With less than two months left to go in 2024,Ubisoft’s nightmare yearcontinues at full speed.
This time around,the company is the target of a lawsuit by disgruntled Californian gamers, in an episode that highlights the importance of the ownership versus licensing debate in the gaming industry.
The French gaming giant put the racing gameThe Crewto sleep on March 31 of this year,killing all serversand removing it from all virtual storefronts.
When Ubisoft first announced the shutdown in December 2023, it offered refunds for purchases made recently, but this was not much use for players who had been enjoyingThe Crewsince its 2014 release.
A spokesman from the company said the decision was “due to server and licensing constraints”.
While servers forold games going downis nothing special, what makes the Ubisoft approach toThe Crewso insulting is that they did not leavean offline version of the game.
According to the lawsuit, the fact that physical copies ofthe game cannot rundespite being advertised as having all the game data violates California consumer protection laws.
Another key aspect of the filing is that Ubisoft misled players into thinking they were purchasing the game itself, rather than a license.
As of today,the gamers are pending court approval to escalate the lawsuit into a class action one, in hopes of giving players monetary compensation for the impact of the servers shutting down.
Ownership versus Licensing
The conversation over whether players are licensing or purchasing a game is at a critical point.
In September, California adoptedlegislation AB 2426, which bans digital storefronts from using terms such as “buy” and “purchase” as they imply ownership of the product.
The exception to this is if the game offers the option to be permanently played offline.
In the European Union, a petition calledStop Destroying Videogamesis closing on the 400,00 signatures mark, calling for any game sold within the bloc’s jurisdiction to have an obligation to stay permanently functional.
It is early days for the Californian lawsuit, and the European petition needs to reach 1,000,000 signatures to go into action, but the overarching theme is clear:gamers are tired of losing games over someone else’s problems.
