Full title: Ubisoft says you “cannot complain” it shut down The Crew because you never actually owned it, and you weren’t “deceived” by the lack of an offline version “to access a decade-old, discontinued video game”
Ubisoft’s lawyers have responded to a class action lawsuit over the shutdown of The Crew, arguing that it was always clear that you didn’t own the game and calling for a dismissal of the case outright.
The class action was filed in November 2024, and Ubisoft’s response came in February 2025, though it’s only come to the public’s attention now courtesy of Polygon. The full response from Ubisoft attorney Steven A. Marenberg picks apart the claims of plaintiffs Matthew Cassell and Alan Liu piece by piece, but the most common refrain is that The Crew’s box made clear both that the game required an internet connection and that Ubisoft retained the right to revoke access “to one or more specific online features” with a 30-day notice at its own discretion.
I’m okay with servers being shut down eventually, my issue is we don’t know when. If they want to call it a license and that it will be revoked later, well fucking plan it out and tell people. Did the game get cheaper as the clock ran down? Did the people buying 10 years of access pay more than people that only got to play it once? I’m pissed for the people like me that sometimes take a few years to get to playing their games only to find the servers are gone and they thought they were buying something (or at least licensing something) they would get to use.
Of course they would probably find that if they told people how long they could use it, a lot of people wouldn’t pay them for it (i.e. their business would fail without intentionally deceiving their customers).