Well that was a bit too aggressive, even for Epic Games. According to Gamesplanet, Epic Games and Ubisoft will not allow third-party digital stores (the likes of Gamesplanet, Kinguin, G2A, Green Man Gaming etc) to sell keys for The Division 2 after its official release on March 15th.
Here’s the full statement:
“Sadly we have to announce you that Ubisoft will not allow digital third party stores, such as Gamesplanet, to sell Division 2 after its release on March 15th 2019. After this date, the game will digitally only be available through Ubisoft’s Store and another exclusive digital store. This will also be true for all upcoming game content such as Season Pass, Extensions, etc.
Take the opportunity to buy at Gamesplanet until March 15th 2019 and make use of the paysafecard promotion as this will be available until the game will be pulled from our stores.
We won’t be able to solve some support requests (e.g. key activated on the wrong Ubisoft account) after March 15th, as we won’t have any more keys to exchange/swap. Please address your support requests to Ubisoft directly for such cases.
Worry not, all purchases that have been completed on Gamesplanet will be honoured. This is also true for gifts, no matter if these have been picked up or not.
Obviously, we are not happy about this decision.”
The games will be available on these third-party sites till the official launch of the game and those interested can either pre-order it from their favorite stores or buy from either Uplay or Epic Store when it lands.
We wonder what happened to “competition is good for consumers” motto Epic was holding onto for the past few months. Stripping away the freedom of choice of gamers is not in any ways pro-consumer and this is a new low for Epic Games in its fight to dethrone Steam.