Ubisoft Responded to the The Crew Lawsuit... But Maybe They Shouldn’t Have!

General news News 04/11/2025

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The French publisher proves that it might be time for a repeat of 1983 among AAA games, as Ubisoft’s response is a bit unfair…

In November, two Californian gamers sued Ubisoft for shutting down The Crew’s servers. They argued that Ubisoft shutting down the servers was like buying a pinball machine and then, years later, having the pinball manufacturer break into your house, remove the bats, bumpers, balls, and everything else that makes the machine playable, leaving you with an empty frame (because one of them bought the game on disk, which is now unusable). The public was outraged when Ubisoft announced that The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest would receive an update that would make them playable offline. (As a side note, we would like to ask: will the Denuvo DRM be removed as well? After all, THAT requires an internet connection, and if the servers go down, you can’t start it…) Polygon has noted that Ubisoft has responded to the lawsuit, telling the accusing players that they should have known they were never buying a game, that they owned it when they bought a copy of The Crew, and that it was clear they were buying a license.

“Frustrated by Ubisoft’s recent decision to withdraw the game after a notice period stated on the product’s packaging, Plaintiffs are taking a kitchen sink approach on behalf of a putative class of nationwide customers. Following their purchases, Plaintiffs enjoyed access to The Crew for years before Ubisoft decided to retire and shut down the servers of the decade-old video game in late 2023. Plaintiffs received the benefit of their bargain and cannot now complain that they were defrauded simply because Ubisoft did not then create an offline version of the discontinued video game,” Ubisoft wrote in its response.

At the end of 2024, before the lawsuit was filed, Valve issued a new warning on Steam, telling players that they were only buying a license for the games they purchased, and not acting as the direct owner of the game. As for Ubisoft, why can’t they address the lack of game preservation?

Source: WCCFTech

Angyal Anikó

Anikó, our news editor and communication manager, is more interested in the business side of the gaming industry. She worked at banks, and she has a vast knowledge of business life. Still, she likes puzzle and story-oriented games, like Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments, which is her favourite title. She also played The Sims 3, but after accidentally killing a whole sim family, swore not to play it again. (For our office address, email and phone number check out our IMPRESSUM)