Numerous gamers around the world love racing games and apart from Forza and NFS, there is another popular name in this genre “The Crew”. Previously, Ubisoft (developers of The Crew) shut down the servers of the game last month which upset a lot of fans.
However, even after the server shutdown, The Crew could be still playable offline. Only the online mode was affected by it. The situation worsened when Ubisoft started revoking players’ licenses after which the game was removed from players’ libraries. After that, it became impossible to download the game from the game library.
According to PC Gamer, Ubisoft moved the game to the “inactive games” section where it mentions: “You no longer have access to this game”. The sudden removal of a purchased game from your library without consent and refund has made the fans angry. Several players have also questioned the legality of this horrendous move by Ubisoft.
One Reddit user argued:
The issue here isn’t about money, though. It’s that they’re basically making it impossible to (legally) play the game again. It’s a symptom of the always-online server based game design that companies have been doing for what feels like forever. If a company wants to do this, they should be prepared to operate or pay for the servers in perpetuity. Barring that, they should plan to accommodate for the games true end-of-life such that people can still play the game if they decide to terminate said servers so that people can still legally play the game they paid for.
Another mentioned:
Ensuring that licenses shouldn’t be revoked like this can’t be particularly difficult? It sounds more like a legal thing than a technical one. Ensuring that online games will always be playable would be more difficult. But taking down the servers is pretty different from revoking the license to play the game at all.
Undoubtedly, it is unfair to suddenly remove a game’s license that you own and have paid for without your consent. While the industry is moving in a direction where more people prefer to own content digitally, you should think about the dark side before making any purchase decision.
We’ve asked the Ubisoft team for a comment on this matter. Once we receive any response, we will immediately update it here.
