The PC version of Rocksmith just released in Europe on Friday and the excited customers got their copy home only to realize that the required CD key was not included in the games package. Now, this is obviously a huge issue as it means thousands of people can’t play a game that they paid for, but on top of that Ubisoft is in no hurry to help their situation.
Ubisoft posted a message on their official support page telling customers to create and account on their support site, open a ticket, upload a picture of their receipt online and then wait for a response. Some would assume that wait would be less than 24 hours to fix a non-playable game issue. Ubisoft however seems to think its okay to force paying customers to wait in a slow moving queue and there are some who have submitted their ticket right away on Friday and haven’t heard anything back yet. Others have reported calling their premium support line only to be informed that said service is closed until Monday.
This has spurred some online rage, such as bad reviews on Amazon and a 20 page forum discussion on Ubisoft’s official page. Ubisoft have not officially posted an apology for the issue, aside from “We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.” at the bottom of the support alert, telling people to submit a ticket. Ubisoft will be giving all who purchased the game a little “gift” in the form of a unlock key for the minigames, which is basically a bypass for playing the game itself to unlock these games. The unlock key is worth £2.95 ($4.50) and is meant for people that don’t actually want to invest a lot of time in the game.
So, with a cheap apology and game ruining unlock key, Ubisoft has created quite a mess and hopefully they will find some better way (perhaps free DLC) to reward early adopters who were burned by their mistake.
I’m sure many will turn to the internet and find cracks or fully pirated version of the game to circumvent the need for CD entry altogether, just so they can play the game they paid for.
