As happens occasionally, publishers discontinue certain games. This time, it’s Ubisoft which finds itself in this situation with one of its major licenses. It’s always a little sad to see a game disappear.
After a marketing period, long or not, publishers sometimes decide to stop the sale of certain games, in particular those which are multiplayer and require significant server resources. This approach is often a way to save very real costs. This is the case this time for Ubisoft.
Ubisoft, it’s the end for this game
Ubisoft recently announced the cessation of sales of its online racing game The Crew on all platforms, with an end of operation scheduled for March 31, 2024. This decision, necessary due to constraints linked to server infrastructure and to licenses, was taken with regret by the publisher, aware of the disappointment that this could cause for players who are still active.
The Crew, launched as a multiplayer game with a single-player campaign, relies heavily on servers for its operation. Despite this dependency, the shutdown even affects the game’s single-player features, making any form of play impossible after the planned end date.
This situation questions the sustainability of games that rely on servers and what it really means to own a digital game. Although The Crew currently only attracts around twenty players on Steam, the problem goes beyond the simple accessibility of an older racing game. It calls into question viewing game ownership as a kind of long-term rental. And players are therefore angry with Ubisoft. As you can see below:
The end of an era
Ubisoft acknowledged the importance of The Crew in establishing the franchise’s foundation, noting that the game helped define a social open world, an RPG progression system tied to player vehicles and actions, and the guarantee of activities at any time. The franchise reached more than 40 million players last year, a success that the company attributes to the experience accumulated with The Crew.
The Crew server will be disabled on April 1, 2024, making the game unplayable. Ubisoft is offering a refund to recent purchasers of the game. Although the definition of recent remains at the discretion of individual sales platform policies.
In conclusion, although this decision marks the end of The Crew, Ubisoft continues to support and develop its franchise with titles like The Crew 2 and the recent The Crew Motorfest, seeking to maintain its commitment to this type of racing game.