Ubisoft Comes Under Fire For Spamming Children With Just Dance Subscription Messages

Oh ubisoft... Goofing up again. They obviously are fishing for cash though, realistically speaking, a responsible adult makes it impossible for their kid to spend the money without permission anyway.

Playing in flight mode (turn the controllers on but the Wi-Fi off) should prevent the Unlimited songs from appearing in-game. I have also been using that trick to delay the Unlimited subscription in JD2018.

As one time dlc, unlimited would be fine, but a subscription is disgusting. Who is gonna want to play year after year to continue to have all the songs the games have to offer, im not buying again until it goes away

@BladedKnight Yeah, a button click like they did with Starlink's DLC would be an easy solution!

They need to figure out if they want to sell a packaged game for price X, or a separate subscription business model- just like the difference between iTunes and Apple Music. Anything else is unfair to the consumer, especially those with kids who think they need everything in the game or they're missing out.

@ThomasS Do you know a lot of 6 year olds who can read and comprehend the words "Unlimited Subscription"? The parent wasn't complaining about it being in the game, but most parents are going to expect that when a game has a "kids mode" that the kids won't see a list of DLC songs, only the ones already in the game.

Seems pretty lame of Ubi to put this in the game under "kids mode", but it does make sense for them as it teaches kids and their parents that all Ubi games, and many video games these days, are sold incomplete, piecrmeal, or with extra content sold later, so everybody is getting indoctrinated into the $60-to-start model. Everybody complained about horse armor, but now people gladly gobble up $30 season passes and yearly subscriptions.

I was actually bothered by something similar in MK8 on Wii U. After the DLC was available they updated the main game home screen menu so that you could see the tracks, cups and drivers that were available in the DLC. I always thought they shouldn't appear in that menu until you nought the season pass. We did, and it was worth it, but until we did seeing things we couldn't play bothered me. Similar to here. Indoctrinating them early.

That's absurd that Just Dance of all games requires a yearly subscription. It's not a damn mmo, it's more of a game you put in during a party every so often.

Yeah just learned this game has a subscription? WTF.

It was my LOCK as a xmas gift to my daughter. Back to the drawing board.

@ThomasS It doesn't make a difference if the parent is aware of the subscription or not. It's a simple request to hide those songs from his 6 year old. Being aware of the subscription won't make it any more annoying when your 6 year old pesters you every 5 minutes about a song not working.

EDIT: And seeing as how Ubisoft acknowledged it and promised a fix soon, it's safe to say they agree.

@Kalmaro personally I totally agree with you but you would be amazed at how not clued up certain people are when it comes to games. If you haven’t been a gamer yourself some simply don’t bother looking into these things. Honestly lost count of the amount of times in the past when I worked in retail where I warned parents about buying grand theft auto for their kid but was met with a ‘oh it’s just a game it can’t be that bad’ rubbish. Now with added microtractions people and especially parents can’t be lazy about this stuff anymore.

@Mr_Pepperami When I worked retail, and kids tried to buy that game, I'd force them to get their parent.

The. I'd read everything on the age rating section. (sex, drugs, etc)

I loved it, I would get the parents so mad and the kids hated me :3c

@Kalmaro hahaha totally. I did the same. Flat refused to sell it to them and would tell the adult about the content. Sadly most would still buy it.

Welcome to the days of you buying a game only to realize you still have to buy things in the game. This generation of gaming is slowly becoming a practice for greed.

@ThomasS Something tells me you don't have little kids I'm sure the parent did do that, but I also know some kids (Mine aren't 6 yet) wouldn't fully understand, and would either forget why that song wasn't working, or would continue to ask about it over and over. In which case, it would be nice to hide those songs when in the kids mode.

Again, I don't think this is some scandal that we need to burn Ubi for. I know the Internet likes to try to turn everything into a huge deal in hopes of dividing everyone into two neatly divided sides where they subsequently fight to the death. In this case, I think it's just a simple fix on Ubi's side that results in a pretty big quality of life improvements for parents of little kids, which I would imagine is a priority of Ubi's since they included a kids mode in the first place.

@Mr_Pepperami Yeah, there was always the one or two parents that didn't care. Was sad

(Plays trumpet. Wah wah wah wahhhhhh)

Oh Ubisoft.

@ThomasS I'm sure there's workarounds, and it's simple to prescribe what the parent should or should not do. I'm just saying it's pretty clearly a simple fix to hide those things from the kids mode, since they can't buy them anyway, which appears to be the route Ubi is taking. I don't think it's a huge deal one way or the other.

@ThomasS I'm just going to let @roadrunner343 reply at #12 stand as mine as well, "pesters" is the only necessary reply. My kids are teens now, and they've been playing video games unsupervised since they were 2, those Godzilla games on PS2 and Gamecube where great. No online, no DLC, just a games.

Now practically every month my kid is asking me to buy him - he pays for it but I still have to do it b/c I'm not giving him the password - new DLC for DBXV2. That game is nearly as bad as FFXV, but it's an online fighter so unfortunately it's to be expected. Those Godzilla games had enough fighters for us. And Godzilla Unleashed on Wii had just about everybody, but the motion requirement was such an annoyance for the kids.

I don't understand complaining about this. It's really really easy to find out it offers a subscription and if you don't want that then don't buy it?

The game isn't your child's babysitter. It's the same thing with other games. My kid bought it when I wasn't paying attention or my kid saw he could have this and wants it now are not anyone's problem but the kid's parents.

i don't understand the outcry over this? fortnite targets children (predatory) on a mass scale and makes billions from it but if ubisoft does it, it's headline news, how does that work?

My kids love it but the subscription model is gross. I already gave you my cash, you damn vampires, now you want a cut of all my pay cheques?

DLC songs should be in a diffrent list,

Obviously an intentional and exploitative marketing tactic. There’s nothing quite like a child’s temper tantrum or constant begging to force a parent to part with cash.
There should always be an option to hide paid DLC especially when dealing with kids games.

@huyi not quite. There is plenty of parental fearmongering regarding Fortnite but the difference there is that’s their entire business model when Just Dance is a paid packaged “complete” product. DLC is supposed to be additional not integrated into the main game especially this close to launch.

As they say in Paris....this is Shay -Dee

Never much cared for this franchise anyway.

Geez if the songs were dlc that would be one thing but you have to rent them for a year(guessing)? Or is it like a regular season pass and you get all the songs?