French consumer watchdog sues Ubisoft over The Crew software discontinuation controversy

Ubisoft is facing down a lawsuit on its home turf for the controversial delisting and discontinuation of The Crew.

2

In March 2024, Ubisoft pulled The Crew from all stores and announced the game would be going offline for good. As an online-only game, that meant consumers who bought The Crew would effectively no longer be able to play. The game, which sold over 2 million copies in less than a month, was a financial success for Ubisoft, leading to a big-budget sequel.

Ubisoft's actions kicked off a controversy that birthed the growing Stop Killing Games movement. The goal was simple: SKG ultimately wants to ensure games that are bought and paid for can continue being played. SKG wanted to drum up enough attention to bring the matter before European Parliament, leading to an effective signature campaign. Now the movement has caught the attention of French watchdog group UFC-Que Choisir, who has filed a lawsuit against Ubisoft in the hope of changing games industry practices.

In a new press release, Que Choisir argues that buyers were never told how long The Crew would be kept online, thus their purchases may not have been made on informed decisions. Ubisoft kept the game online for 9 years, which is long for any live service game that depends heavily on licenses to operate--Ubisoft had to pay to utilize all of the cars in The Crew.

"Players were never fairly informed about the potentially temporary nature of access to the game they were buying," the consumer group says.

"At the time of the game's release, Ubisoft led players to believe they had an unconditional right to use it, whereas the game's use was actually subject to an online service (server) which the publisher ultimately interrupted at its discretion, making the game de facto unusable."

While it's unlikely that any video games company would be forced to keep a game online indefinitely, the Stop Killing Games movement seeks to have publishers make and distribute offline versions of the games so that they continue being played. Ubisoft actually did this to an extent with The Crew 2, which operates in a hybrid offline model.

Que Choisir goes on to highlight the potential consumer risk associated with the ongoing live-driven models that are currently being employed by the games industry:

"The case of The Crew illustrates a worrying trend in the video game market: more and more games require a constant internet connection, allowing publishers to remotely disable games legitimately purchased by consumers without justification or alternative solutions.

"UFC-Que Choisir believes that by abruptly depriving players of all access to The Crew, Ubisoft has violated fundamental consumer rights."

No information on the court filings has been made public at the time of this article's publication.