Kinguin Respond to Ubisoft Revoking Keys
As with G2A, Kinguin have made an official statement regarding the revoking of keys from Ubisoft.
Posting to their blog, they had the following to say:
Ubisoft revoking games from customers' libraries
Since Kinguin has been founded back in 2012 more than 2 million customers have experienced the platform and its services. Customer satisfaction has always been our core focus and we have adjusted our policies many times in the past to keep up with our promise of 100% Buyer Protection guarantee.
Kinguin is a platform used by over 500 independent merchants from all around the world. We are processing the transactions from merchants to end-users including payments, customer support and EU VAT collection services in accordance with the latest EU Directives. Every merchant goes through a strict verification procedure to make sure Kinguin stays a trusted platform among players worldwide. This is also why Kinguin holds one of the lowest fraud rates in the industry.
The current case raised by Ubisoft is surely unfair towards the gamers. The banned game copies in question were acquired through licensed wholesale distributors and as such the origin of the "keys" is the publisher himself. From the gamer point of view its like going out to the store, purchasing a copy of the game, taking it home and suddenly a knock-knock on the door with Ubisoft representative taking the copy away - not even asking you as a paying customer to return it.
We believe Ubisoft had no legal basis for its action. Simply, they did it because they can. Kinguin of course is not going to challenge Ubisoft in court as we are not match up for these giants. We will continue to focus on customer satisfaction and our customers know we have never let them down.
Every customer whose game has been revoked from Uplay games' library can contact Kinguin Customer Support for help. Our Customer Service representatives are resolving each case individually in order to help everyone affected by this unpleasant situation.
Many big publishers are fighting the customers' demands for fair pricing on digital products worldwide. The customers' rights for reselling used "digital downloaded" games is also being largely ignored. It might remind us all the situation in the music industry in the past decade. We all know how this ended up.
Update 1 - 22:35 CET: in regard to this new information published here at MCVUK. Kinguin will commence an immidiate internal investigation through which the origin of the keys offered by the respective merchants. Kinguin never tolerated sales of stolen goods through the platform
Below the blog is an advert for Kinguin's Buyer Protection Plan, which provides a 100% money back guarantee within 30 days. However it is unclear whether they will be offering that as a blanket, as G2A is doing with their G2A Shield in Ubisoft's case.
More information on the Buyer Protection Plan can be found here.
COMMENTS
Platinum - 11:31am, 28th January 2015
Good Guys Kinguin Will check out the prices with buyer protection in the future, if its still cheaper than Steam then ill have some.
Guest - 02:14pm, 28th January 2015
I think it's pretty shocking. Ubi are saying that the distributors weren't authorised to re-sell those keys - but at the end of the day they were bought by a wholesaler and Ubi were paid for every single one of them. Ubi have received the cash for each of these games, then denied the game themselves to the final consumer simply because they disagree with how they were distributed after the original purchase. They've literally taken the money and supplied nothing, and it's a disgrace. I hope they reconsider this action and publicly apologise.