Support us on Patreon
PayPalVideo game preservation is important, and now the French consumer group UFC-Que Choisir are getting into a fight with Ubisoft over The Crew. UFC-Que Choisir announced this today, with support from the Stop Killing Games movement.
Launched originally back in 2014, it was delisted in December 2023 and then Ubisoft shut down servers it required in March, 2024 so no one who purchased it was able to play it officially after that date. Ubisoft then began stripping away peoples licenses for the game, so you couldn't even install it.
This case could end up proving to be quite a big one, especially on the subject of publishers being able to completely turn off a game that people have purchased. A topic that comes up quite often, as we've seen numerous games just completely vanish over the years. It's not just a question of licenses versus ownership, but of games having expiration dates that you're not informed of when buying them.
It's often a problem with how the bigger games are designed, entirely relying on their proprietary server systems with micro-transactions they never open up to others even when they entirely move on from them. It would require some rethinking from the industry if lawsuits like this actually went in the consumer's favour.
What are your thoughts? Leave a comment,
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
See more from me
You can also find comments for this article on social media: 
GustyGhost 2 hours ago
[Tethering a product or program means designing it with features that can function only through communication with a restricted set of servers, through a protocol that you could not make your own server speak. That is always an injustice since it means you can't use the program without one of these servers. It is also a secondary injustice if you can't communicate with the servers in another way.Funny enough, there is an entry on that page for 2024-11: "Ubisoft is facing a fraud lawsuit for shutting down the proprietary video game The Crew..."
In some cases, tethering is used to do specific nasty things to the users.](https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/proprietary-tethers.html)
williamjcm 2 hours ago
While UFC-Que Choisir won the initial trial, Valve won the appeal, and the Cour de cassation (the French equivalent to the US' Supreme Court) upheld the appeal's ruling.
gaboversta 1 hour ago
Even back then I was shocked by the possibility of some day not being able to play just the online multiplayer anymore, more than a decade in the future. The game itself and local multiplayer would still work and yet young me realized that having the thing I bought with my money being downgraded later was bad.
Last edited by gaboversta on 31 Mar 2026 at 6:04 pm UTC
Quoting: gaboverstaI still remember many years ago when I bought Age of Empires 3 with both DLC on physical disc. Somewhere on the box it said that the ESO game servers needed for online play would be running until at least 2030.Has been shut down in 2024, if Google serves well?
Caldathras 52 minutes ago
Quoting: williamjcmSame group that sued Valve back in 2019 on the subject of Steam not allowing transferring accounts or selling individual games, by the way.So you're saying France's legal system is just as corrupt as the US? That's depressing.
While UFC-Que Choisir won the initial trial, Valve won the appeal, and the Cour de cassation (the French equivalent to the US' Supreme Court) upheld the appeal's ruling.
How to setup OpenMW for modern Morrowind on Linux / SteamOS and Steam Deck
How to install Hollow Knight: Silksong mods on Linux, SteamOS and Steam Deck