Ubisoft Removes The Crew From Players' Libraries

Ubisoft-Deletes-The-Crew-From-Libraries.jpg
Image: Ubisoft
A few weeks after switching off the game's servers, Ubisoft has now started removing The Crew from players libraries altogether - sparking more controversy.

When the announcement that The Crew's servers would be switched off on March 31 was made, it was at least with three months of lead time. Regardless, players were not happy with the decision - the game is a racing MMO after all, so it needed servers to be played. With official support ending, privately hosted servers seemed like a possibility to keep The Crew going for those who wanted to keep playing it.

Granted, the game did not see many players take it to the US-based open world map anymore, cracking the 100 player average mark for the last time all the way back in January 2019. Recently, the average was just over 20 players.

Obviously, there was not a big demand for the game anymore, but Ubisoft's latest course of action related to The Crew sparked more controversy among gamers: According to multiple reports, the publisher has started deleting the game from players' Ubisoft Connect libraries - apparently without warning. Expiring licenses for in-game content apparently also led to the decision.

Gamers Are Outraged​

Enquiring about the The Crew license removal, OverTake received the following reply from Ubisoft:

We announced on December 14, 2023 that after almost a decade of support, we would be decommissioning The Crew 1 on March 31, 2024. While we understand this may be disappointing for players, it was necessary due to server infrastructure and licensing constraints. You can read more about this here: https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/the-crew/the-crew/news-updates/mOR3tviszkxfeQCUKxhOV.

While The Crew was not officially playable anymore anyway, it is the practice itself that enraged some. Reddit comments on the matter range from "With this move, Ubisoft seems to be begging for digital consumer protection legislation to be passed. In an ideal world, revoking a license like this should entitle the buyer to a refund." to "Delisting is one thing, but actively revoking licenses customers paid for? Nah, that's something else entirely. I'm hoping this is just a mistake on Ubisoft's part. If not, bye bye Ubisoft I guess."

As a result, some players are vocal about demanding a refund for something they bought. The root of the deletion of The Crew from players' accounts is the fact that for digital games especially, you do not buy a copy of the game as such, but rather a license to access it. This is also part of Ubisoft's Terms of Use and EULA (End User License Agreement), which state:

1.3 The Services and Content are licensed to you, not sold. This means we grant you a personal, limited, non-transferable and revocable right and license to use the Services and access the Content, for your entertainment, non-commercial use, subject to your compliance with these Terms.

"Stop Killing Games" Initiative​

Of course, player have to agree with these terms in order to play. Still, this does not make the deletion of games or making them unplayable via the shutdown of its often vital online functionality okay in the eyes of most. In fact, the announcement of the server shutdown led to the creation of the "Stop Killing Games" initiative by YouTuber Ross Scott, which lists options available for players to take action depending on the country they live in.

The initiative hopes to set a precedent via the The Crew case so that other publishers might stay away from similar practices. Just recently in early March, fans of the F1 series were irritated when it was announced that F1 22 would be removed from online stores only about a year and a half after its release. The game does remain playable, however.

What are your thoughts on the The Crew situation? Let us know on Twitter @OverTake_gg or in the comments below!
About author
Yannik Haustein
Lifelong motorsport enthusiast and sim racing aficionado, walking racing history encyclopedia.

Sim racing editor, streamer and one half of the SimRacing Buddies podcast (warning, German!).

Heel & Toe Gang 4 life :D

Comments

People need to read the terms prior to spending the money on new shiny toys. Make a decision then and either skip the game or deal with the consequences of not owning.

My only complaint is actually about Steam and the Steam storefront - not Ubisoft. the EULA should automatically be displayed when the "add to card" button is pressed, not during install, not a simple link at the side of the page than can be easily missed. Evil gaming studios are getting a helping hand from Steam :rolleyes:
 
I remember when steam first came out there was a lot of discussion about the fact that T&C made you not really possess the game. Unfortunately this is going to happen more as most games are becoming tied to some cloud service, which is a cost most companies won't want to keep paying after the game's lifespan
 
People need to read the terms prior to spending the money on new shiny toys. Make a decision then and either skip the game or deal with the consequences of not owning.

My only complaint is actually about Steam and the Steam storefront - not Ubisoft. the EULA should automatically be displayed when the "add to card" button is pressed, not during install, not a simple link at the side of the page than can be easily missed. Evil gaming studios are getting a helping hand from Steam :rolleyes:
Every game you buy is a "rent", since you want to argue "shame on you for not reading". Short of GoG no other platform totally lets you "buy" a game.

No, not even physical. The case has already been set.


Even without court rulings, The crew was sold physically. But you dont own the "contents" in the disc, you only get the permission to play them if the connection to the server required to play stands.

So what will people do, not purchase any game that you cant own on physical media and doesn't require internet connection to work? Im sure some people will do that, but most wont, so the solution isn't "read the terms of your new toys". The solution is to force companies to stop doing this ****.
 
The Crew is a bit of an older game, and it has a sequel that's arguably built upon it. So it's bad, but it can be worse. Imagine if EA looks at this and decides to delete F1 23 from everyone's libraries as soon as F1 24 releases, so you are obliged to pay launch price for the new game if you want to play anything at all.
 
Every game you buy is a "rent", since you want to argue "shame on you for not reading". Short of GoG no other platform totally lets you "buy" a game.

No, not even physical. The case has already been set.


Even without court rulings, The crew was sold physically. But you dont own the "contents" in the disc, you only get the permission to play them if the connection to the server required to play stands.

So what will people do, not purchase any game that you cant own on physical media and doesn't require internet connection to work? Im sure some people will do that, but most wont, so the solution isn't "read the terms of your new toys". The solution is to force companies to stop doing this ****.
I’m not arguing anything, the terms are clear, the structure the game is built on is also clear - server only.

If Jimbo buys the game and expects servers to be kept online for decades, yeah… he needs to wake up.

Stopping this - and I agree, getting out hand, is by not buying. No government body will make the necessary changes.
 
The Crew is a bit of an older game, and it has a sequel that's arguably built upon it. So it's bad, but it can be worse. Imagine if EA looks at this and decides to delete F1 23 from everyone's libraries as soon as F1 24 releases, so you are obliged to pay launch price for the new game if you want to play anything at all.
I think the issue is not just "did you like the crew enough to be mad that its getting shut down" and more "they DONT CARE how much you liked the game. Its getting shut down just the same".

I didn't really like the crew either. I did love Driver SF. That's ok, at least it didn't need an online server. But what if it did?

What about the people that REALLY like the crew 2 or the crew motorfest? What will happen when the people that play sea of thieves have their server shut down? Do you think these companies are willing to keep the servers open for no more than 300 people playing their game daily? Of course not, but they wont also give any other way to enjoy the game. Just imagine how many lesser known MMORPG games right now are lost media because of these things. Spore is still working. But for how much longer?

How much time will we have to wait before a "good" game gets shut down this way and THEN its a problem?
 
It used to be that games like this didn't exist, or at least there was a way to keep them going after the official server got shut down. Of course, the older the game, the more difficult it can be to make it work. Nowadays, no one thinks about what will happen in the future with games that are not subscription-based yet rely upon continuing access to the official server, which of course costs money to run. The publisher doesn't care because it's making money when the game comes out, and it can do whatever it wants later. The consumers don't think about it because they want to play the video game now, and 99.999% of players won't still be playing a decade later. It's extremely distasteful for publishers to revoke licenses in this way. Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's right.

Not sure I have much of a point here. I'm more on the side of "this shouldn't be allowed to happen," but I don't have a good solution, and don't claim to have any right to what I think should be.
 
I think the issue is not just "did you like the crew enough to be mad that its getting shut down" and more "they DONT CARE how much you liked the game. Its getting shut down just the same".

I didn't really like the crew either. I did love Driver SF. That's ok, at least it didn't need an online server. But what if it did?

What about the people that REALLY like the crew 2 or the crew motorfest? What will happen when the people that play sea of thieves have their server shut down? Do you think these companies are willing to keep the servers open for no more than 300 people playing their game daily? Of course not, but they wont also give any other way to enjoy the game. Just imagine how many lesser known MMORPG games right now are lost media because of these things. Spore is still working. But for how much longer?

How much time will we have to wait before a "good" game gets shut down this way and THEN its a problem?
I agree with you on everything you said about The Crew and other games you cited afterwards. I just pointed out that other publishers might look at this and push the limits even further, in the case of yearly releases. For example, last time I bought an F1 game was 2021 before the EA price tag came and prohibited me from spending money on it. It's a thing of its own to imagine them deleting F1 2021 from my library (can you even buy F1 2021 today? I don't even know), but what if they decide to delete F1 22 and F1 23 as soon as F1 24 releases, so you are obliged to buy the new release every year?

The more time passes by, the more I think I'll become a retro-racer/gamer. In the end, I think this only happens due to the multiplayer focus of modern gaming, and also due to digital media/cloud-based stores. Maybe it'll never get to that point, but I hope there are still offline single-player modes to racing games to justify them at least being playable. On a separate note, NFS 2016 is also a game that will eventually be impossible to play once EA decides to shut the servers down.
 
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We own nothing nowadays. Only consolation is there's other means to get a game playable. That being said, I have not and will never buy a game that is solely dependent on servers. If there's no way to crack a game for offline, I will not buy it, publishers especially are not to be trusted. Hell, I even bought Escape from Tarkov just to play it a bit with the SPT offline single player mod. Otherwise I would've never spent money on it.
 
Yep, despite having the Limited Edition on disc, I can no longer do anything with the game, except boot it from the exe in the game folder, whereupon it's now in Trial Mode as my key has been removed. And won't work anyway as it all needs online services to function.

At least people are trying to make it work again https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Crew/comments/1bsdnji/a_server_emulator_for_the_crew_1_is_being_worked/

I at least captured some video of some of the racetracks in the game, before it was killed off.
 
This game looked truly terrible.The Laguna Seca was comical.I am pleased that nobody else can make the mistake of buying this garbage.Licences from makes were clearly bought on the cheap.

Lessons from this:Read the terms & conditions and dont buy any titles from Ubisoft/EA and other large corporations that clearly dont care about customer loyalty.
 
The Crew is a bit of an older game, and it has a sequel that's arguably built upon it. So it's bad, but it can be worse. Imagine if EA looks at this and decides to delete F1 23 from everyone's libraries as soon as F1 24 releases, so you are obliged to pay launch price for the new game if you want to play anything at all.
Don't give them idea's.. They might do that in a not so long future.
 
Any time these kind of posts about corporations being corporations come up I always have the same response. If you don't like what they are doing, stop giving them your money. It's as simple as that and there is nothing else that will work. People can cry, and give out, and sign petitions all they want, they will ignore all that as long as money keeps rolling in.

The crew was a **** game, but it shouldn't be taken away on principle. The only Ubisoft games that interest me anymore are the assassins creed series, but they've pretty much milked that one for all it's worth. I'll be in no rush to get the next one.
 

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