Black Flag Resynced Showed Games Weren’t Really Ours

Black Flag Resynced was temporarily unavailable on PC due to a Ubisoft Connect outage over the weekend. The inability of even users who had purchased the single-player game to access it has reignited the question of whether digital games truly belong to their owners. This issue, occurring at a time when concerns about the future of physical games are growing, clearly demonstrates the risks that DRM systems can create.

Black Flag Resynced Fuels Digital Ownership Debate

The brief offline outage of Ubisoft Connect affected a large portion of the company’s PC games, including Black Flag Resynced. Users encountered connection and verification errors when trying to access single-player content. The inability of those who legally purchased the game to access their own libraries was the most criticized aspect of the outage.

Ubisoft had previously stated that an internet connection was only required for the installation and initial verification phases of Black Flag Resynced. While it was later stated that the game could be played offline, the outage showed that this wasn’t always the case. The inability to access Ubisoft Connect servers meant that the offline option didn’t work for some players.

Another detail that fueled the controversy was that pirated versions were unaffected by the connection problem. These versions, which didn’t use DRM checks, continued to work, while paying users couldn’t access the game, raising questions about the purpose of the protection system. It seemed as if the DRM system was punishing legitimate customers, not pirates. This situation revived previous criticisms of similar technologies.

Although the service later returned to work, the incident created a significant trust issue for Black Flag Resynced. In digital games, users often purchase a usage license that can be restricted by the publisher, rather than the product itself. Access can be lost in the event of server outages, account issues, or complete service shutdowns. The Black Flag Resynced incident once again reminded us that digital libraries don’t offer the same guarantee of permanent ownership as physical games.

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