In 2014, Ubisoft launched The Crew as an open-world, always-online racing game with a campaign and multiplayer mode. It was a fairly successful game for Ubisoft, spawning two sequels—The Crew 2 and Crew: Motorfest. But in December 2023, Ubisoft suddenly delisted the racing game from digital stores and, in April 2024, completely shut off its servers. This means that even if you bought a physical copy of the game, you can no longer play it. Now, two gamers in the United States who weren’t happy about this are filing a lawsuit against Ubisoft.
As reported by Polygon, on November 4 Matthew Cassell and Alan Liu filed a lawsuit in federal court. The main complaint of the recently filed lawsuit is that the two plaintiffs believe Ubisoft has “duped” consumers by telling them they are buying a game when in reality they are only “renting” a “limited license.” The lawsuit also says that Ubisoft rubbed “salt on the wound” by not making the single-player portion of The Crew playable offline.
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Earlier this year, Ubisoft’s decision to kill The Crew’s servers and make them unplayable led to a firestorm online, and fueled a movement dedicated to fighting back against the ongoing practice of companies killing online games and making them unplayable after people have bought them. Currently, that group is looking for signatures to force European Union lawmakers to address the issue directly.
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Funnily enough, Ubisoft announced in September that it was planning to make sure The Crew 2 and Motorfest get offline modes that will let people keep playing the games even after the servers are shut down. I wonder why they scrambled to announce that?
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Source: Ubisoft Facing Lawsuit Over Shutting Down Always Online Game
Robin Edgar
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