In a lawsuit over the video game, The Crew, Ubisoft is arguing that you don’t own the games that you legally purchased.
When you purchase just about any product, you own it. This has long been the norm. If you purchase a head of lettuce, it’s yours to do as you please. When you purchase a wrench, you are free to do with it as you please. For the longest time, the same was said for video games. If you purchase a video game, you are free to do as you please with it. You can keep it sealed, open it up and play that game, share it physically with friends, showcase it on YouTube, or whatever you liked. The game is something you purchased. It’s yours.
The problem, however, is that the gaming industry as long been at war with the concept. So, instead, they are altering the deal so that you are only allowed to play that game as long as they feel like they are wanting to “sell” the game. As soon as they don’t feel like selling it, they want to do what is known as “planned obsolescence” where they can simply press a button and no one is allowed to play the game anymore. It’s one of the ways the industry is being abusive to their customers.
Now, to be fair, the gaming industry is far from the only industry that is abusive towards their customers. This sort of bullshit has been happening in the music industry and the publishing industry where if someone decides not to sell the item anymore, they’ll have the power to stop people from enjoying the product they legally purchase – thereby ripping off the customer and robbing them of their hard earned money in the process.
In the gaming industry, there has long been a push to have an online only system. This is where even single player games require access to a Digital Rights Management (DRM) server to keep running. When that server invariably goes offline at a later time, then access to the game is no longer permitted and your legal purchase of said game goes from something you enjoy on a Saturday afternoon to nothing more than a drink coaster.
Now, if the game was given away for free, this wouldn’t be as big of a problem. After all, you didn’t have to be out monetarily. Maybe you payed for a subscription. In that case, the customer was able to easily understand that this ability to play the game wasn’t going to last forever. What makes this whole issue an even bigger problem is the fact that companies are charging full game price for the video game. In that case, the implication is that you purchased a product, it is yours. Now, when the developer decides to shut down access to that game, they broke that implied contract and the original purchase suddenly is intentionally broken by the developer.
The Crew is one of numerous examples of this happening. You needed to purchase the game to play it. The problem is that the developer decided it no longer wanted to support the game. Rather than providing an offline mode to allow players to continue playing the game, the developer, Ubisoft, decided to break the game and prevent people who legally purchased the game from playing that game. As a result, they basically were ripping off their customers by taking this action.
While this was threatening to become yet another story of how a game developer ripped off the customer by arbitrarily null and voiding everyone’s legal purchases, that’s not where this story ended. Instead, the customers decided to fight back against this customer abuse by suing Ubisoft. This in a lawsuit filed in 2024 which was, at the time, seeking class action status.
The lawsuit was seen as the customer fighting back. It was also seen a critical moment for the game preservation because while it is relatively easy to repair an old game cartridge, it is much harder to preserve a game that is online only given, in part, to the legalities of breaking a DRM.
Today, we are learning that Ubisoft has responded to the lawsuit arguing that when you purchase a product, there is no way the customer could have thought that they could play that game whenever they like. From Polygon:
Ubisoft responded to California gamers’ The Crew shutdown lawsuit in late February, filing to dismiss the case. The company’s lawyers argued in that filing, reviewed by Polygon, that there was no reason for players to believe they were purchasing “unfettered ownership rights in the game.” Ubisoft has made it clear, lawyers claimed, that when you buy a copy of The Crew, you’re merely buying a limited access license.
“Frustrated with Ubisoft’s recent decision to retire the game following a notice period delineated on the product’s packaging, Plaintiffs apply a kitchen sink approach on behalf of a putative class of nationwide customers, alleging eight causes of action including violations of California’s False Advertising Law, Unfair Competition Law, and Consumer Legal Remedies Act, as well as common law fraud and breach of warranty claims,” Ubisoft’s lawyers wrote.
Now, all of this could’ve been avoided if the game came with an offline mode from the get go. If the developer doesn’t want to support online servers for online multiplayer, then yes, they can pull down their official servers. After all, it is still possible to play Forza Horizon and Forza Horizon 2 even after the servers were taken offline. This is because you can still play a majority of the game without it. Certain features may not be accessible, but there was still a product that can be enjoyed afterwards. That didn’t happen with The Crew. Instead, offline mode was only added after litigation was initiated. It really shouldn’t have taken a class action lawsuit to spur that kind of action.
Further, the argument that there is no reason for the player to believe that they would have continued access to the game is obviously pure nonsense. It’s actually very normal for a player to believe that when they purchase a video game that they would be able to play that game at a later time. We’re not talking about the legalities of the End User License Agreement (EULA), we’re talking about an average customer just reasonably understanding the transaction they are getting themselves into. If you purchase a box of cereal, there is no reasonable scenario for the customer to believe that the company might send in a goon squad to break into your house at a later time and empty that cereal box out because the company decided you shouldn’t have access to said cereal. That is pure nonsense. So, why should a customer reasonably believe that when they purchase a game that the company would, at some point, the company would intentionally make the game unplayable? It doesn’t make any sense from a reasonable perspective.
It’s probably not a surprise that others are angry at Ubisoft for taking such a stance. From Vice:
On top of all that, Ubisoft, come on. Yeah, the former Nintendo employee’s “This isn’t Ubisoft” joke might have hit y’all in the chest a bit, but also, yeah? Because you can’t move like that. And to be clear, absolutely no one should, but at least build up a certain level of goodwill. The level of arrogance to be the ones saying this is wild. You want people to buy your games? You want them to stop looking at your games as an icon-fest? Treat the damn games and the gamers with the respect they deserve.
It doesn’t hurt you or any other company in the slightest to stop this online-only, live-service crap and just get back to making games people can buy and own. And to be clear, the fault isn’t strictly yours. GameStop has their ridiculously predatory pre-owned setup. And to stop the monster, a lot of companies started throwing whatever spear at it they could. But come up with something better. Come up with something that doesn’t take away what people paid their hard-earned money for.
And as far as the gamers? Starve out GameStop. That’s how we get this shit back. Go to the mom-and-pop retro game spots — the ones that actually care about game preservation and not marking games up to ridiculous prices. GameStop shouldn’t even be in the position to have this effect on the gaming industry as a whole. (Thanks to Gunzilla Games for bringing Game Informer back, by the way.) There is a path for this to go back to the way it should be. But it requires a level of understanding that the games are what matters and the stories behind owning them and the feeling of owning a collection are what make this something we all love.
It’s easy to see the stunt these developers are trying to pull here. They want to not only completely eviscerate the used game market, but also control which games are available and which ones are not. In doing so, they want to charge full price games in perpetuity and make it impossible to play anything else, thus continually ripping off the customers. This as consolidation in the gaming market continues to run rampant, making it more difficult for customers to vote with their wallet when they have a problem with this. It’s very understandable that the customer is fighting back against this in the first place.
