The Crew, an online-only racing game developed by Ubisoft, ceased to function on April 1. However, other people are claiming that things have progressed a little farther. According to reports by Game Rant and others, they claim that the business actually accessed Ubisoft Connect accounts and cancelled the license to access the game.
Since they paid for the game themselves and weren’t informed that Ubisoft would be canceling the license, some of these users compare this action to stealing. Some users claim they got a message saying they could not access the game when they tried to start it.
At first glance, this sounds very awful. Consumers paid for items that were later stolen. But there’s a big disclaimer. Since The Crew is a racing game that can only be played online, the servers are absolutely necessary. On April 1, those servers went offline, and the game was taken down from online retailers. Furthermore, this action only affects the original game. Both The Crew Motorfest and The Crew 2 are still in operation.
When Ubisoft announced that the servers would be taken offline, it offered refunds to those who recently purchased the The Crew. The game’s been around a decade, so this refund likely didn’t apply to the vast majority of players. Some of these people said they had planned to set up private servers to play the game, an option that is now impossible.
This isn’t the biggest deal in the world, being as how The Crew is not operable, but it does highlight a major problem with the purchase and use of digital goods. We pay money for these products. We think we own them, but we don’t own a damned thing. Read the terms of service from Ubisoft or any other major games publisher for proof of that. Philippe Tremblay, Ubisoft’s director of subscriptions, recently told Gamesindustry.biz that players will become “comfortable with not owning” their games. I’m not so sure we’ll ever be comfortable with the idea that stuff we paid for can disappear on a dime, even if it becomes standard practice.
