As a “commitment to [their] future”.
Image credit: Ubisoft
Following Ubisoft’s decision to shut down The Crew’s servers earlier this year – a move made even more controversial when it began revoking players’ licensing to the game – the publisher has announced plans to prevent other entries in the open-world racing series from suffering a similar fate by retroactively introducing offline modes.
Ubisoft began delisting The Crew from digital storefronts last December, announcing it would be permanently shutting the game’s servers down on 31st March this year. Unfortunately, its always-online nature meant players didn’t just loose access to The Crew’s multiplayer elements when the day came – all its single-player content became unavailable too.
The controversy surrounding Ubisoft’s decision led to revitalised discourse on video games preservation, and the establishment of Stop Killing Games – an initiative aiming to mount political and legal challenges to the increasingly common occurrence of purchased games becoming unplayable. And debate only intensified when Ubisoft later began quietly revoking owners’ licenses to The Crew, making it impossible to download and install.
Five months on, Ubisoft has finally acknowledged player concerns around access – or rather, the complete lack of access – to The Crew in a statement on social media. And while it doesn’t sound like there’s much hope for the original The Crew’s revival, the publisher is at least looking to protect its sequels.
“We heard your concerns about access to The Crew games,” the publisher wrote on Twitter/X. “Today, we want to express our commitment to the future of The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest.” It then confirmed “an offline mode to ensure long term access to both titles” is in the works, promising more details “in the next months”.
In response to today’s news, Stop Killing Games founder and YouTuber Ross Scott wrote, “The Crew 2 and Motorsport is getting an offline mode. Hopefully this is in response to consumer agencies in multiple countries investigating the legality of them disabling [The Crew 1], which was sold as a one-time purchase with no stated expiration date.”
