Ubisoft has new trouble facing in the horizon, as they are now subject to a new lawsuit.
As reported by Polygon, two customers have put forward a proposed class action lawsuit because of Ubisoft’s decision to shut down the servers to their online only racing game, The Crew.
Released in 2014 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox 360, and Windows, The Crew was developed by Ubisoft studios Ivory Tower and Reflections. It featured a persistent open world version of the Contiguous United States, for players to race in large scale online races, or in role playing scenarios.
The Crew was designed as an online game, but in 2014, Ubisoft made choices that ruffled a few feathers. The Crew could only be played if you were online, even if you were not playing any multiplayer modes. As that seemed to imply, the game was programmed in such a way that if the game was taken offline, it would no longer be playable.
On December 2023, Ubisoft delisted The Crew from all digital storefronts, and that included blocking further sales of microtransactions. They also went ahead with shutting down the servers as announced on March 2024, claiming they had to because of “upcoming server infrastructure and licensing constraints”.
Fans found this hard to accept, because this isn’t how developers of other racing games deal with these situations. For example, Codemasters would announce when certain content would get delisted because of expiring licenses, and also when they would have to delist their older games.
More recently, they started offering those games in deep deep sales, and even giveaways, just to make sure gamers would get their chance to get their copies of the games.
But then, Ubisoft took it another step further. They revoked licenses from gamers who had copies of The Crew. That meant, whether you had a digital download of the game or a physical disc copy, you could not even access the files to find a way to play them.
This entire situation prompted YouTuber Ross Scott, AKA Accursed Farms, to start a movement called Stop Killing Games. That movement started from a threat to sue Ubisoft, but snowballed to a bigger effort.
And somehow, that movement seemed to have been superseded by this class action lawsuit, which Ross revealed that he had no involvement in. In his words:
“Two people are suing Ubisoft over The Crew in California. Some physical copies had that “expires 1/1/2099” label, so maybe they have an angle, but I doubt one that would save games overall. I knew nothing about this, I think it has harsh odds in the USA.”
Indeed, while the plaintiffs could have a strong case given Ubisoft’s aggressive actions, but their suit alleges that Ubisoft mislead customers into thinking they purchased the game instead of licensing it. Given that that was in the EULA, that argument may not hold up in court.
That may in fact be why Ross chose a different course of action. But now that there were people willing to test it in court, we may soon see an immediate dismissal, or it could indeed be another concern that the Guillemots didn’t need to be added onto the pile.
No doubt, Ubisoft should have faced some form of consumer watchdog or legal action for these actions. It just so happens that it also came at a time when the company isn’t in a good place. Ubisoft did see the backlash and tried to make good by promising offline modes for The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest. But that was clearly all too little too late.
