Full title: Ubisoft says you "cannot complain" it shut down The Crew because you never actually owned it, and you weren't "deceived" by the lack of an offline version "to access a decade-old, discontinued video game"

Ubisoft's lawyers have responded to a class action lawsuit over the shutdown of The Crew, arguing that it was always clear that you didn't own the game and calling for a dismissal of the case outright.

The class action was filed in November 2024, and Ubisoft's response came in February 2025, though it's only come to the public's attention now courtesy of Polygon. The full response from Ubisoft attorney Steven A. Marenberg picks apart the claims of plaintiffs Matthew Cassell and Alan Liu piece by piece, but the most common refrain is that The Crew's box made clear both that the game required an internet connection and that Ubisoft retained the right to revoke access "to one or more specific online features" with a 30-day notice at its own discretion.

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[–] lolcatnip@reddthat.com 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I think Ubisoft is clearly in the wrong, but you're not making a good case. You're conflating very different meanings of the word "own".

In terms of legal ownership, only the copyright holder owns the intellectual property, including the right to distribute and license it. When a consumer "buys" a piece of media, they're really just buying a perpetual license for their personal use of it. With physical media, the license is typically tied to whatever physical object (disc, book, ROM, etc.) is used to deliver the content, and you can transfer your license by transferring the physical media, but the license is still the important part that separates legal use from piracy.

When you pirate something, you own the means to access it without the legal right to do so. So, in the case at hand, players still "own" the game in the same sense they would if they had pirated it. Ubisoft hasn't revoked anyone's physical access to the bits that comprise the game; what they've done is made that kind of access useless because the game relies on a service that Ubisoft used to operate.

The real issue here is that Ubisoft didn't make it clear what they were selling, and they may even have deliberately misrepresented it. Consumers were either not aware that playing the game required Ubisoft to operate servers for it, or they were misled regarding how long Ubisoft would operate the servers.

Ultimately I think what consumers are looking for is less like ownership and more like a warranty, i.e. a promise that what they buy will continue to work for some period of time after they've bought it, and an obligation from the manufacturer to provide whatever services are necessary to keep that promise. Game publishers generally don't offer any kind of warranty, and consumers don't demand warranties, but consumers also tend to expect punishers to act as if their products come with a warranty. Publishers, of course, don't want to draw attention to their lack of warranty, and will sometimes actively exploit that false perception that their products come with a perpetual warranty.

I think what's really needed is a very clear indication, at the point of purchase, of whether a game requires ongoing support from the publisher to be playable, along with a legally binding statement of how long they'll provide support. And there should be a default warranty if none is clearly specified, like say 10 years from the point of purchase.

[–] p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I'm not trying to frame this in the context of the lawsuit, even though that's the point of the original article. The Crew's nonfunctionality is just a consequence of our lack of ownership.

Perhaps this article would explain things better than I could.

Ultimately I think what consumers are looking for is less like ownership and more like a warranty

No. That's not true. Otherwise people wouldn't be reciting this phrase over and over again.

Consumers want to fucking own shit again! Renting everything is the entire fucking problem.

[–] lolcatnip@reddthat.com 1 points 5 days ago

My point is they never have and never will.