Fans are incredibly unhappy about Ubisoft revoking licenses and game files for The Crew following server shutdown

Nine years after it was released, The Crew‘s servers have been shut down. Now, Ubisoft is rubbing salt in the wound by pulling licenses and digital copies from stores to make it even more unplayable.

Fans and many people who purchased The Crew on digital storefronts are kicking up a bit of a fuss over Ubisoft revoking licenses for the game. Its servers were turned off last month on March 31, 2024, but revoking licenses and pulling the game from storefronts so it can’t even be downloaded feels like overkill. For most, this going the extra mile to erase the game adds insult to the injury of it already being unplayable.

Ubisoft is pre-emptively shutting down any fan efforts to bring The Crew back

Ubisoft delisted The Crew from all online storefronts late last year, and news of the server shutdown in March had already been circulated – sadly, this has happened before. For example, the same day, Dark Souls 2‘s PS3 and Xbox 360 servers were shut down.

However, what fans didn’t realize would happen is that the game would be actively removed from their game libraries and their licenses for it revoked. This topic quickly racked up comments on Reddit and now has hundreds of players expressing not just their disappointment in Ubisoft but the ruthlessness of these actions.

I myself have The Crew downloaded on a PS4 because I intended on playing it before it went down. As everyone else is experiencing, I can run the game in demo mode but nothing more. Steam reportedly asks for a key to play, and Ubisoft Connect has moved the game to the Inactive Games section.

The heart of this issue for fans isn’t a matter of wasted money. Instead, it’s about a potential revival that can now never happen. As user FISTO puts it, “So now if the community does somehow create dummy-servers and/or find a way to make the game operable as a single-player offline game it’s literally impossible for owners of the game to download it and mod it. Great. Just a real wonderful move on Ubisoft’s part that shows how much they value both games and their customers.”

In a few rare cases, fans have been able to build servers that enable dead online games to run for brief periods of time so they can enjoy them together and welcome those who never had a chance to play them. Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood is a great example of a game in which players banded together to keep the multiplayer alive.

Ubisoft has systematically culled any possibility of that for those who didn’t already have the game installed, though. I’m not even sure a disc copy would work because it would require an online connection that may be severed forever.

Is what Ubisoft is doing with The Crew even legal?

When I saw this conversation pop up it struck me as odd because I assumed when we buy a copy of the game, we’re buying a copy of the license and a right to use it. That copy is, therefore, ours to do with what we want. That’s why it’s always been possible to sell games and buy second-hand copies. It’s not the full code or complete license, but a copy every legal owner is allowed to use.

I’m not the only one who believes this, which is why the Pirate Party Germany, a political party that supports the preservation of current civil rights and telephony on the internet, is taking a case to the EU Commission to ascertain if what Ubisoft has done is legal.

The reason this is a much bigger deal than, for example, Dark Souls 2‘s multiplayer servers going offline for PS3 and Xbox 360 is because that game is still playable. Customers can still use their Dark Souls 2 licenses, just not the online portion. In the case of The Crew, the license people paid for has been revoked without a refund or compensation. Effectively, anyone who purchased The Crew has just had the product they bought stolen from them, which wouldn’t be acceptable in any other circumstance.

The trouble is that this is such a vague area of consumer law. While Ubisoft might not like the fact that fans may have eventually set up emulation servers for The Crew, it’s not something it can complain about if it won’t support the game or allow anyone to have the files at all. The company can’t recall every disc copy of the game, so why should it be able to effectively recall every digital copy?

Despite a case being brought to such a powerful consumer body, we may never know the legality of what Ubisoft has done. Ubisoft launched The Crew, an MMO-CAR-PG, in late 2014. The game had a pretty rocky start because its driving mechanics weren’t the best, and its world design resembled the classic Ubisoft open-world formula. Fans at the time didn’t enjoy unlocking towers as they explored the world in what they felt should have been a much more open online driving game.

But The Crew is a part of Ubisoft’s history and a very memorable release. While it had its issues, it can be remembered as one of the prolific voice actor Troy Baker‘s roles, in a franchise that involves two more games and dozens of DLC releases.

What Ubisoft has done feels quite callous, and you have to wonder if there’s an emotional response driving what seems to be akin to the erasure of a project countless people played and worked on for almost an entire decade.