Ubisoft is clearly a tone-deaf company. But that doesn’t change that this comment has been frequently cited in some very out-of-context ways.

For those who don’t know, the not-owning games comment was in reply to an investor asking why people were reticent to try out Ubisoft+, their monthly service that lets people play pretty much all their games. He was suggesting many people are not used to the option of mass rental as opposed to ownership. But, many Game Pass subscribers (at least before their price increase) can attest that when the value proposition is good enough, it is an appealing option, wherein you accept impermanent access to get more games. In that sense, he was right.

So far as I can see, the intent of the comment had nothing to do with people who buy “lifetime” copies of their games. There’s separate criticisms to make about poor online implementations leading games like The Crew to be yoinked, and I’m in favor of that regulation. But Ubisoft is hardly alone in the way they’ve mishandled that, and the quote had nothing to do with it. I feel like most people pointing to it have only a vague idea of what corporate greed it represents, as though CEOs just want a way to delete your library and somehow make money from it.