Ubisoft is stripping people's licences for The Crew weeks after its shutdown

Online-only design and shutdown impact

• Many see The Crew as a mostly single-player game that was unnecessarily online-only, making its shutdown feel like avoidable loss.
• Some note evidence of built-in offline functionality and local save support that Ubisoft never exposed, heightening frustration.
• Others argue it was conceived as a car MMO from day one, so always-on servers were part of the original design, but agree that killing servers (and now licenses) is the real problem.

Ownership vs licensing / “buy” vs “rent”

• Strong sentiment that digital “ownership” is largely fictional: users get revocable licenses, not durable property.
• Several call for legal restrictions on using words like “buy” or “purchase” when access depends on remote servers; terms like “rent”, “lease”, or “subscribe” are seen as more honest.
• Others argue changing labels alone won’t fix the underlying problem, as people will still pay for rentals and subscriptions.

Legal and regulatory angles

• Multiple comments point to EU Directive 2019/770: if you pay for digital content, the seller must keep it usable or refund you, unless it was clearly sold as time-limited or subscription-only.
• Suggestions include mandatory refunds if service ends “too early”, mandatory archiving, or even forced open-sourcing / escrow release of code when support ends or a company dies.
• Norway is cited as having a law requiring refunds when paid digital content is revoked; EULAs cannot reduce statutory rights there.

Piracy, preservation, and user workarounds

• Many explicitly frame piracy (copyright infringement) as a rational response when paid access can be unilaterally revoked, especially for preservation.
• Proposals include allowing private servers, legal protection for reverse engineering and emulation, and public-domain release of software that’s no longer commercially offered.
• Concerns are raised about publishers deleting local files or old content (e.g., other games) under pretexts like storage or maintenance costs.

Industry incentives and business models

• Ubisoft and similar publishers are described as repeatedly abusing trust, pushing some users to boycott their games entirely.
• Commentary links this to broader AAA trends: large, risk-averse teams, focus on recurring revenue, and willingness to sacrifice long-term reputation for short-term gains.
• Some predict increasing “killing” of old games as attention becomes scarcer and only actively monetized titles are tolerated.