“Imagine you buy a pinball machine, and years later, you enter your den to go play it, only to discover that all the paddles are missing, the pinball and bumpers are gone, and the monitor that proudly displayed your unassailable high score is removed”. As reported by Polygon, that’s an argument put forth by a new lawsuit against Ubisoft, filed by two Californian players of The Crew. They’re suing the company in a proposed class action lawsuit over shutting down the racing game’s servers, rendering it unplayable.
Ubisoft pulled the ol’ snippy Johnson on The Crew’s server wires back in March, effectively killing the online-only game. The following month, it started disappearing from owner’s Ubisoft Connect libraries. In response, YouTuber Ross Scott started a Stop Killing Games initiative, petitioning France’s Directorate General For Competition, Consumer Affairs And Fraud Protection (DGCCRF) to investigate.
I still fondly remember how Spellbreak just dropped the tools to run dedicated servers when they shut down. I don’t think forcing companies to run servers forever is tenable, and slapping an expiration date on the games is less helpful than it seems. Would be nice to enforce distributing those tools on shutdown, but that seems like a difficult fight considering what right to repair looks like.