Ubisoft threatened with class action lawsuit after shutting down online services for popular game

YouTuber Ross Scott, who posts as Accursed Farms, has announced plans to take legal action against Ubisoft over the termination of The Crew. To recap, Ubisoft released The Crew in December 2014 before bringing it Amazon Luna in November 2020. Subsequently, the company has introduced two sequels as The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest, with the latter arriving in September 2023.

Three months after the release of The Crew Motorfest, Ubisoft de-listed the original game, preventing any additional purchases. Additionally, it confirmed that it would be discontinuing The Crew's online services on March 31, 2024. While the latter is a regular occurrence for a nearly decade-old game, developers will leave its offline portion untouched.

However, while an offline mode for The Crew has been discovered, encryption makes this impossible to enable. Thus, The Crew is an online-only title at the time of publication. Currently, Scott hopes to argue that Ubisoft sold The Crew as a perpetual licence, the value of which shuttering its online services would destroy. Ultimately, it remains to be seen what success such an argument would have, particularly given the extensive terms of service that Ubisoft provides before purchasing any of its games.

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