The issue is, once again, about the difference between buying and licensing games
Two Californian gamers are suing Ubisoft in a proposed class action lawsuit over the developer and publisher’s recent shutdown of racing game The Crew. Ubisoft released The Crew in December 2014 and shut down its servers after a decade due to “server infrastructure and licensing constraints.” After the servers shut down, the game became totally unplayable due to its lack of a single-player, offline mode. When the shutdown was announced on Dec. 14, 2023, Ubisoft did offer refunds to people who “recently” purchased The Crew, but given the age of the game, a lot of players were unable to participate in the offer.
“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,” lawyers wrote in the lawsuit, which was filed Nov. 4 in a California court and reviewed 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 lawsuit alleges this is “exactly” what happened when Ubisoft shut down its servers for The Crew in 2024 — suddenly leaving consumers unable to access something they purchased and assumed they owned. The lawsuit says 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 a physical disk. Second, that Ubisoft “falsely represented” that The Crew’s files were on its physical disks to access freely, and that the disks weren’t simply a key for the game. Ubisoft is violating California consumer protection laws, the lawsuit alleges.
Both plaintiffs purchased the game well into its lifespan, in 2018 and 2020, respectively, on physical discs. The lawsuit says neither would have purchased the game “on the same terms,” i.e., price, knowing the game’s servers could be taken down, rendering The Crew totally unplayable even in an offline mode. The lawsuit also covers the backlash to Ubisoft’s decision to shutdown the servers and not include an offline version of the game; it cites several games that turned servers off but patched in an offline option, like Knockout City and two of Ubisoft’s own games, Assassin’s Creed 2 and Assassin’s Creed 3. Ubisoft responded to the criticism and vowed to include offline versions of its existing games in The Crew franchise, like The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest — but the lawsuit says this does nothing to amend the problem of The Crew’s server shutdown.
The plaintiffs are looking for the court to approve the lawsuit as a class action, meaning other The Crew players may get involved. They’re looking for monetary relief and damages for those impacted by the server shutdown. The lawsuit follows a campaign from YouTube creator Ross Scott to urge companies to “stop killing games,” a movement that kicked off after The Crew announcement was made. The Stop Killing Games movement is petitioning the European Union to force game companies to keep games in playable states. It currently has more than 379,000 signatures.
As media continues to go more and more digital, the issue of owning vs. licensing — especially in video games — becomes more of a problem. While some people are taking games into their own hands (like with the player-created The Crew Unlimited), the onus is largely on companies and what they do to preserve their games and servers. But in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed a bill into law that requires companies to tell consumers they’re buying licenses, not games themselves, in online storefronts. The law itself, introduced by California assemblywoman Jacqui Irwin, is actually partly inspired by Ubisoft’s shutdown of The Crew. The law, however, doesn’t do anything about the fact that games are licensed and not purchased outright, nor does it stop a company from rendering a game unplayable, but it does, in theory, offer transparency on the issue.
I think we need a very strict regulation, where the wording is never “purchase” or “buy” or “own”. It should always be “rent”. Because that’s what it is.
And like other time-limited services outside entertainment, the duration should be made clear. I’d personally like something as clear and blunt as:
"We guarantee access for at least X months/years after paying the license.
After service is suspended we will release all information and code necessary to set up a private server or otherwise restore function."
And for the worst kind:
"We make no guarantees of access duration, and can revoke your access immediately after paying the license.
After service is suspended we will not release information or code necessary to set up a private server or otherwise restore function."
Ideally the last type dies out completely, or becomes exceedingly rare.
These always online, server-dependent, licence-limited games are very unlike what we used to deal with; Books, DVDs, CDs, and other games on disk/cartridge or with a simple download that you can keep and use for as long as you live as long as they’re still stored and in readable condition.
They’re very different, and should be treated like it.
There should be a very clear visual difference when looking at the box or store page of a game that is made to simply last as long as you keep the code stored, and a game that won’t. A consistent warning design. Maybe two color codes.
Lets be real, while I love the idea of users making informed choices… how big do you think the labels on cigarettes to say “they will give you cancer and kill you”. People aren’t bright, you can warn them until the cows come home, they want to play a game, they will buy it. Very few of them would have listened to any warning no matter how blatent.
People are stupid… for 99.9% of people “we’ll send out the code and let you set up private servers”, is really no different than we’ll shut down the servers and you can never play again. There’s not a huge overlap between people who understand how to create a private server and/or set up their routers to allow incoming connections, and people who actually can convince friends to join their servers.
Now maybe the “the servers are guaranteed to remain until X date”, is a reasonable one. Very least tells people their games have a shelf life and not to buy it after a certain point in time.
It gets to be way harder to argue in court when it isn’t a “clean kill”, using Ross Scott’s words, so The Crew is going to be one of the best examples we’ll ever get for courts to rule on. I expect Ubisoft would rather settle than let this one go that far though.
I imagine a lawsuit would likely bring up the topic of how hard it would be for a developer to keep the game around past purchase.
For instance, imagine a massively multiplayer online game; everyone playing the game is acutely aware of how much server hardware is needed to maintain that online presence, and it’s unrealistic to assume it would exist forever.
That’s probably why attention was pushed onto The Crew. It’s a racing game that shouldn’t need much from a server, so it’s arguably unfair to tie it to that access and take it offline.
I would imagine it would reveal how sh*tty the ubisoft code bases are and has a reputation cost XD. But if it’s that big of a risk then they should keep the servers running indefinitely.
Pirates have managed to run servers for tons of MMOs. The only thing stopping people from running servers themselves is that they’re not made available.
Don’t get it wrong, the reason The Crew was the perfect game to start the movement is solely because Ubisoft is french, a country that has pretty strong consumer laws that they aren’t respecting.
If you’re an EU citizen, please take the time to sign this citizen initiative to stop killing games. It could be our best chance of preventing such situations in the future.
This guy’s strawman arguments have already been destroyed by plenty of people who actually know what they’re talking about and don’t have an interest in keeping the current situation.
The guy who won’t go 5 seconds without flashing his “20 years of service to Blizzard” badge also was dumbfounded at the possibility of people self hosting game servers like World of Warcraft, even though they’ve been doing it for years. Dude seems like a MASSIVE know it all.
If you buy a game, which you cannot use in single player mode, without internet access, you are signing up for this happening to you too, one day, guaranteed.
I mean, that’s basically all AAA games in 2024. Even songs PC ports which historically avoided DRM and network requirements is starting to mandate PSN accounts. I 100% would prefer to be able to play offline, more often than not it’s unwanted telemetry or BS bloat but that isn’t something we as users can enforce.
Last week I downloaded Dark Age of Camelot which I have not played nor paid for 20 years, and my character was still there. I was really not expecting them to keep the data for so long without any payment.
I understand why most companies wouldn’t do that, but they should be forced to open-source online games that get shut down or otherwise made non-functional.
At minimum they should provide copies of the software to anyone who paid a subscription, and then enterprising individuals would figure out how to get private servers running
Death Stranding is one of my favorite examples of how many ideas are out there to make games out of without resorting to making a game loop revolve around violence.
Really? That scene where you’re lost on the beach was at least 45 minutes. It may have been hours…I’d get to the next part, the cut scene would start and Id put up with it for 5 minutes then go mow the grass or something. That was painful to get through.
Well ya that was really bad. But it was just that 1 time (also it’s with the credit roll) so I’m going to let it slide. I also started reading a book at that part tho.
Benson explained that because “the various projects that I am affiliated with in my career are family-based, children-based,” voice acting director Kris Zimmerman suggested that she go with a pseudonym.
That’s gotta be the stupidest thing I ever heard. Just about every voice actor does adult Video Games and kids movies. Nobody cares.
Also she’s been on the IMDb credits for the metal Gear games as EVA for like years
polygon.com
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