Proposed class action lawsuit claims The Crew players were 'duped', bizarrely comparing the game shutting down to Ubisoft breaking into your house and stealing parts of a pinball machine
Two Californians are suing Ubisoft over fraud, and several other complaints, due to the publisher's shutdown of The Crew in April, which left players unable to access even the singleplayer portion of this online-only racing game. While the lawsuit (spotted by Polygon) only includes two plaintiffs, the claims are also being made on behalf of other players as well, with the plaintiffs hoping the court will approve it as a class action.
Both plaintiffs purchased The Crew late into its lifecycle, in 2018 and 2020, and picked up physical copies. This plays a significant role in the lawsuit. «Plaintiff Cassell was under the impression that by purchasing the physical Game disk,» the lawsuit reads, «he acquired the full bundle of ownership rights over the Game, and that he would be able to use the disk to play the game whenever he wanted in the future.»
Ubisoft misled the plaintiffs, the lawsuit claims, through language on the game's packaging. «Defendants also reinforced this belief by including language on the Product packing stating that the online portion of the Game could be retired, thereby representing to consumers that an offline portion of the Game existed that would be unaffected. Second, through the totality of the Product’s packaging, Defendants falsely represented that The Crew itself was encoded onto physical disks consumers could buy or the digital files consumers could pay to download.»
By not making it clear they were purchasing a digital licence, or that they could lose access to the entirety of the game, the plaintiffs' lawyers argue that Ubisoft has violated California's Unfair Competition Law and committed fraud. Here's the full list of claims:
The lawsuit highlights other instances where online games were shut down, but not before the developers deployed a patch to let players continue to access them, including Ubisoft games like Assassin's Creed 2 and 3. After the initial backlash after The Crew's shutdown was announced, Ubisoft also promised to
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