Ubisoft Removes The Crew From Players' Libraries

Unless you're going to read the EULA (which, on Steam at least you have to buy the game first to get to) and see if they can remove it from you in future (before you buy) then that's fine.

It's a principle thing though. What better way of "encouraging" people to upgrade than turn off their old games and make them unusable?

Imagine the hoo-ha if consoles did the same "Sorry, your Playstation 4 has now been discontinued and can no longer be used, please go here to buy a PS5"

Or, as someone else put it, you buy a car today, and in 10 years time someone takes the car away and leaves you with just the keys. Or, more accurately, takes the keys and leaves the car as an unusable shell.

Never have been Ubishafted. Thought I had never really bought any Ubi games. But looking into it, I bought some Tom Clancy games on PC, but nothing from 2010 and on, except Il-2 Sturmovik (still a 2001 game though).

Played some more of their console releases, but never owned them. Nor a console after my OG XB was stolen.

So I will not miss owning any of their newish game releases.

VirtuaIceMan said:

Or, as someone else put it, you buy a car today, and in 10 years time someone takes the car away and leaves you with just the keys. Or, more accurately, takes the keys and leaves the car as an unusable shell.

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There is such thing, when you rent or lease a vehicle. But in that case you are presented with the terms before you get your keys. Which isn't the same with games... Again, I blame Steam.

UnixRoot said:

The thing is that many of those "terms" have no legal relevance outside the USA and in some cases even violate applicable law in the countries they sell their games.

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I get that, but then why does Steam sell you the game with what could be considered an unenforceable EULA in such countries?

If it's online only, and is 10 years old and has an average of 20 players per day I'm surprised they didn't ditch it long ago. It may be frustrating to some, but I don't think it's unreasonable.
And if you can't play it, why shouldn't they delete it from libraries? Just extra admin and space for nothing.

And to think I loved Ubisoft when F1 Racing Simulation appeared and got to know it on a car expo back in 1998...

The problem is not in the games, but in the user agreements. They almost do not take into account the rights of gamers. We talk about The Crew and Ubisoft, but no one talks about EA, and Need For Speed Hot Pursuit, as well as Burnout Paradise, which stopped working after EA released remasters. I just hope that this is the beginning of a big wave that will bring more rights to gamers.

It's always really surprising reading some comments like "rou should read the terms of use before buying". Most people have been aware of these terms since Steam's launch. Once you have read them, what do you do? Not playing video games? That's a good solution indeed. There are not a lot of racing games available on GOG so probably 100% of us have accepted Steam / Ubi / EA / Epic terms of use.

The first issue is that, as a customer, to get access to the video game market, you don't have any other choice than accepting these terms, GOG excepted but it is not a contender to the other plateforms. You are basically hostage in this situation.

The second issue is a question of ethics/ Some modders are working on an offline patch, with, from what they declared, Ubisoft's greenlight. So why Ubisoft is removing the game from their customers libraries? And, even if the modders do not have any official greenlight, why not letting them doing it? There is no point except if Ubisoft is afraid that the average 20 players of The Crew 1 can kill the sales of the 2 next games ; it doesn't make sense at all. These 20 average players may be at best a 5000 player base in the entire world (I assume the 20 players figures is a Steam one, ignoring Uplay direct users and consoles players, which would represent maybe 200 players a day and maybe a 50 000 player base ; which is still a little figure and not a danger for TC2 and TCMF). By dropping the game from customers' librairies, Ubisoft definitely cut any hope for their customers to keep on enjoying a product they have paid for.

A third point imo is a legal perspective. Providing an offline patch now, after having delisted the game, may seem an unnecessary cost, just for a "few" thousands of users. But what should be mandatory, and brought by laws into these terms of use, is the integration of this offline patch into the development phase of the game, before its launch, because in these agreements the possibilty to stop the online services in the future is already announced. As a publisher, as you forecast the end of this services, you should have to facilitate the use of the product after this end because you can do it, you are not unable to do it at all.

And I think a company like Steam should pressure Ubisoft to make this move, because having any game from any publisher disappearing on Steam is bad for both companies in terms of image. Obviously many had forgotten this issue, having most of thei library on Steam, thinking it was forever and Ubisoft just have shown it is not forever. EA did it before, but at least it didn't stopped the players to find other ways to keep on playing the games (recent example : Bad Company 2). It is really bad for business, except for GOG, which I generally is my option to buy, and not rent, a game (unfortunately, the few titles it shares with Steam are often much more expensive during Steam sales periods). I personnally decided to stay away from Ubisoft products and I'll stick to my decision ; there are 2 or 3 games which picked my interest but no ; and on sale I would may have gotten TC Motorfest; I'm rather thinking about getting FH4 which is currently quiet cheap on Steam.

Whatever you think about The Crew (and it is absolutely not replaced by The Crew 2, the first game looks and plays much better, the second one brings other things in exchange for the downgraded aspects), you should support all the complains about that situation, against Ubisoft. Because it will happen to the games you like, one day or another. If in your mind you seriously think that you don't care because a few thousands users feel spoiled, you really have a problem and need to use your imagination : just replace the game's title, The Crew, by your favorite game (even not online, because it uses the same terms of use). Like rfactor 2 and LMU, which could really happen in a few months with a MSG total failure. It's less probable currently, but as you may dislike both games, let's mention Assetto Corsa, BeamNG; Wreckfest...