French consumer group UFC-Que Choisir sues Ubisoft over The Crew shutdown

Video 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.

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