Two people from California are suing Ubisoft because the company completely shut down The Crew servers without giving the game's owners the opportunity to play offline. This was reported by Polygon.
When Ubisoft shut down The Crew servers in March 2024, the company offered to refund players who had recently purchased the game. However, the game was released back in December 2014, and players who bought the game earlier were left with nothing.
The lawsuit claims that players were deceived in two ways. First, customers were misled into believing that they were buying a game, when in fact it was a license, even if they bought a physical disk. Secondly, Ubisoft deceived buyers of a physical copy of the game who believed they could access the game's files, when the disk was just a key.
Both charges violate a recently passed law in California that forces software and media producers to indicate that buyers will license content rather than own it. In particular, because of this law, Valve has started to add a corresponding notice when purchasing games on Steam.
The plaintiffs also ask the court to consider their lawsuit as a class action and call on other players who believe that Ubisoft deceived them by not providing the opportunity to play The Crew even offline. It's also interesting that in the case of other games, such as Assassin's Creed 2 and 3, the ability to play offline remained after the servers were shut down.