Ubisoft is to face an action lawsuit filed by the two US-based players. The case is based on allegedly sharing personally identifiable information (PII) with Meta without advance disclosure to Ubisoft services users.
On October 3, two players, Travor Lakes and Alex Rajjoub, filed a lawsuit at the US District Court for the Northern District of California. The plaintiffs filed this suit on behalf of themselves and others in the same situation.
The report mentions that when users purchase any game via the Ubisoft store or as a Ubisoft Plus subscriber, the service would share user PII with Facebook. This personally identifying information is captured by utilizing Meta’s tracking Pixel on Ubisoft’s website. The user’s data, personal or regarding any necessary actions done on the website, gets transferred to “any person of ordinary technical skill who received that data” on Meta’s end.
The lawsuit states that this Meta Pixel can’t be placed in the website code without the knowledge and agreement of the website owner.
Ubisoft did not ask for users’ consent before sharing PII
Gaining access to users’ personal data is a common way for businesses to target their advertisements to the right demographic. However, the suit focuses on the fact that “Defendant does not seek, and has not obtained, consent from PII users to utilize the Pixel to track, share, and exchange their PII with Facebook”.
The Video Privacy Protection Act 2013 states that video rental companies can only share PII with other sites only with users’ consent.
In this case, Ubisoft has reportedly not abided by the law, inviting another headache for themselves. As a user on X commented, “They’ve been getting an excessive amount of attention lately for all the wrong reasons.” The company is already dealing with the stock plunge and decreasing fanbase of their games.
The defendant has not made any comments on this matter.
The plaintiffs are seeking financial compensation for the privacy violation for everyone affected. Additionally, a court order is expected for Ubisoft to either remove the Pixel or simply add the consent section on their website about sharing user PII.
