On March 31st, Ubisoft permanently shut down the servers of The Crew, their online driving game. In the following days, the game became a digital paperweight that only displayed error messages. As if that wasn’t enough, the French company has started revoking The Crew licenses from players.
If you have noticed that The Crew was missing from your Ubisoft Connect library, don’t worry, you’re not crazy. Ubisoft has introduced a new section called “Inactive Games” on their platform, where they group titles that can no longer be downloaded or played. In fact, if you try to download The Crew again, you will see a message announcing that you no longer have access to the game.
Ubisoft expressed to Eurogamer that they announced on December 14, 2023, that “after almost a decade of support, we would be retiring The Crew on March 31, 2024. Although we understand that this may be disappointing for players, it was necessary due to server infrastructure and licensing limitations.” It is striking that even paying for a game does not guarantee that we can enjoy it.
Although The Crew could be enjoyed solo, it relied on online servers to function. Without them, the game becomes inaccessible, even for those who owned a physical copy. There are those who do not lose hope and dream that the community can make The Crew playable again. Other platforms like Steam are exempt and still have The Crew available.
Once again, the debate between physical and digital and property rights resurfaces. Currently, we not only pay for games that we cannot play, but we also need players to preserve them, as it is clear that some companies care very little about it.
