Ubisoft is facing a proposed class action lawsuit over its decision to shut down The Crew earlier this year, a decade after its initial release. Two players submitted the filing before the California Court, claiming that Ubisoft “duped consumers” into purchasing The Crew without the knowledge that its servers could be shut down, making the online game unplayable.
When the shutdown was announced in December last year, Ubisoft offered refunds to players, but only those who “recently” purchased the game. Given the age of the game, a lot of players were unable to receive theirs.
“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.
The Crew Motorfest Gameplay
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The lawsuit claims 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 the physical disk. Second, Ubisoft “falsely represented” that The Crew’s files were on those physical disks to access freely, and that the disks weren’t simply “a key” for the game. The lawsuit adds that Ubisoft is violating California consumer protection laws.
This is just another addition to the development of gamers not realizing what they’re getting when they’re purchasing a game, which is more often than not, the license and not the game itself. That difference is something that platforms like Steam is trying to make more apparent when you buy a digital game.
Ubisoft declared it shut down its servers after a decade due to “server infrastructure and licensing constraints.” Both the 2018 sequel, simply titled The Crew 2, and the latest entry in the franchise, The Crew Motorfest, will remain unaffected after the servers go dark.