Ubisoft Faces Backlash For Making The Crew Completely Unplayable After Its Closure

Ubisoft is once again in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons after it revoked all digital licenses for The Crew following the multiplayer racing game’s closure two weeks ago. Anyone who owned the game through Ubisoft Connect will no longer be able to access it, shattering fan hopes of an unofficial revival at some point in the future.

Since the open-world racer was only playable online, it had already been rendered unplayable the moment that Ubisoft pulled the plug on the servers. Apparently, they wanted to take the extra step to make sure that no one would be able to play the full game past the closure date, although it’s still playable in demo mode if you launch the client directly from the installation folder.

The move has unsurprisingly been met with criticism from The Crew fans who believe that Ubisoft shouldn’t have made the game unplayable in the first place and that they should have at least been given an option to play it in offline mode or through a private server.

It’s also brought to question the legality of revoking access to digitally purchased games as video game companies end support for older titles. One YouTuber even launched a petition website called Stop Killing Games to fight for perpetual ownership of digital and physical copies of all video games instead of just being granted licenses to use them.

There’s also that time when Ubisoft deleted an inactive account with hundreds of dollars’ worth of purchased games, which appears to be a one-off thing but still concerning, nonetheless.