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The server shutdown of online racing MMO The Crew has sent waves through the gaming community. Kicking off the ongoing Stop Killing Games campaign, gamers are attempting to force publishers to keep online-only games alive either through offline functionality or custom server support after their official shutdown.
Responding to a class action lawsuit in California filed by gamers Matthew Cassell and Alan Liu, Ubisoft attorney Steven A. Mareberg states that fans “cannot complain” about the death of online-only games. Via the official court documents, uploaded by Polygon, Marenberg states that the box for The Crew clearly states that an internet connection was a requirement for the game and Ubisoft had the right to kill “one of more specific online features” as long as players received a 30-day notice.
“After making their purchases, Plaintiffs enjoyed access to The Crew for years before Ubisoft decided in late 2023 to retire shut down the servers of the ten-year-old video game,” the Ubisoft lawyer stated.
Marenberg claimed that gamers “received the benefit of their bargain and cannot complain now that they were deceived simply because Ubisoft did not then create an offline version of the discontinued video game.”
The base argument for the case is that “by selling a physical copy of the Game, Ubisoft represented to consumers that they were purchasing a copy of the Game and were therefore obtaining the full bundle of traditional ownership rights over that copy of the Game”. Ubisoft’s attorney claims that “this supposed misrepresentation stems from [the] plaintiffs’ own unreasonable and unfoudned assumptions that one form of purchase entitled them to more ownership than another”.
As the lawsuit was filed in California, plaintiffs Matthew Cassell and Alan Liu have amended their complaint to target both the expiration date of the game’s retail Activation Code and the in-game currency that could be purchased within The Crew.
Cassell and Liu argue that the in-box Activation Code for The Crew had an expiration date of 2099. With the date firmly on the card for the code, the plaintiffs argue that this implies the game would remain playable in some form until that date. Additionally, the game’s in-game currency could be considered a form of gift certificate. In California, a gift certificate is not allowed to expire.
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The Crew
- Platform(s): PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One
- Genre(s): Adventure, Massively Multiplayer, Racing
