Ubisoft sued for shutting down The Crew

The issue is, once again, about the difference between buying and licensing games

Two Californian gamers are suing Ubisoft in a proposed class action lawsuit over the developer and publisher’s recent shutdown of racing game The Crew. Ubisoft released The Crew in December 2014 and shut down its servers after a decade due to “server infrastructure and licensing constraints.” After the servers shut down, the game became totally unplayable due to its lack of a single-player, offline mode. When the shutdown was announced on Dec. 14, 2023, Ubisoft did offer refunds to people who “recently” purchased The Crew, but given the age of the game, a lot of players were unable to participate in the offer.

“Imagine you buy a pinball machine, and years later, you enter your den to go play it, only to discover that all the paddles are missing, the pinball and bumpers are gone, and the monitor that proudly displayed your unassailable high score is removed,” lawyers wrote in the lawsuit, which was filed Nov. 4 in a California court and reviewed by Polygon. “Turns out the pinball manufacturer decided to come into your home, gut the insides of the pinball machine, and remove your ability to play the game that you bought and thought you owned.”

The lawsuit alleges this is “exactly” what happened when Ubisoft shut down its servers for The Crew in 2024 — suddenly leaving consumers unable to access something they purchased and assumed they owned. The lawsuit says players were duped in two ways: First, by allegedly misleading players into thinking they were buying a game when they were merely licensing it — even if a player bought a physical disk. Second, that Ubisoft “falsely represented” that The Crew’s files were on its physical disks to access freely, and that the disks weren’t simply a key for the game. Ubisoft is violating California consumer protection laws, the lawsuit alleges.

Both plaintiffs purchased the game well into its lifespan, in 2018 and 2020, respectively, on physical discs. The lawsuit says neither would have purchased the game “on the same terms,” i.e., price, knowing the game’s servers could be taken down, rendering The Crew totally unplayable even in an offline mode. The lawsuit also covers the backlash to Ubisoft’s decision to shutdown the servers and not include an offline version of the game; it cites several games that turned servers off but patched in an offline option, like Knockout City and two of Ubisoft’s own games, Assassin’s Creed 2 and Assassin’s Creed 3. Ubisoft responded to the criticism and vowed to include offline versions of its existing games in The Crew franchise, like The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest — but the lawsuit says this does nothing to amend the problem of The Crew’s server shutdown.

The plaintiffs are looking for the court to approve the lawsuit as a class action, meaning other The Crew players may get involved. They’re looking for monetary relief and damages for those impacted by the server shutdown. The lawsuit follows a campaign from YouTube creator Ross Scott to urge companies to “stop killing games,” a movement that kicked off after The Crew announcement was made. The Stop Killing Games movement is petitioning the European Union to force game companies to keep games in playable states. It currently has more than 379,000 signatures.

As media continues to go more and more digital, the issue of owning vs. licensing — especially in video games — becomes more of a problem. While some people are taking games into their own hands (like with the player-created The Crew Unlimited), the onus is largely on companies and what they do to preserve their games and servers. But in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed a bill into law that requires companies to tell consumers they’re buying licenses, not games themselves, in online storefronts. The law itself, introduced by California assemblywoman Jacqui Irwin, is actually partly inspired by Ubisoft’s shutdown of The Crew. The law, however, doesn’t do anything about the fact that games are licensed and not purchased outright, nor does it stop a company from rendering a game unplayable, but it does, in theory, offer transparency on the issue.

Ubisoft declined to comment.

I’d say French or Portuguese

I was about to get one of those used (only difference is it being the 8GB version) but at the end it turned out it didn’t work so I bought a new RX 6600 instead

Nah, Halloween died down and we celebrate Mascaradas (another tradition) instead in that same date.

They used to say that black shirts, heavy metal, Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokémon and even Winnie the Pooh were satanic too as well

I like Forza, but have caution with the online players. Most of them love ramming people

Here in Costa Rica we don’t usually celebrate Halloween because people back in the 90s said it was satanic and stuff.

Eventually the tradition died down

That would be understandable but they are capping it to less than 1 MB that is very low

Believe me or not this is not ok according to the Forza Code of Conduct:

https://support.forzamotorsport.net/hc/en-us/articles/360035563914-Forza-Code-of-Conduct?origin=serp_auto

Fuck Epic. Maybe they should fix their store first

Only Fortnite and Minecraft? Rather than a gaming laptop, you can buy him the ROG Ally handheld instead and save some money. Even the Steam Deck will do the job (make sure you get the 512 GB or 1 TB version, 64 and 256 GB are limited)

I’m a tech person and I still use reddit

Yeah, you’re right. My bad

The game seems it will be always-online. That is a bummer considering to what happened to the OG The Crew

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16959/intel-innovation-alder-lake-november-4th/3

They don’t seem to realize that core managing is done better in W11 than in W10

without activating Windows

Edit: yeah nevermind, just ended up activating

Yeah I fully agree. Not to mention their app is badly optimized and it uses up to 40% of my CPU. If my CPU is a six core (i5-10400) then I don’t want to see what happens with dualcores…

Why does Lemmy randomly signs me out? This happens on Vivaldi 6.4.3160.44

Make sure to install uBlock Origin when you install FF. It’s unlikely your nephew can click on ads believing there is a virus but do it, to be safe

So here’s the deal, I have an old HP laptop I am in the process of resetting and setting up as my ~8yo nephew’s first computer.

Big mistake. It reinstalls all the bloatware and sometimes it can even end up bricking your Windows install. Always clean install.

Obviously the parental controls will be in place with his parents getting a crash course in anything they don’t already know how to use(they’re tech literate so I’m not worried about that).

Just in case you decide to use the Microsoft parental controls. It automatically blocks Firefox so you have to unblock it manually.

So here’s where my question for y’all comes in, what are your recommendations for a budding computer scientist/programmer’s first Windows machine?

Replace the HDD with a 512 GB SATA SSD, install 8 GBs of RAM and it will probably last more