Ubisoft being sued by The Crew players after shutting down servers

Two fans of Ubisoft’s The Crew are suing Ubisoft over its decision to shutter the game’s servers earlier this year.

Released in 2014, The Crew aimed to take a share of the live-service racing game market dominated by Playground Games’ Forza Horizon series but didn’t manage to replicate its success, garnering criticism for its always-online requirement.

Ubisoft shuttered The Crew’s servers in March 2024, making the game completely unplayable due to having no offline, single-player component. It’s for this very reason that two plaintiffs have sought to take on Ubisoft in a class-action lawsuit.

As reported by Polygon, court documents claim that Ubisoft’s decision “resulted in the complete destruction” of The Crew, which “totally barred consumers’ access to the product they paid money for.”

“To further rub salt on the wound, Defendants decided that they would not provide consumers with the basic courtesy of leaving intact the single-player version of the game so that the thousands of consumers who paid hard-earned money for The Crew could at least enjoy some portion of this beloved game offline,” the filing continued.

Further, it’s claimed that Ubisoft “duped consumers” by “telling them they were buying a game, when in fact, all they were renting was a limited license to access a game.”

While the outcome of this case remains to be seen, it renews the conversation about video game preservation and further scrutinizes the line between buying and licensing products.

Whatever the conclusion, it’s worth pointing out that, unlike its predecessor, The Crew 2 at least won’t be subject to any similar legal action in the future. Released in 2018, the sequel features a single-player component playable without an internet connection.

Dexerto has contacted Ubisoft for comment.