Over the weekend a number of Uplay accounts had games suddenly vanish from their libraries. These users took to the Ubisoft forums to enquire about why this had happened and Ubisoft have provided an answer. They’re actively seeking out and disabling keys that they believe were obtained in a fraudulent manner through bad credit cards and then resold.

The keys in questions came from a number of third-party sites, such as Kinguin and G2A, the latter seems to be where the majority of users who have lost access to their game bought keys from and it isn’t the first time G2A keys have been found to be obtained in a fraudulent manner. Back in April 2014 Devolver disabled a number of keys for game keys purchased through the site. People still buy from third-party sites though because they will often sell the keys at a lower price than the official channels will.

A Ubisoft rep issued a statement earlier to Eurogamer that read:

“We regularly deactivate keys that were fraudulently obtained and resold. In this case, we are currently investigating the origin of the fraud, and will update customers as soon as we have more information to share. In the meantime, customers should contact the vendor from whom they purchased the key.”

As always the moral of the story is that if you buy third-party, you take a risk on your key later being rescinded. Most third-party sites do have the policy of refunding keys that no longer work though, so if you’ve been affected contact them. You can only try.