Ubisoft Lawyer Says You 'Can't Complain' Over The Crew Being Unplayable Now

Server shutdowns are becoming a common thing on Xbox (and other platforms) these days, and unfortunately, so is the practice of locking modes or even entire games behind these servers - meaning they eventually become unplayable.

Sometimes, the developer goes the extra mile to add offline functionality when this happens, but there are plenty of situations where that's not the case, and Ubisoft's The Crew suffered that fate when it was closed down in early 2024.

Since then, a group of Crew players have actually tried to sue Ubisoft over the shutdown, presenting a series of arguments about why they feel cheated, and Ubisoft issued a lengthy response in February that's over 35 pages long.

We'll let you dig into the full document if you want to, but the bit that's getting attention from the likes of Polygon and GamesRadar is where Ubisoft's lawyers mention you "cannot complain" over the game being shut down permanently.

Here's an excerpt about this:

After making their purchases, Plaintiffs enjoyed access to The Crew for years before Ubisoft decided in late 2023 to retire and shut down the servers of the ten-year-old video game. Plaintiffs received the benefit of their bargain and cannot complain now that they were deceived simply because Ubisoft did not then create an offline version of the discontinued video game.

In this section, it's also mentioned that The Crew's access is "entirely consistent with what Ubisoft marketed to them", and that the game's packaging featured clear references that a server shutdown could render the game useless.

The packaging contains clear notices that Ubisoft could “CANCEL ACCESS” to aspects of the game that were “REQUIRED” to play, thus putting Plaintiffs on notice that they did not have unconditional access and ownership.

Now, to be fair to Ubisoft, this all makes total sense. If you're putting clear warnings on your marketing material, the consumer is taking the risk that their game will no longer be playable, and it's happening with multiple titles every year.

That's not to say we like it though! 2K has become particularly bad at this in recent years, locking single-player modes in games like PGA Tour 2K and TopSpin 2K behind servers that inevitably get shut down in just a few years.

For what it's worth, Ubisoft followed up the controversy surrounding The Crew's shutdown in 2023 by announcing that The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest would receive offline modes to prevent the same situation from happening, which is a lot more than some games get - so hopefully it'll become a thing of the past with Ubisoft specifically.

The plaintiffs are still keeping up their arguments though, with an amendment filed back in March that Ubisoft has until the end of April to respond to. If anything else comes up that we find particularly interesting, we'll let you know!

What are your thoughts on this whole situation? Tell us down in the comments section below.

[source polygon.com, via gamesradar.com]