In January, we reported extensively on a situation involving fraudulent Far Cry 4 keys. Ubisoft had discovered that the keys were bought with a stolen credit card and decided to deactivate all of them.

Ubisoft has continued to investigate the matter and has amended its decision. “After further investigation into the matter of keys that were fraudulently purchased on EA's Origin store, we are reinstating keys for consumers who already had successfully activated and started playing the games,” a representative told us via email. “Any remaining fraudulently obtained and resold keys have been deactivated.”

The publisher says it will continue to deactivate fraudulently purchased keys in the future. “We are working with EA to prevent situations like this from happening again, and we will continue to deactivate keys that are found to be fraudulently obtained and resold,” we have been told. “We strongly recommend that players purchase keys and downloadable games only from the Uplay shop or trusted retailers.”

Retailers Kinguin and G2A both issued statements on the matter in January when their customers reported that keys purchased from the sites were made inactive. You can read our previous coverage for more on this story.

Our Take

Ubisoft had every right to pull the plug on the stolen merchandise. However, this move is a smart play with regard to customer service and satisfaction. Hopefully those customers that were impacted by this keep it in mind when purchasing from potentially problematic sites in the future.