Russian discs locking off upgrade path
[Update: In a statement to Eurogamer, Ubisoft has said that the issue has been resolved. PS4 players should attempt the upgrade once again.]
A selection of UK PlayStation fans lit up Ubisoft’s notifications this weekend with complaints pertaining to its latest release, Far Cry 6 — the open-world epic offers a free upgrade from its PS4 edition to the PS5 format, but it seems that some players who purchased boxed copies of the new game have found themselves unable to activate the offer.
The problem lies with a batch of Russian copies that have been released for retail within the UK and perhaps elsewhere. While owning one of these Russian editions makes no difference in regards to Far Cry 6‘s packaging, disc, or gameplay itself, it does lock out the option for players with UK PSN accounts to upgrade to the PS5 edition of the game. This theory has seen been seemingly confirmed by fan Stuart Pearson, who was able to access the upgrade by opening a separate Russian PSN account.
Amazingly, this is not the first time that Ubisoft fans have suffered from this problem, as 2020 releases Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Watch Dogs Legion also saw their physical shipments include Russian stock, similarly locking out PS5 upgrade paths. The UK and Europe have, for many, many years, featured street stock built up from numerous distributors, with discs from other territories ending up on store shelves.
While this has rarely ever proven any issue for players, the recent introduction of PS5 upgrades means that the issue is inevitable. I absolutely don’t this changing at a distribution level — it would require a ridiculous amount of monitoring. Publishers are going to have to make changes on a software level to prevent the problem from arising again. We’ll keep you updated when word from Ubisoft about the Far Cry 6 upgrade issue is forthcoming.
Far Cry 6 is available now on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC platforms. You can check out Jordan Devore’s review here.
https://twitter.com/sjpearson85/status/1446054522120544257?s=20
