign up to get your free copy of Steep you'll be able to play anytime! You can claim the game from May 16th at 03:00 pm to May 22nd at 12:00 am (your local time).

Claimed! Does it come with a key if you dont download it?

It is, thanks.

That's quite common these days, the same is true for Hitman 2.

That's not an excuse. Once that central server goes down you can't play the game anymore, the game is dead. Or in Hitman 2's case, cannot complete challenges or earn rewards. Games should NEVER require online, period. It puts a death timer on something that doesn't need it. It's a deliberate decision by the creators or the publishers so that they can have more "control" over the userbase and to combat piracy. Bad exchange if you ask me; to kill off their own game in favor of control. The same thing will happen to The Crew, another Ubisoft game that became free a few times before. "No plans to shut it down any time soon" is not a guarantee that the game won't work, say, 10 years in the future.

Faith said:

That's not an excuse. Once that central server goes down you can't play the game anymore, the game is dead. Or in Hitman 2's case, cannot complete challenges or earn rewards. Games should NEVER require online, period. It puts a death timer on something that doesn't need it. It's a deliberate decision by the creators or the publishers so that they can have more "control" over the userbase and to combat piracy. Bad exchange if you ask me; to kill off their own game in favor of control. The same thing will happen to The Crew, another Ubisoft game that became free a few times before. "No plans to shut it down any time soon" is not a guarantee that the game won't work, say, 10 years in the future.

Getting it for free is good, UBISOFT is actually pretty good

Dude said:

Getting it for free is good, UBISOFT is actually pretty good

Absolutely. But I wasn't questioning the notion of a free game, but something that is common is not an excuse. My point is that games - particularly single player-esque games with an online component - should not require a server to be able to play it. Some games like this won't even work when that connection goes down, or at least be severely crippled, and potentially killing the game in the process. All that work gone because the revenue is not sustainable. In Steep they have an offline mode, but similarly to Hitman the game won't feature any challenges because they rely on servers. That's what I am pointing out. Online servers should not be a requirement for save files, challenges, rewards, AI routines etc, but instead should be there as a seperate optional identifier for online components, multiplayer modes and leaderboards. Like they did in the past. I don't like the disposal of games because I want anyone to be able to play these games however they want to, whenever possible in the future.