The Crew’s servers, scheduled for Sunday March 31, represents a “gray area” in videogame consumer law that he would like to challenge.
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I think the argument to make is that The Crew was sold under a perpetual license, not a subscription, so we were being sold a good, not a service
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the seller rendered the game unusable and deprived it of all value after the point of sale.Goddam right, that’s not a grey area IMO, that shit ought to be illegal. Maybe there should be a term, like let’s say 90 years maybe?
I just expect a popup in the game which says something like “Could not connect to server, some multiplayer features will be unavailable. Continue offline?”
My personal favorite is the “companies are obligated to support it forever, or open source the server software hosted by a third party, hosting paid for up front for at least a year.”
They get to keep my money forever don’t they?
While I love the spirit of this idea, it gets complicated fast. Worlds adrift is a great example. The game’s server was created using some closed source libraries with a paid license. So when the owning company (Bossa Studios?) went under, they were unable to open source it.
A law like this would effectively kill all licensed software that isn’t a full product. I do agree though; we need a solution
IIRC Bossa tried to open source it but they used a license for Spatial OS, which provided the backbone of their game. They were unable to make a stable game without it and opted to not open source it. But they were also in an early access that would probably provide an exception for a game closing down.
Bossa did leave the island creator active and has spun up Lost Skies on the same engine, which wouldn’t be possible if they open sourced WA.
Ultimately the issue should be GaaS and MMOs are offerings service while other games are goods which have an artificial expiry date. This is a good test of software judication.
A law like this would effectively kill all licensed software that isn’t a full product
What I’m hearing is: this law needs to be a constitutional amendment.
This is all well and good, but what of all those MMORPGs that got shut down?
The Crew is a bizarre game to do this kinda treatment for, since the sequel is very similar to the first, less terrible crime syndicate story, more planes and other nonsense. It’s also pretty middling, car handling is really weird, and the lack of rear view mirrors looks pretty weird nowadays.
I’m guessing it’s car licensing that’s causing the shutdown. It’s what happened to Forza Horizon 1 and 2. If that is the case, this game isn’t going to get open sourced ever. Also: why didn’t this guy go after Microsoft to make them playable again?
It’s because MMOs were sold as subscriptions (most of the time) so they’re legally covered in being allowed to end their service. The crew however was sold as a full game with no subscription. They didn’t make it clear that the game could cease to exist even though you paid for it outright.
Sadly, I feel like a lawsuit line this won’t have the benefit we’re all hoping for (open sourcing on closure of services) but will instead just make all subsequent games free-to-play, which would make them more exempt to the same scrutiny. And we’re already seemingly heading that way too, warts and all.
For the last few years, most MMOs have been, or become, Free to Play, with (a lot of) microtransactions. The only subscription MMOs I can think of off the top of my head are FFXIV, WoW and Eve. Then you have the buy to play, with no sub (or optional sub, but not required to play), games like New World and Elder Scrolls Online. Making the vast majority F2P.
All of those games can become EOL and be removed from sale for any number of reasons, and they’ll have the same terms in the EULA that the crew would have. There is literally nothing different legally between The Crew and something like Elyon. Both were paid for up front, no subscription with some optional microtransactions.
Since legallly there is nothing different between all these live service games, it makes this youtubers campaign all the more odd. Car Licensing is notoriously well enforced, so why is this guy, a Half Life youtuber of all things, thinking he can go after Ubisoft on this when it’s pretty obvious that it’s the license agreements that are the likely cause of the shutdown.
For the future maybe. For games that were sold one day, they would have to either keep supporting it, or release server software.
It is up to the gamers to keep supporting this practice in the future.
I can still play Unreal Tournament '99 and 2004 even though the servers are offline. I can even still play it online with the server ip and even use the server browser with fan mods.
You can’t say the same for the crew when it goes offline.
The reason you can still play UT99 and 2004 is because those games were never hosted by epic on a central server. The game shipped with the server hosting tools, and it was designed to allow you to host your own server (if your connection was fast enough) or to rent your own server from a third party.
They’re also very different types of games from the current crop of live service games that this youtuber is targeting.
I got the game for free, and I’ve been playing it since every three months for a few days, just driving around. I bought the sequel, but it sucked.
I never used the multiplayer component, I treated it like a single player game. And now it’s going to vanish? This whole world? They can’t be serious. This isn’t a multiplayer only title, it’s single player with an optional mp stacked upon it. At least put an offline patch out… Assholes!
But that’s the crux with only buying licenses. Or games with always online requirements. I hope fans find a way to crack the online code!!
