"If someone goes on a website like Fanatical and buys a Ubisoft product, it will take them through the checkout process, then ask you to enter your UPlay account -- if you don't have one, it asks you to set one up. The game is then automatically activated in UPlay. Fanatical doesn't get a key, and neither does the player. They just log into UPlay and the game is there, as if they bought it from the UPlay Store.

"It's preventing keys being bandied around the market, so they can't be resold. I suppose you could sell your account, but they'd pick up on that and that's a very messy way of reselling games."

Murphy notes that this also prevents the retailers themselves from redistributing the keys, helping them to "build up their reputation as legitimate sales only."