Something is rotten in the state of Tom Clancy’s The Division 2. Beginning yesterday, third-party digital retailers began informing their communities that post-launch they will no longer be selling Ubisoft’s shared-world third person shooter due to upcoming retailer limitations. Even worse, this may lead to some negative impacts to customers and consumers who have already purchased The Division 2 on these platforms — and the retailers are not happy.
News comes from digital key retailer Green Man Gaming, who put an announcement on The Division 2′s store page alerting that the game would not be available for purchase after the pre-order period:
Worth noting, unlike digital launches like Valve’s Steam or Epic’s Epic Games Store, Green Man Gaming is primarily a storefront–and a trusted one at that. The retailer would be selling DRM compliant keys for Ubisoft’s launcher, UPlay. So it’s immediately suspect why Ubisoft would be pulling the game from this storefront.
And while this notice offered little clarification, other (more niche) digital retailers began listing similar notices with more fleshed out explanations. Specifically, retailer Gamesplanet has a notice with a fill explanation on why this is happening and how it is expected to impact the customers of Gamesplanet:
There a few notable points in this explanation to focus on. According to the statement, “Ubisoft will not allow digital third party stores, such as Gamesplanet, to sell Division 2 after its release on March 15th, 2019.” There is a carve-out exception being made for “another exclusive digital store.”
On one hand, Gamesplanet is clear they will be able to honor all purchases that happen ahead of release. However, they are also super clear on how this will likely still impact consumers:
We won’t be able to solve some support requests (e.g. key activated on the wrong Ubisoft account) after March 15th, as we won’t have any more keys to exchange/swap. Please address your support requests to Ubisoft directly for such cases.
And they do manage to end it on a biting note: “Obviously, we are not happy about this decision.”
Without further information from Ubisoft, it is immediately unclear — though there are some good estimated guesses that can be made. Ubisoft and Epic have been partnering up to launch The Division 2 exclusively on for that platform outside of Uplay. However, there is a difference there — while the game would be skipping Steam’s platform, there was never an indication that there would be retailer exclusivity to follow.
Unfortunately, this hurts consumers in a couple of ways. As Gamesplanet mentioned above, moving a previously-purchasable item off a storefront carries issues when it comes to redeeming and support. On another end, gamers who prefer to purchase via third-party retailers with benefits — for instance Humble Store and their charitable focus — have far less options.
At the moment, we don’t know for sure who this other exclusive retailer is or whether Gamesplanet’s statement is full accurate. Given this is a developing story, we will keep you update as more becomes known.
The Division 2 is certainly having a media blitz as it nears release — it was recently revealed that the PS4 version would require 80% more memory than both the PC and Xbox One version. Meanwhile, a roadmap of the game’s Year One content has been published to let everyone know exactly what is coming soon.
The Division 2 releases for PC, PS4, and Xbox One on March 15, 2019. If you are interested in checkign otu the game, you can pre-order The Division 2 on Amazon.
The post The Division 2 Will Be Pulled From (Most) Third-Party Digital Retailers After Launch by Lou Contaldi appeared first on DualShockers.