Legendary Half-Life YouTuber plans class-action lawsuit against Ubisoft for killing The Crew

The Crew’s servers, scheduled for Sunday March 31, represents a “gray area” in videogame consumer law that he would like to challenge.
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I think the argument to make is that The Crew was sold under a perpetual license, not a subscription, so we were being sold a good, not a service
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the seller rendered the game unusable and deprived it of all value after the point of sale.

Goddam right, that's not a grey area IMO, that shit ought to be illegal. Maybe there should be a term, like let's say 90 years maybe?

My personal favorite is the "companies are obligated to support it forever, or open source the server software hosted by a third party, hosting paid for up front for at least a year."
They get to keep my money forever don't they?
- While I love the spirit of this idea, it gets complicated fast. Worlds adrift is a great example. The game’s server was created using some closed source libraries with a paid license. So when the owning company (Bossa Studios?) went under, they were unable to open source it.
  A law like this would effectively kill all licensed software that isn’t a full product. I do agree though; we need a solution
I'd tie its length to copyright length. Maybe they would fight Disney when they try to raise it again.
I just expect a popup in the game which says something like "Could not connect to server, some multiplayer features will be unavailable. Continue offline?"
- Or the ability to host community servers like the olden days when a game is sunsetted.
Or, maybe don’t force online requirement, and allow p2p. Or, better yet, open source the server now that it’s shut down and release a patch to specify where to connect.
- Blacklight Retribution did this for their console version. Wish they woulda did it for the PC version but whatever.
Imagine buying a T-shirt, and the manufacturer, without your prior knowledge or consent, could somehow render your shirt unwearable -- that's effectively what's happening here. The only "gray area" might be that ultimately you don't own a copy of the game anyway (since digital copies are effectively leased -- a whole other issue unto itself), but regardless: more power to this lawsuit. Seriously shady shit getting tacitly accepted lately.
- "we lost our license to print this brands logo on our shirts, so you have to give it back now"
  Smh
- "Imagine everyone moves to electric vehicles, gas stations close down, and people start sueing Ford for releasing a gas car 30 years ago" is the better analogy.

I got the game for free, and I've been playing it since every three months for a few days, just driving around. I bought the sequel, but it sucked.

I never used the multiplayer component, I treated it like a single player game. And now it's going to vanish? This whole world? They can't be serious. This isn't a multiplayer only title, it's single player with an optional mp stacked upon it. At least put an offline patch out... Assholes!

But that's the crux with only buying licenses. Or games with always online requirements. I hope fans find a way to crack the online code!!

Yeah, no one is arguing games shouldn't have online, just that they continue to work after the devs are done with them, have an End of Life plan like the late Avengers game, or the gacha Megaman X Dive that got an offline version sold on steam and consoles.

I'm all for improving consumer rights in the videogame industry, but I'm more than a little amazed anyone's willing to put up a fight for The Crew of all things.

He's rather critical of the game. He just really hates when games are lost forever.
Seems more to do with the way things line up--it's a perfect example of a physical and digital game getting permanently shut down without any sort of refund or compensation to the buyers of the game. It sounds like it's about setting precedent so people will have a better idea of how this kinda stuff is going to work in the future.
He just likes driving around and nothing more, it's his podcast/tourism game, but also the perfect one since it happened after he started this fight for preservation and it's not sold as service but as a product, unlike MMOs.

Don't forget we have to get comfortable not owning our games guys... This is Ubisoft showing us how that works..

This would be a huge precedent for video-game preservation. IANAL but this would mean one of these two:

service cannot be shut down without release of server source code
whole game need to be reclassified as software service

Seems like the latter would be an easy loophole tbh.

Also NAL, but it seems like they aren't arguing for server functionality but rather just the ability to play offline at all, which opens up the third option of requiring games to be patched to remove sever requirements if being shut down, in any case this will be a fascinating case to follow, and I hope they go through with the lawsuit.
- True though that's a bit of a potato/potatoh probpem as the easiest way to patch-in offline would be to run server locally rather than have 2 different architectures of offline and online plays. That's already how many games work today actually - singleplayer is just a server with only you on it.

Now also make it illegal to sell physical copies of games that need day 0 patches/downloads to make them work.

I still kick on my original nes every now and then. 20 years from now when you dig out your old copy of borderlands 3 and there's no longer a download available, you think you'll get to play through the game?

This is why his videos about this issue are great, he dismantles every single argument against it like "just buy physical", The Crew has physical versions, they won't work just like the digital one.
True. Though there really are NES games that should've received a patch if that were possible.
- yeah, but how rare is that compared to today, where almost every bloody game is ridiculously broken and needing major day 1 patches... an day 2 patches, and day 7 patches.
. 20 years from now when you dig out your old copy of borderlands 3 and there's no longer a download available, you think you'll get to play through the game?
Yes, games often come with bugs, but a game that comes out unplayable or unbeatable on disk is extremely rare.
This is, of course, discounting the fact that as part of community preservation efforts, updates are preserved along with the games.
- They aren't extremely rare at all, bro.

Fuck yeah Ross

Stuff like this is always welcome.

That aldo happened to Bomberman. To play locally, it needs to connect to a server. The servers are no longer active, and as a result, the game isn't playable.

This is all well and good, but what of all those MMORPGs that got shut down?

The Crew is a bizarre game to do this kinda treatment for, since the sequel is very similar to the first, less terrible crime syndicate story, more planes and other nonsense. It's also pretty middling, car handling is really weird, and the lack of rear view mirrors looks pretty weird nowadays.

I'm guessing it's car licensing that's causing the shutdown. It's what happened to Forza Horizon 1 and 2. If that is the case, this game isn't going to get open sourced ever. Also: why didn't this guy go after Microsoft to make them playable again?

It's because MMOs were sold as subscriptions (most of the time) so they're legally covered in being allowed to end their service. The crew however was sold as a full game with no subscription. They didn't make it clear that the game could cease to exist even though you paid for it outright.
Sadly, I feel like a lawsuit line this won't have the benefit we're all hoping for (open sourcing on closure of services) but will instead just make all subsequent games free-to-play, which would make them more exempt to the same scrutiny. And we're already seemingly heading that way too, warts and all.
- For the future maybe. For games that were sold one day, they would have to either keep supporting it, or release server software.
  It is up to the gamers to keep supporting this practice in the future.
  I can still play Unreal Tournament '99 and 2004 even though the servers are offline. I can even still play it online with the server ip and even use the server browser with fan mods.
  You can't say the same for the crew when it goes offline.
- For the last few years, most MMOs have been, or become, Free to Play, with (a lot of) microtransactions. The only subscription MMOs I can think of off the top of my head are FFXIV, WoW and Eve. Then you have the buy to play, with no sub (or optional sub, but not required to play), games like New World and Elder Scrolls Online. Making the vast majority F2P.
  All of those games can become EOL and be removed from sale for any number of reasons, and they'll have the same terms in the EULA that the crew would have. There is literally nothing different legally between The Crew and something like Elyon. Both were paid for up front, no subscription with some optional microtransactions.
  Since legallly there is nothing different between all these live service games, it makes this youtubers campaign all the more odd. Car Licensing is notoriously well enforced, so why is this guy, a Half Life youtuber of all things, thinking he can go after Ubisoft on this when it's pretty obvious that it's the license agreements that are the likely cause of the shutdown.
Horizon can be played offline. When Microsoft bites the dust, I can still pop in a Forza horizon 2 DVD into my 360 and play it.

You just made it look even worse for Ubisoft since the first 3 Horizon games work offline and everyone that bought them can still play it just fine, you just can't buy them right now.

Not sure why he's being recognized by a Half-Life series of his. I discovered and watched him for his deep dives of old crappy PC games.

For sure, Ross' Game Dungeon is amazing and one of my favorite things to watch!
Ross Scott posts his content on Accursed Farms for anyone interested!
- I also recommend Grim Beard and Pushing Up Roses for similar content.

Blessed Ross Scott