Free in-game ad supported PC games from Ubisoft available in the US

Tuesday 04th September 2007, 10:10:00 PM, written by Farid

Ubisoft, French publisher of Rayman, Tom Clancy’s game series' and Far Cry amongst other titles, has decided -- without any form of publicity on its website -- to make available ad-supported versions of three games from its portfolio, at no cost to the user other than the download.

The free games trio is comprised of the IHV favourite and tropical shooter from Crytek, Far Cry; the modern day rendition of Jordan Mechner’s Apple II hit, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time; and finally the philosophically-engaged mini-games compilation, featuring scholarly allegories with rabbits, Rayman: Raving Rabbits. It's unclear whether the ad-supported version of Far Cry is compatible with user modifications or not.

As with every too-good-to-be-true deal, there is a catch. The offer is only available for U.S. residents with a valid Ubi.com account (it is undisclosed whether the games check the computer IP or not), the games installers are only available at FilePlanet (update: not anymore), a service known for its slow free servers which require intrusive and proprietary download manager software to be installed in order to download files. Finally, the in-game advertisement for these games are of the unsubtle kind. However, for this last contention point, one could argue that you are getting what you paid for.

The ads are akin to web ads and display at various places in-game, from menus to pop-ups during saves/checkpoints. According to the first users, the severity of the in-game ad population varies from one title to another, with Prince of Persia faring the best, Far Cry in the middle and Rayman being the worst offender with ads appearing every five minutes or so.

Update: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon has been added to the list of available games and the installers are now available from sources other than Fileplanet.

Links to download these games:
Far Cry (Crytek) @ Fileplanet - Size: 2,743.5 MB
Far Cry (Crytek) @ GamerHell - Size: 2,743.5 MB
Far Cry (Crytek) Torrent @ Gameupdates - Size: 2,743.5 MB

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (Ubisoft Montréal) @ Fileplanet - Size: 1,154.1 MB
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (Ubisoft Montréal) @ GamersHell - Size: 1,154.1 MB
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (Ubisoft Montréal) Torrent @Gameupdates - Size: 1,154.1 MB

Rayman: Raving Rabbits (Ubisoft Montpellier) @ Fileplanet - Size: 1,282.6 MB
Rayman: Raving Rabbits (Ubisoft Montpellier) @ GamersHell - Size: 1,282.6 MB
Rayman: Raving Rabbits (Ubisoft Montpellier) Torrent @ Gameupdates - Size: 1,282.6 MB

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon (Red Storm) @ GamerHell - Size: 542.7MB
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon (Red Storm) Torrent @ Gameupdates - Size: 542.7MB

Reminder: these games are only available to U.S. residents with a U.S. Ubi.com account.

Discuss on the forums

Tagging

graphics ± ubisoft


Latest Thread Comments (22 total)
Posted by Davros on Wednesday, 05-Sep-07 03:33:34 UTC
They would have to do it with games i allready have or
games i dont want
rayman - that guy needs to pull himself together

Posted by Davros on Wednesday, 05-Sep-07 03:54:19 UTC
Quoting Kaotik
Worked for me and I'm from Finland :cool:
The Finnish National Anthem
http://www.mwscomp.com/sounds/mp3/finland.mp3

Posted by _xxx_ on Wednesday, 05-Sep-07 15:23:40 UTC
Quoting Kaotik
register ubi.com account and set the country to "USA" and you're good to go
Nice, thanks!

Posted by Zaphod on Thursday, 06-Sep-07 00:22:46 UTC
Seems like our "friends" at Ubisoft might have added an (or improved their) IP-check. They won't install for me anymore.

Posted by Sobek on Thursday, 06-Sep-07 02:03:04 UTC
Would using some kind of proxy help?

Posted by xatnys on Thursday, 06-Sep-07 03:00:58 UTC
They should do this with BG&E.

Posted by accidentalsuccess on Friday, 07-Sep-07 15:27:07 UTC
vote #2 for Beyond Good and Evil (even tho I have the PC and bought the xbox version for an ex)

advent rising is another game that should get this treatment (not Ubi, I know).

Posted by pjbliverpool on Saturday, 08-Sep-07 12:18:45 UTC
Quoting Zaphod
Seems like our "friends" at Ubisoft might have added an (or improved their) IP-check. They won't install for me anymore.
Bollocks! I knew I should have got this straight away :sad: Rayman won't install for me either. I hope Ubi set up advertising deals in other countries aswell so that we can have it.

Posted by embargiel on Monday, 10-Sep-07 20:13:15 UTC
Is it just me, or the fileplanet link really doesn't work? Does anyone know whereelse I may download one of these games aside from Torrent and gamershell (which is painfully slow at this moment, probably due to a lot of people downloading the new Quake game)? Darn, if only I had downloaded this a lot earlier when the fileplanet link still worked...

Posted by Kaotik on Monday, 10-Sep-07 21:03:02 UTC
Quoting Zaphod
Seems like our "friends" at Ubisoft might have added an (or improved their) IP-check. They won't install for me anymore.
On positive side, I don't seem to have any ads on my Raving Rabbids anymore, but the game works fine nonetheless :lol:


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