This past Christmas and the attacks on PSN and Xbox Live rendering digital games unplayable has shown us that going digital doesn’t come without its drawbacks. At least people who own the disc based version of a game have some ability to play it, but if the servers are completely borked and you went digital, you’re definitely outta luck.
It’s even worse when the game is just suddenly yanked from one of the marketplaces, as Xbox One owners of Far Cry 4 learned last night. With it being gone from the Xbox Live Marketplace, digital owners weren’t able to play the game at all. They were quick to make this known to Ubisoft on the company’s official forum, with a community manager known as “Mr_Shade” offering the advice to contact Microsoft for support while they dealt with things on their end. Far Cry 4’s now been restored and had its problems sorted out, but it does make one wonder about how games are authenticated for access. Neither Ubisoft or Microsoft has revealed what made this happen, but as soon as they do, we’ll let you know.
