Earlier this year, Ubisoft decided to pull the plug on The Crew, which has now led to a proposed class action lawsuit.
Two players have taken their grievances to a California court, arguing that they were tricked into buying The Crew without knowing its servers could vanish, turning the game into an unplayable relic. When Ubisoft made the shutdown announcement last December, they offered refunds, but only for those who had “recently” bought the game. With the game being quite old, many players missed out on getting their money back.
“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,” the plaintiffs’ lawyers wrote in the lawsuit that was uploaded 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.”
Players claim they were fooled in two ways: First, Ubisoft allegedly tricked them into believing they were buying a full game, not just a license, even with a physical disk. Second, they say the company “falsely represented” the game files as freely accessible on those disks, when really, the disks were just keys to the game. The lawsuit accuses Ubisoft of breaching California’s consumer protection laws.
Sometimes, we forget that buying a game doesn’t always mean we own it forever.
Many gamers don’t realize they’re often just getting a license, not the game itself, and platforms like Steam are trying to clarify this with digital purchases. Ubisoft explained the server shutdown was due to “server infrastructure and licensing constraints.” Thankfully, both The Crew 2 from 2018 and the newest game, The Crew Motorfest, will keep running even after the original game’s servers go offline.
