France's 'leading consumer association,' backed by Stop Killing Games, sues Ubisoft over The Crew shutdown

French consumer group UFC-Que Choisir, with support from the Stop Killing Games initiative, has filed a lawsuit against Ubisoft over the 2024 shutdown of the racing game The Crew. An announcement on the UFC-Que Choisir (Google translated) says Ubisoft's decision to close the game and revoke licenses "violated fundamental consumer rights," and that "players were never fairly informed about the potentially temporary nature of access to the game they were buying."

The Crew launched in 2014, but became unplayable in April 2024 after Ubisoft closed the servers it depended upon; adding insult to injury, it began stripping people's licenses to the game a few weeks later, presumably to prevent them from playing it on then-hypothetical fan servers. It proved to be a PR botch of truly epic proportions, to the point that Ubisoft promised to never, ever do it again—even as it doggedly defended the initial decision by reminding gamers that they don't actually own their games.

The Stop Killing Games initiative, launched by YouTuber Ross Scott, is maybe the biggest thing to come out of the whole mess. What initially looked to me like a long-shot campaign to squeeze some promissory pleasantries out of game publishers has exploded into something much larger: An EU Citizens Initiative started by STG drew 1.3 million verified signatures and is due to be debated by EU politicians in April, and in February the group announced that it's launching NGOs in Europe and the US.

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The UFC-Que Choisir lawsuit is also meaningful. Founded in 1951, the group describes itself as "France's leading consumer association," providing everything from product comparison tools and buying guides to investigative reports, legal advice, lobbying, and direct legal action like this.

The goal of the lawsuit isn't to force Ubisoft to bring back The Crew, but rather to keep this sort of thing from happening again "by obtaining a pioneering decision essential to clarifying the obligations incumbent upon videogame publishers." UFC-Que Choisir said in the lawsuit announcement that it is seeking an end to "harmful practices," a removal of clauses in terms of service agreements that enable publishers to shut down games without warning or recourse, and an acknowledgement of the harm done by these practices.

In the meantime, if you just really wanna play The Crew, you can: Modders brought it back to life in 2025. Just think of all the hassles that could've been avoided if Ubisoft had done that itself in the first place.