By Leo Marchandon
March 31 (Reuters) – France’s leading consumer association, UFC-Que Choisir, said on Tuesday it had filed a lawsuit against Ubisoft over the shutdown of online racing game “The Crew”.
The company delisted the title from digital marketplaces in December 2023 and shut down its servers on March 31, 2024, rendering the game permanently unplayable for all who had bought it.
The case could have sweeping implications for millions of players worldwide: can a video game company simply “erase” a product consumers paid for by shutting down its servers?
Ubisoft did not reply to a Reuters request for comment.
“The Crew”, launched in 2014, was a multiplayer game allowing players to race across a scaled-down representation of the U.S. The game required an upfront purchase and offered in-game transactions for additional content.
In April 2024, Ubisoft began revoking licenses from customers without issuing refunds, sparking a backlash over the precedent such actions could set.
The company has said customers only bought a limited access to the game, not full ownership.
UFC-Que Choisir alleges that Ubisoft misled consumers about the permanence of their purchase and imposed abusive contractual clauses stripping players of ownership rights.
The lawsuit is backed by European consumer movement “Stop Killing Games” (SKG), which was launched in response to “The Crew” controversy.
A citizens’ initiative was launched in 2024 and presented to the European Commission last month with more than 1.3 million signatures. That surpassed the threshold mandating a review by the EU executive, which is expected to present its findings by the end of July.
Moritz Katzner, SKG’s general director, told Reuters the EU Parliament was expected to hold a hearing on the matter on April 16. He said SKG was planning to demonstrate broad parliamentary support “in order to encourage the industry to engage with us on a constructive solution.”
(Reporting by Leo Marchandon in Gdansk, editing by Milla Nissi-Prussak and Matt Scuffham)
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