Ubisoft shut down the servers for The Crew in March 2024, and this decision has not been well received by the community. While fans understood the removal of the multiplayer aspect of the game, they were frustrated that the single-player mode was also made inaccessible. Now, fans have filed a lawsuit against the publishers for failing to provide an offline mode.
As reported by Polygon, the court document reveals that plaintiffs Matthew Cassel and Alan Liu have brought this class action against Ubisoft Entertainment S.A. and Ubisoft, Inc. on behalf of themselves and “all others similarly situated” for shutting down The Crew.
The plaintiffs have accused Ubisoft of duping them in several ways. Firstly, they stated that Ubisoft “misled consumers by telling them they were buying a game, when in fact, all they were renting was a limited license to access a game.”
The plaintiffs have also alleged that Ubisoft “omitted material facts from the packaging and marketing” of The Crew. It was stated that Ubisoft didn’t mention that The Crew’s servers could be shut down at any point “without providing, at a minimum, an offline mode for consumers to continue to access the game they paid for”.
Moreover, they bought physical discs, believing “The Crew itself was encoded onto physical disks consumers could buy or the digital files consumers could pay to download.” Instead, the game was on a remote server, and the physical disc acted as a key to access this server.
The plaintiffs stated that when they purchased The Crew’s physical discs, they believed the game would be playable indefinitely without the risk of it being disabled. They also gave examples stating that Ubisoft had shut down online servers for games like Assassin’s Creed 2, Assassin’s Creed 3, and more in the past, but it patched an offline mode later.
However, in the case of The Crew, even after the community backlash, Ubisoft responded, stating that offline features of other games from the Crew franchise (The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest) would be preserved. But the original The Crew was left out of the list.
The plaintiffs have demanded a trial by jury and “the aggregate claims of all members of the proposed class are in excess of $5,000,000.00, exclusive of interest and cost” as this is a class-action lawsuit.
In other news, a group of modders have announced their commitment to resurrect The Crew. Also, Rainbow Six Siege made more money than any other Ubisoft franchise. What are your thoughts on the class-action lawsuit against Ubisoft for shutting down The Crew? Let us know in the comments or our new community forum!
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