How Ubisoft Learned Its Lesson After Killing Online Racing Game ‘The Crew’

It’s no fun when a game you love becomes unplayable. It’s frustrating when you can’t buy a game legally anymore, or when the hardware is old and hard to come by. But what’s most baffling is when a publisher shuts down a perfectly good game—just like Ubisoft did with The Crew.

Why Did Ubisoft Shut down The Crew?

The Crew was the first entry in Ubisoft’s open-world racing series, and it was unique in many ways. For starters, the map was a scaled-down version of the United States with several major cities and lots of streets to explore. The diverse biomes mirrored those of the real country—like the sandy Mojave around Las Vegas or the swampy Everglades near Miami.

The first entry is arguably superior to the second in many ways, as it has a decent story, an amazing car tuning system, police in free roam, and lots more to love. The point is, The Crew was great, and a lot of people loved it.

Yet, Ubisoft permanently shut down the game’s servers early in 2024. Since it was an online-only title, players lost access for good. The most likely reason is that the game servers cost too much to run, as the game didn’t have a large player base. It was simply no longer profitable to keep the servers going, so Ubisoft’s decision was to simply pull the plug.

There Was an Outrage

Fans were rightfully furious when they heard that they were permanently losing access to a beloved game. Many paid the full $60 when the game was first released, and also bought additional DLC, only to see the game they owned disappear without a refund. A friend and I got the game for free, but we were still upset when we heard the news. We lost the chance to revisit a game that defined our late teens.

Although the game had a core multiplayer component, most of the content could be enjoyed in single-player. That is to say there’s no reason that you’d need to be online to simply enjoy the map and cars or race against AI opponents.

The Crew highlights a massive problem with the online-first game model, as players can lose access whenever the developer feels like it, and there’s no way to stop them. I would go so far as to say that online-only is Ubisoft’s preferred design choice as it allows the publisher to recycle and sell players the same game.

The most egregious part of this story occurred after The Crew went offline, as Ubisoft began revoking licenses, perhaps in an attempt to prevent players from creating alternative ways to play the game.

This hostile approach toward its own playerbase underscores a concerning trend, where companies prioritize short-term profits over long-term player retention. The good news is that a passionate group of players called The Crew Unlimited has managed to find workarounds and are working on getting The Crew back up and running with the help of a server emulator.

Ubisoft (Hopefully) Won’t Repeat Past Mistakes

Let me preface this by saying that Ubisoft has not announced that the The Crew will be getting any official offline mode or server revival, at least at the time of writing. Instead, the company announced on X (Twitter) that The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest are getting offline modes. While we won’t get the original back, at least we won’t lose access to the subsequent racing games in the series.

Following the announcement, Ubisoft gave a two-week 98% discount for The Crew 2 and 70% for The Crew Motorfest on Steam. I managed to snag The Crew 2 for one euro. It’s no replacement for The Crew, but it’s okay.

The bigger issue is that it feels a lot like a “gacha” game, unlike the original entry that was released before microtransactions took off. The game is cheap, but it’s filled with different things you can buy with real money if you wish to speed up progression.

The Situation Matters More Than You Might Think

If Ubisoft wanted to keep players happy, it could have done one of two things with The Crew. The first option was to add an offline mode. The other two entries are also online-only, and they’re getting an offline mode, so I can’t help but think that it would’ve been possible to port it over to the older game as well. Perhaps Ubisoft is too proud to reverse course, or perhaps they lost the source code (it’s happened before).

The second option was to continue running the servers at a loss. This might sound crazy, but if the player base is small, server costs could be scaled down to match the active players and minimize losses. This is what Blizzard did with Heroes of the Storm, a MOBA from 2014 that’s still getting maintenance patches even though it’s been long discontinued. Blizzard is most likely losing money because of this decision, but the game’s small community greatly appreciates it.

Blizzard isn’t exactly a role model when it comes to video game preservation, though. The Warcraft III: Reforged remaster was patched over the original Warcraft III, rendering the original unplayable. Video game remasters and remakes should be treated as entirely different games, as they typically provide a different experience than the games they were based on.

It’s also worth mentioning that older games are generally easier to run. The Crew is much less demanding than The Crew 2. You could probably run the original on the underpowered laptop you take with you when you travel, giving you something to play while you’re away.

Thanks to pressure from players, Ubisoft is taking The Crew franchise offline, but this is about more than a few mediocre racing games. This could set a precedent for other video game companies to follow.

We know that the internet is not forever, so it’s essential we preserve our aging video game collections with offline access and store them on physical media.