It’s been two years since The Crew was shut down, which prompted a fast and negative response from the majority of players and people concerned about the games industry’s poor game preservation efforts, especially when it comes to always-online games. While some fans moved on, others worked to revive it through modding and some people even filed lawsuits against publisher Ubisoft. Now, more legal battles are set to happen in France.
Reuters (via Yahoo) shared the news on 31st March, stating “France’s leader consumer association, UFC-Que Choisir, said on Tuesday it had filed a lawsuit against Ubisoft over the shutdown of online racing game The Crew.” While it does state “the case could have sweeping implications for millions of players worldwide,” we’ve been here before, and so far, not much has changed. We lost Anthem back in January too, and no one (but a few passionate players) seems to care.
Still, this is a battle worth fighting, and public backlash plus lawsuits have already forced Ubisoft to give offline modes to The Crew 2 and Motorfest so they remain playable once their servers go to sleep, too. While it’s easy to understand how the costs of sustaining servers for mostly barren games doesn’t make sense, the right move would be to ensure that (while building them) non-MMO games with structure and gameplay that aren’t defined by online interactions work after official support ends.
Unsurprisingly, the Stop Killing Games movement, which recently got its initiative to Brussels, has backed the lawsuit which alleges “that Ubisoft misled consumers about the permanence of their purchase and imposed abusive contractual clauses stripping players of ownership rights.”
On Stop Killing Games’ own battlefront, the latest update from Moritz Katzner, SKG’s general director, is that they’re expecting the EU Parliament “to hold a hearing on the matter on April 16.”
