1y ago

Ubisoft is stripping people's licences for The Crew weeks after its shutdown, nearly squandering hopes of fan servers and acting as a stark reminder of how volatile digital ownership is

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1y ago

Ubisoft is stripping people's licences for The Crew weeks after its shutdown

www.pcgamer.com /games/racing/ubisoft-is-stripping-peoples-licences-for-the-crew-weeks-after-its-shutdown-nearly-squandering-hopes-of-private-servers-and-acting-as-a-stark-reminder-of-how-volatile-digital-ownership-is/

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1y ago

Ubisoft is stripping people's licences for The Crew weeks after its shutdown, nearly squandering hopes of fan servers and acting as a stark reminder of how volatile digital ownership is

50 comments

PSA: if you own the crew, consider taking action.
https://www.stopkillinggames.com
- Especially if you live outside of the US!
- Maybe raise a stink with your attorney general and/or representative, too. The whole idea that a company can sell licenses for something and then arbitrarily decide they don't want to do it anymore and revoke all the licenses doesn't sound legal. And if it is, it doesn't sound like it should be.
- Is their removal of these licenses a measure to somehow prevent people from taking action?
- Kinda wish I had the crew so that I could clown on these Mfers
- I own the crew, but honestly think it's a shit game that's not worth my attention.
  
  It's not about this particular game.
  It's about setting a precedent for games you do care about.
  
  The idea is that since the company is French and France has excellent consumer protection, The Crew is the best example of this practice to fight
  It's not about whether the game is good, it's about Ubisoft being French
  
  The Crew was great in its time. It was basically the bridge between Test Drive Unlimited (superior open world gameplay) and early Forza Horizon (superior driving physics). Later Forza Horizon games simply took all the good gameplay features from both TLU and The Crew and is unmatched in quality now.
  The Crew 2 was worse than both its predecessor and the competing Forza Horizon at that time, so if you were talking about that I'd half agree. But it's still a problematic industry trend worth stopping.
Digital "ownership".
"Ubisoft is determined to take things one step further to stamp out any attempts to continue playing it past its expiry date."
Lmao, fuck licenses; pirate it, and we'll make our own servers.
They can't do shit then
- Afaik nobody has cracked it as it's always-online, though I'd be happily incorrect about this if one can slide me some sauce. I'm one of the affected players in the shutdown (still play occasionally) so the ability to continue playing this game would be very nice.
- Afaik there is no crack for The Crew because it stored your progress on ubisoft's server and has no local save data.
  
  There are cracks that managed this tho Nfs:World and wangan midnight comes to mind
  
  So if we need to somehow pirate it we need to break ubisoft drm and rediect the calls for savedata that are supposed to be sent to the servers to a local storage
  
  It can't not have local save data. It can delete it at exit, sure, but it needs it to load the game properly. Save game extraction might be more complex, but it is still sent to the local machine.
  Unless it's a streamed game of course.
If buying is not owning, pirating is not stealing.
- The problem is this game can't even be pirated due to how it's architected.
I can't believe they double down on this. It seems ubisoft's management actually thrives on gamers' rage.
- Well they are french.
For anyone who doesn't think this is a problem, watch this video and join this campaign.
The Crew represent a real chance to change things globally (seriously, watch the video).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w70Xc9CStoE
https://www.stopkillinggames.com/
you're only allowed to have fun if we control it
- You're only allowed to have fun if we can monetize it
  
  I figured it was a micro transaction game. This shit should be covered under right-to-repair.
  
  We don't care if you have fun. You already paid for it.
How the digital ownership normalized the fact that any service, game can disappear easily. The full digital future empowered the corporations, and that issue is here clearly shown by Ubisoft.
- That eats into their profits for their other/new games
Boycott this shit company
- Been doing that for years. Will happily continue.
  But I’m just one person. Ubisoft won’t feel it unless hundreds of thousands more do the same.
  
  Same
If you want to do something about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w70Xc9CStoE
- If you want to do something about it just go play beam.ng or motor town or another racing game from a smaller dev.
  
  Not the same thing at all. When the Crew is lost, a unique game and its world are lost with it. That's like saying if you want to play something like Metal Gear Solid you can go play Hitman. They're broadly the same genre, but a lot of unique art and experience is lost by just giving up and letting it go the easy way.
When Nintendo eshop closed, I lost all my purchases. I tried contacting Nintendo to see if they could transfer my purchases to my switch account, but contacting Nintendo is like trying to contact god, you're gonna get nowhere
Thanks UbiSoft for rubbing it in my face with this message, "You no longer have access to this game. Why not check the Store to pursue your adventures?"
- "Your single-payment rental period is suddenly over. Check out our shop where you can single-payment rent another game."
  Fixed it for Ubisoft
As if copies of a game on your computer is somehow more digital than the copy being on a disk or a chip that's ROM.
- Digital ownership, not storage. As in DRM, GaaS licensing and always-online launchers.
  A ROM cartridge was physical ownership, if you had the cartridge, you could play.
  A CD-key was also a form of physical ownership, install the game and type in the key from the case, you could play.
  
  That should be "ownership" as actual ownership implies having control over a thing and no one who "purchased" this seems to have much control. Breaking the DRM and creating a self hosted sever is taking ownership of it. Don't pretend CD keys were physical ownership either unless the key was entirely validated offline which admittedly older key schemes were.
It's a shame, but people are asking for it when they buy, and therefore support, these kind of games. If people simply refused to buy always-online games, we wouldn't be in this mess.
- Literally victim blaming. Classy.
  
  Blaming the player goes a bit far, true.
  That said, the sad truth is that companies only react when it affects their bottom line.

50 comments