Ubisoft May Be Doing More Harm Than Good With Its Deletion of The Crew
The argument over whether you own digital games or not is truly heating up — and the end result isn’t going to do any good for a certain company.
I’m talking about Ubisoft and their treatment of The Crew, their big multiplayer racing game that came out a few years ago. Back in March, the company announced it would be shutting off online servers for the game, noting it needed to reserve the server space for other games.
Which is fine. We see this a lot. Older games get removed and online services get shut down. Especially for titles that have the licenses expire.
But what Ubisoft is doing is an act of outright cruelty.
This week, many users noted how their copy of The Crew suddenly vanished from their game libraries. And what’s more, there’s no option to redownload it.
Was this…really necessary? It’s one thing to turn the lights out on a server, but to virtually erase the game entirely? It’s Konami’s deletion of the P.T. demo all over again, assuring that no one gets to play it.
I mean, imagine the frustration with some of these players. They go all out to purchase a game which is, what, $60 at the time? Even if they haven’t played it for some time, it should still be theirs. I mean, I have a bunch of Xbox 360 games I can’t play anymore on my service, but I can still access them (well, somewhat — damn 360 servers are slow) to re-download.
It just reminds me that we’re in a day and age where companies think they can yank something out from beneath us, even though we have proof that we purchased it. It’s like what Sony did with some of its third-party movies (almost) after it failed to reach a deal to keep distributing.
I still think digital’s a good option for those that want to go that route. It’s easier than going to a store and buying a physical, or having to venture onto eBay and pay hundreds for something that’s in their hands. In today’s economy, it’s a practical solution.
But this is a reminder that some companies just don’t care, and want something eliminated merely for the sake of simplicity. Ubisoft has no reason to delete the game entirely — especially since you can still get a physical copy for a great price (though why you’d want to is beyond me, since you can’t start it).
Rest assured, though, this will bite the company in the butt. It just will.
It’s already going through a flurry of hell with what’s happening with Star Wars Outlaws, and has people questioning if it can do the same thing to that game years from now after the license expires. (And we’ve seen it happen, just look at the awesome X-Men arcade port that came out years ago.) So, as expected, most people won’t pick that game up, or will take the option of getting Ubisoft+ for a month just to go through what it has to offer and move on.
We shouldn’t erase game history, we should be preserving it. The Crew was a pretty good game for years, and Ubisoft could have easily found a way to keep it going offline, or give us something for the investment.
Instead, it’s just deleting it and following the logic that we don’t own our own digital games. But watch — that’s going to backfire. And miserably, might I add.
Just my two cents. We do still have The Crew 2 and Motorfest, but they require an additional investment. And I can totally see why some folks would be skeptical of that, seeing as how they might have their plug pulled when you least expect it.
Anyway, back to my Switch and my physical copy of Castle Crashers.
Have a great week, everyone!
