The Crew's servers went down over a year ago and rendering the online game unusable. It was bad enough at the time, a harsh reminder that even the games we can buy are not a guaranteed to last forever, but for two dedicated fans, it was the start of a very long battle with Ubisoft over ownership rights.
In November it was revealed that these two fans are suing Ubisoft, as they allege the publisher misled customers into believing they were paying for ownership of the game rather than a license. The goal was to eventually convert the lawsuit into a class action, allowing The Crew's owners to get financial relief for the shutdown.
Ubisoft Says Players Were Never Promised Ownership in The Crew Shutdown Case
Ubisoft's response to the lawsuit filed in February a few months ago, has been shared by Polygon, as lawyers representing the company claim that the company never led players to believe they were purchasing unrestricted ownership rights in the game. They also claimed that plaintiffs, frustrated by the shutdown have taken a kitchen sink approach and failed to state any reasonable claim under any of their eight causes of action.
Ubisoft's lawyers say, Frustrated by Ubisoft's recent decision to shut down the game after the notice period indicated on the product packaging, plaintiffs are taking a kitchen sink approach on behalf of a class of skeptical consumers from across the country pleading eight causes of action, including violations of California's false advertising laws, unfair competition laws and the Consumer Legal Remedies Act, as well as claims for common law fraud and breach of warranty.
While this has not come out of anyone's mouth directly and it is a sign that Ubisoft sees people buying the game as a license, nothing more, and that they should have the right to revoke access whenever they want. We have known this is Ubisoft's attitude ever since its membership director Philippe Tremblay claimed that gamers should be comfortable with not owning their games.
That doesn't sound great for the overall case, but the two people fighting against Ubisoft have responded with a modification using images of the game with 2099's activation code. They claim this is proof that Ubisoft intended this game to be around for a long time.
They also claim that Ubisoft broke the law in California, as gift cards for the game's virtual currency (which do not legally expire in the state) technically expire after the servers are shut down. Ubisoft has until March 29th to respond to this new revision and but I have a feelings Ubisoft is going to be fired.
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