Ubisoft announced on March 31st local time the open world racing game “The Crew” service has been terminated. Distribution of this work was suspended in December of last year, and the service was announced to end as scheduled. However, this work has been attracting attention as a user has reported that “Ubisoft even stripped the ownership of the game.”PC Gameris telling.
“The Crew” is an open world racing game released in December 2014. Set in the vast continental United States, you can freely run around various locations such as roads, fields, and mountain trails. The story, which follows the mystery of the brother’s death, was also appealing, and there were also online elements such as encountering other players on the map. It is being developed by Ivory Tower, which has staff members who worked on the “Need for Speed” series and “Test Drive Unlimited.” This work was released for PC/PS4/Xbox 360/Xbox One, and was later expanded into a series. The latest work “The Crew: Motor Fest” is currently being distributed.
Ubisoft ended sales of “The Crew” on each platform on December 15th of last year. It was announced that the game itself would be impossible to play on March 31, 2024 (local time). This game requires a connection to an online server even when played alone. In addition to the issue of maintaining the server infrastructure for this purpose, there were also license agreement issues, which led to the decision to terminate the service (see related article).
On April 12th, some time after the service for “The Crew” was terminated, a post was made on the overseas bulletin board Reddit that “Ubisoft has stolen the ownership (license) of this work”, which attracted attention. . Attached to the post is a screenshot that shows that when trying to open the game on Ubisoft’s launcher, a message saying “This game is not available to you” appears.
The post has been featured on multiple subreddits, garnering more than 27,000 upvotes and over 2,600 comments, making it the subject of attention and discussion. Among the user opinions received, there is a noticeable amount of content that is critical of Ubisoft.
Specifically, some are questioning the legality of Ubisoft’s response, saying that it is “an act that arbitrarily takes away ownership of games that users have purchased.” There seems to be a strong argument that users are feeling a sense of crisis and anger at the situation where they can no longer even download the games they have purchased due to the discretion of the distributor. This was probably a move that went against the mentality of fans who wanted to own the game even though it was no longer playable due to the end of the service.
On the other hand, Ubisoft’sEnd User License AgreementIf you check the page, you will see the following sentence: “This product is licensed for use by the customer, but not sold.” On Ubisoft’s side, it may be that they are not taking away ownership rights, but rather that they are terminating the usage rights they had granted.
Additionally, a comment on the above-mentioned post mentions “revival of the work through volunteer servers and mods.” This is a reference to the possibility that tools and mods for The Crew that could replace Ubisoft’s services could be created by the community, allowing grassroots play. In fact, for this work, an unofficial server development project called “The Crew Offline+Online Server Emulation” is being carried out by volunteers.
However, licensing issues have also been mentioned regarding “The Crew” when the service ends. Similarly, there is a case in which volunteers attempted to “revive” a work whose service was terminated due to licensing issues. It’s “Friday The 13th: Resurrected,” an unofficial project for “Friday the 13th: The Game.” This project has been canceled at the request of the rights holder (see related article). There is a possibility that such an outcome could follow, and Ubisoft may have taken measures to make it difficult to access the game files in order to check the “volunteer version of “The Crew” project.
Concerns surrounding download sales of games, such as “the game may become unavailable someday due to the discontinuation of the service provided by the distributor,” is often a topic of discussion among gamers. This incident seems to be an example of the fear of not being able to own a purchased game becoming a reality.
