Every time something like this happens I'm reminded of the saying "If buying isn't owning then piracy isn't stealing"

It should be illegal for developers to suddenly revoke access and render a purchase useless. It's a grim future for the industry if this trend continues.

Listening to people defend a company stealing $60 is wild.

As a dev, there is no reason why a game should be always online if it's a single player. It's essentially making people pay for a live service that they aren't interested in. And the worst part is that their rationale is that they're trying to keep piracy in check, which is absolute bs. If someone wants to pirate a game, they will figure a way to do it. As an indie dev I believe that if a consumer wants to support you, even if they pirate it first, they will do so at some point.

As an experienced developer, I know for a fact they have the software for dedicated servers sitting on a host somewhere (since that's basically what cloud-based servers run off of), all they have to do is give it away freely so people can host their own servers...but nope...this is just pure greed because server costs cut into profit. I've worked on games that cost $60 to buy and $60mil to develop, and they became unplayable only 2 years later. Don't be fooled gamers, they have the tools to release to the public to allow online-only games to be run offline or at least hosted locally, they're just being greedy and trying to cut corners. Not allowing people to play something they spent $60+ on should be considered fraud no matter how long after it's launch.

Hot take: If you buy a physical game, you should be able to play it forever.

The fact that my PHYSICAL copy of this game is going to be completely useless after this month is crazy to me.

this is so fucked up in so many levels. thank you for speaking up, Muta. Gaming just simply will never be the same

I've been saying it for years. It needs to be fully illegal to use language like "purchase" or "buy" when you're paying for a temporary, revokable license to download and play something. Either game stores need to make it abundantly clear that what you're buying isn't the game, or they need to make it clear that you're spending $60 to lease it.

This is why people like Louis Rossmann are right. We don't own shit anymore, we just rent it for however long it exists. The average consumer isn't interested in repairing their devices, or preserving their video games and movies, but there are more and more people every day who think this practice is inherently anti-consumer and are coming around to our side. What we need is a lawsuit against a large company to create precedent for legislation to occur where when an online-only game is shut down, either an offline mode is released as a final patch, or server tools are released that will allow the end user to foot that bill themselves. You cannot tell me this cannot happen. Private servers for games like Need for Speed World exist, for fucks sake.

Gamers are the only consumers that can get shafted consistently and rather than come together, fight amongst each other for the right to dislike a game or practice a game company does

I agree completely. I hate 'digital only' anything. It's really only renting, not owning if you can't have it physically, and play it off line.

“You will own nothing and you will be happy” This type of stuff has me cherishing a lot of the physical media from my childhood. Like I can’t imagine all the amazing games I grew up playing since the PS2 being completely wiped out and unplayable. Straight up robbery from these companies.

There should be a way to legally declare this practice as abandonware. And then anyone can rip apart the code and rebuild it, do offline or whatever, without fear of legal repercussions.

The only reason they do this is so you're forced to move on and buy the new stuff. It should be criminal (reminds me of when Apple pushes updates to older devices and they take a crap soon after)

And this is why piracy will never cease to exist. As Lord Gaben said: "it's not an issue of price, it's an issue of service" and said service has become worse and worse over time. Piracy is the only legit way to _actually_ own a lot software/games these days. Though I will say GOG with their DRM-free stuff is a good step in the right direction.

This is why piracy is needed and should never go away, because they keep preserving our games. What these companies are doing should be illegal, why aren't there rules for this. If I buy a game, I should be able to play it whenever I feel like it.

IMO it should be a legal requirement to provide an offline-mode patch, release the server software so people can run their own servers, or release the source files so the community can make the necessary changes to keep the game playable.

Would love to see a video about what can be done to fight against this sort of practice. Since I believe that most people (including myself) are illiterate when it comes to legal stuff. It's insane that this kind of thing keeps happening. And I'm sure a lot of people would like to put a stop to it, but have no idea how. Voting with your wallet doesn't feel enough anymore..

So I developed and self-published a game on the PlayStation Vita called Among The Stars. Beyond my control, the game was removed from the store and pulled from all download lists. I'll tell you right now that only 27 people purchased it. Did anyone know it exists? What if you want to play it now? (Side note: I was contacted by a publisher after its delisting to get it published again, and have a PS4 port, and I still have the files on my computer.)

Scott Ross from Accursed Farms was talking Games as a service is a scam years ago, and The Crew was one of his examples. He was looking into the legality of it, but hit a dead end back then. If anybody can pick up where he failed, I am certain he would be thrilled to help.

When things like these happen, piracy literally becomes the only option and the only way to preserve a game.

Thank you for covering this Muta! I bought this game at launch on the PS4 and really like this project's plot and open-world activites compared to many racing games coming out nowadays. I don't understand why wouldn't they add the offline mode in the first place. This actually makes me fear certain Need for Speed Titles like NFS Rivals and NFS 2015 since those games are also online only, it's only a matter of time for EA to pull the plug on those games, people can't play them no more, and players wasted money on those purchases.

The Crew is such a banger. Probably the last good racing title with a good story and cutscenes. How that needs to be online is beyond me. I have my physical copy. I played this game so much on XB1. And I'm going to play it right now.

All abandonware should be required to be open sourced

John Romero, the creator of Doom, along with his co-creator John Carmack, said in an interview last week that it's a shame games are not freely put out as shareware. Doom was intentionally made shareware because Romero saw potential in what modders can do. I think game companies should release their games as shareware the instant they announce shutting down servers or discontinuing sales of said game.

Got into the conversation with my brother where I said it was BS that it will be unplayable and he told me “just play the crew 2” that’s really not the point. Thanks for talking about this

If an online only game is discontinued, they should be legally forced to release server packs

I've been angry at the entire "Games As A Service" model for a while now. EA in particular has also been pretty awful with this. I'm going to continue to call every single live service game "planned obsolescence games" and spread that anger for this model of *destroying games that people purchased after the fact.* Because that's what this is. It's planned obsolescence to intentionally design something that will stop functioning either after a certain amount of time, or after the person who sold it decides to remotely break it. Also, Ross Scott has a fantastic video on the subject and I highly recommend watching Accursed Farms' "Games as a service is fraud" video.

Until a legitmate lawsuit is brought to their doorstep and a precedent is made companies will continue these anti-consumer practices.

We need someone like rossman but in gaming, someone in America who brave enough to mention this in hearing even sue the gaming company for this.

Modding community for games like New Vegas makes me come back to it time and time again, showing the beauty of offline games.

Serious question: can we as gamers bring a class action to these big publishers? This feels almost the same as the right to repair arguments

Ubisoft being anti-consumer. I'm shocked and amazed.

3:32 you killed me with this insult against those people 💀never expected an insult said this way lmao

This is so scary, video games have taught me things about myself a 12-17 year old would never try and understand at the time, to think it’s possible it may just exist in our memories one day

I did a research paper on DRM back in my senior year of high school. The fact that software companies are allowed to sell products and decide whenever they want to completely deny you access to all of its content is sickening. It’s a total disrespect and violation to basic consumer laws but is viewed differently in the eyes of the court system simply because the products being sold are “digital” and are labeled as a “service”. Discs and keys are essentially sold to customers merely as access points for these services; however, the content within the service is owned and managed by the respective software company.

Thanks for talking about this, Muta. What's sad to me personally is how people just brush it off with "just play the new game". People just don't see any differences between car games and assume they're all the same. The first Crew game was a lot more similar to something like Need for Speed with police and illegal street racing. The vibe and content is just different and it's sad we will lose it forever next year.

Finding your channel has been a highlight. I enjoy your energy. Have a great holiday.

So fun story: I just recently replayed Splinter Cell: Conviction. I looked through the Steam reviews out of curiosity. Keep in mind, this is a game that is still available to purchase. And the tags still label the game as having multiplayer and co-op. On top of a LOT of people complaining about how incompatible the game is on modern systems, (can confirm, it took a LOT of hoop-jumping for me to get it to work) people were also talking about the co-op being disabled. BOTH ONLINE AND LAN. My guess is that the LAN mode required an initial server tag for some ungodly reason. Instead of patching the game to remove that server requirement, Ubisoft decided it would be easier to mothball the servers and call it a day. Now if you wanna play the multiplayer component, you have to do port-forwarding magic to do it. I dunno if there will ever be a way to make this kind of practice illegal. But one thing's for certain, it's a practice that should be called out and shamed.

Ross Scott has been beating the drum about this type of nonsense for at least 8 years now. He even did a video on The Crew 5 years ago, where he mentioned that this game would eventually die, because it was connected to a central server. 4 years ago, he put out a video detailing why the whole "games as a service" practice is essentially fraud. All the while, people were arguing against him. Nowadays, people are waking up to how wrong and stupid this all is, but many more are still too used to this as "normal". We need a whole lot more well known gamers on KZfaq to bring awareness to what's going on with the games industry. It can't just be one lone voice out in the wilderness. So I'm glad you're at least doing your best to get the word out.

I became acutely aware of this danger back in 1999-2001. A friend got me into a pair of online games, and although I wasn't that into either of them, I was quite shocked when one of them (the one I preferred) got permanently shut down after not even TWO YEARS. Granted it was free to play (and I don't _think_ it had any microtransactions), but still. Good lesson to learn that early. Since then I have avoided online-only games like the plague, even if they are free, because I don't want to get attached. The second even more egregious issue though, is when OFFLINE games are delisted from digital storefronts (a lesson I learned multiple times over in the PS3 era), and even worse, when digital purchases can no longer be redownload (a lesson many people learned during the Wii U and 3DS era, as well as from Sony's recent removal of thousands of movies). For these reasons, I always strongly discourage anyone from ever buying digital content, unless they are the type of person who is extremely fickle and quickly moves on to other things, never to revisit it and therefore treats it like a rental. But even then, I strongly discourage them from paying FULL purchase price.

This stuff is terrifying and goes farther back then a lot of people realize. We've been seeing the live service failures for a minute now(Babylon's Fall Anyone?) but even some older offline games are getting increasingly hard to play on genuine non jail broken hardware. There are quite a few examples of entire games and/or DLC being removed for various reasons(for example Soulcalibur II HD or Soulcal IV DLC. Did anyone know No More Heroes Paradise was a thing? an HD port of the wii version that's now harder to find due to the download version being delisted but at least it got physical releases). There is also the slightly growing issues of games getting replaced with new versions like counter strike 2 or Overwatch 2 or "remakes" that change/remove content from orignal releases. We've seen a good handful of strange changes that probably don't matter but still change the original ranging from stuff like Lolipop Chainsaw getting tweaked and Skullgirls editing digital artbooks + funding goals + being unable to play the original game digitally purchased on older consoles to more minor stuff like the Borderlands 1 remaster not having Physx or the Witcher 3 refresh removing SLI support. It's not just games being changed but also the very tech that helps it run. Anyone remember Nvidia 3D vision? obv obsolete but kinda strange a 3090 or 4090 cant even attempt it due to support being removed from the driver.

I've only just learned about this just now when I noticed the game greyed out in my library. You are 100% right.What Ubisoft have done here is SIMPLY UNACCEPTABLE, and basically theft.

Devs should give players the ability to self host if they choose to not pay/host their games own servers, dedicated servers should be essential

The irony is that they talked about how much The Crew means to them and then proceed to do fuck all to preserve it.

its crazy how common it is for companies to be able to revoke your game license yet people either don't care or really think the internet is always going to be 100% at all times. I remember complaining to my ISP because my internet was down for weeks and when it was up was severely lagging to the point where even if I was able to hold a steady connection I couldn't play most of my games "offline" because it required a steady online connection which didn't make any sense and reminded me of the past when PC games used to be playable on CD's and I didn't have internet.

I completely agree, the whole online only stuff is not only a crap practice but also it literally inspires me to hack to get the game and all its files.

I KNEW HE WAS GOING TO TALK ABOUT THE CREW 2, I KNEW IT!! THANK YOU MUTA. This ABSOLUTELY needs to be addressed so these people can stop paying for this only online games!!

I remember a couple years ago when my brother and I went to Gamestop to trade in a bunch of old Wii shovelware for a couple new games. He ended up picking Battleborn, only to discover the servers had been shut down months, if not years ago. I still haven't forgiven that Gamestop location for selling us a game that was literally unplayable

This also almost happened to Anno 2070 but I think too many people complained and now you are still able to use the online features. You were always able to play Anno 2070 offline, but they still managed to keep the online part working, so it should be possible for The Crew too

Steam should have a separate category "always online singleplayer" so you know what you're going into when buying the game. It's not just about when games are being shut down but you will also know if you can take the game on the go without connection

If we're reaching the point where we no longer own the things we pay for. Then why should we pay for them in first place?

This game taught me a lot on corpo-speak & false promises, I was extremely hyped for the crew back when it was originally announced and released. The thought of an MMO open world racing game akin to Drift City was something I really wanted, and who knows, maybe I did have some unrealistic expectations. But the game came out with online only component tied to it, only to discover that its not an MMO and only 7 other players can show up next to you at any given moment. And guess what, for the first 3 months that online component didn't even work and you could not matchmake for races. And DESPITE all that, I still think it was an excellent game to just drop in and cruise around the USA with a lot of cool ideas and car modding. I no longer preorder games and very cautions to anything that is being hyped by major devs, and I owe my thanks to the Crew for that.

I still play the original crew as no other racer is truly like it and I don’t want Ubi to get away with this If the offline only mode really is just a small patch away from being a reality, this game is not even a decade old and requires no actual players to function like a real mmo, killing it off completely should not just be accepted. Glad to see you passionate about covering this

It's times like this where I'm almost glad I dont invest a whole lot in modern gaming. I have other hobbies that take up far more of my time and finances, but when it comes to video games, I like to play more of the older stuff I grew up with and almost always buy physical content if possible.

A Dev on Twitter said that companies often release a game that requires a DAY ONE PATCH on purpose. So even people that buy physical copies of a game are boned. Because they still depend on a digital patch to play a game.

ill never forget the disappointment when i told my friends about game ownership and they said that it just doesn't matter😞😞

Back in the 360 says they would just patch the game to grey out the "online" section or even if you clicked on it. It wouldn't connect to the servers. Everything else remained unaffected.

Agree with everything you said. It’s not just this. This is only the start and they will go much further to remove paid for content you “own” bc they have bs legal stuff saying you don’t own it and can’t fight it.

This is why just owning physical games isn't preservation anymore. Arbitrary online servers are an inevitable and unnecessary disaster.

Ross Scott of Accursed Farms predicted that this game had a life span, based on other Ubisoft titles being delisted in the past, of about 8 years. He was off by 2 years, but that doesn't make the anger of seeing this game being taken behind the shed any less bitter. All that work in designing systems and creating art assets, gone with a push of a button.

We all need to file a class action. It only starts with one person and they will comply.

A few months ago we went without wireless for two weeks, due to a service outage in the area. So you can’t always just expect you will always have the internet.

And even more ironic is that if you patch it with an offline patch on a game that you yourself bought, it would be piracy and a break of contract/tos and they could go after you legally. Likely they would dmca any offline patch to make sure the game gets buried deep.

there should be laws against this kind of stuff, example: if any company that have online only entertainment and shut it down years later, that company is forced by law to refund 100% of everyone's money

100% agree to you muta, even back then i had to google if some games like new generation cod have bot support or not before i buy

The same thing is going to happen to the division 1 and later with the division 2 😢 I could cry thinking about it, to one day not having the opportunity to revisit these games when they shut them off, they will be gone forever 💔

"Online only" was the worst thing to happen to games.

The crew made my entire childhood. Honestly really sad to see it go

A thing they could do is just use a proper load balanced server hosting environment with a basic entrypoint that wakes up different game servers, then they can just share the servers for all games just fine, no need for separate servers or separate costs for games played by only a few hundred people

This has already happend to some games I used to play, Asphalt Xtreme and Forza Street. They both shut down on very short notice.

My favourite game developer is Cyan, the guys who made Myst. Not just because I enjoy their games, but because of their behaviour. After Uru, Myst's spin-off MMO, failed to turn a profit, and got batted around from publisher to publisher, Cyan didn't just let it die. They knew a lot of Myst fans still played it and treated it as a social hub. They reacquired the full rights to the game - which must have been insanely expensive - and then they released the source code, for free, for both the client and server, and then they _also_ hosted an official server, funded entirely by fan donations. That official server occasionally receives updates, as Cyan add cherry-picked community-made content. This is how you keep an unprofitable but beloved game alive for its fans. It doesn't have to be expensive. Heck, the fans are happy to cover the costs themselves. It just takes a small initial time investment and minimal effort to process donations and keep the server running. And even if a publisher didn't do that, releasing the source code costs basically nothing, and enables fans to host their own unofficial servers. But publishers are usually allergic to letting anyone else anywhere near their assets, even if they're never going to use them again. They don't want us playing old games. They prefer for old games to die, so that we have no choice but to buy their new games. Except for one thing: I help to crowdfund every single new Cyan game. And I haven't bought a single Ubisoft game since 2012.

Piracy is becoming more and more justified!

this is basically the meme where credit card declines and the vendor takes away your service, like where mr crabs presses a button and the fish customer gets the tv pulled from his eyes

Ross from Accursed Farms is currently planning to take legal action against the practice of destroyng games like that. You should really give a shoutout to him and draw attention to his cause because it could make some HUGE legal waves in the gaming industry so this practice can finally DIE.

Ubisoft cries and cries about pirates while being one of the largest reasons they exist

this is so true. I have just finished playing tomb raider 2013, which is a decade old by now and I had a blast, being able to revisit these games is what makes pc gaming interessting in the first place instead of being vendor locked like on consoles. The online only landscape truly sucks for everything that is more than pure multiplayer

I've been saying this same thing for the last couple years, especially when it comes to live service games. The push towards digital games gets all sorts of push back with people saying "you don't own your games!" "The publisher is going to steal your games one day!' Then as soon as they're done yelling about how digital games are theft, they go back to playing their physical copy of Destiny 2. I never hear anyone say that shit about online games. People just keep throwing their money into these live service games. There are people who spent a fortune in Avengers, Knockout City, and (soon to be) Suicide Squad only to have the game taken from them. All that time, gone, all that money, gone. People have to vote with their wallets. Don't even buy games like that in the first place, let alone spend money on microtransactions. If people stop buying a type of game, the industry will change, but you have to make it change.

Data preservation feels like a neverending battle sometimes. We need to return to the LAN days. Stuff like Phantasy Star Online for Dreamcast/GameCube (later) come to mind immediately as the kind of "MMO" we need to be creating still (vs a real *necessary* online experience a la World of Warcraft or the like - and even then there will be private servers that continue the experience).

The official reddit page for the crew now has a petition pinned for ubisoft to make an offline patch. Its absurd to think that we are basically at the mercy of developers to be able to play a game we paid money for. Hopefully something will change in the future.

I appreciate the passion that Muta has when it comes to this topic. How about this though? If the game companies do not add an offline patch to a game they are planning to shut down, how about giving us gamers our goddamn money back. Damn scummy game companies and their exit scamming practices.Great video as always Muta. Keep up the fight, my friend.

So funny that you mention black ops and steam decks. So if I want to play solo Zombies on my deck and I think even on PC, you have to be on the internet... even for the base maps...

aparently amazon is doing something similar. if you buy a movie on amazon prime and later that movie is taken off their server, you lose the movie AND dont get a refund, not sure what would happen if the movie suddenly comes back, but im sure amazon is gonna act like you need to pay for it again

Things like this evil is so dishonorable. I do not know how they are not being sued or held legally accountable in prison for literally scamming, false advertising, and stealing from innocent people.

we always love to see game services pulling our property from their services.

I can understand some games being digital-only. It's an easier and cheaper way for indie games with smaller budgets to find success. Sometimes, those indie games do well enough that they'll get a physical release and that's awesome. It's when something is online-only that I start to get sceptical as maybe 90% of the time a game is online-only because it wants to push microtransactions, a subscription model, or both.

I I think that developers should release the source code for games they no longer plan to support. That way a community could continue to improve and host the game for people who still wanto play it.

Dude I am still playing games from the 80s. Thank you GOG for making this possible.

I'd definitely sign a petition or something for there to be a legal requirement for an offline mode to avoid situations like this!

The all digital future of games is exactly what will stop me from buying the new games! My backlog is extensive, might just have to start playing those games on my shelf instead of buying new ones.

So many hours logged into this game. So many memories.

Waiting to see if Muta covers something that is in Sony's "Software Usage Terms" from the UK. (saw one KZfaqr mention it today and wanted to fact check it myself since no source was posted) Section 7 talks about resale and how "only authorized companies" can resell PHYSICAL games. Cause that is such a great precedence to come in the future. /s Word for word: 7.1. You must not resell either disc-based games or digital games, unless expressly authorised by us and, if the publisher is another company, additionally by the publisher.

Unpopular opinion: Video games should be respected and preserved just like we respect and preserve any other arts; literary art, paintings, films, statues and so on.

I feel the same about software in general. It seems like all new apps are just web apps or based in the cloud. I hate the direction the world is going.

This is the problem with having everything digital as well. I really miss having physicals copies of games. Legit makes me feel like people steal my money. All games we play and own right now on steam could theoretically all do the same thing and we would be out thousands of dollars. Maybe a way around this (which we KNOW will not happen) is making it so you get a huge discount on the next game if the previous one shuts down, like $60 off the next installment since they won't even have the previous game available to even play.

You literally cannot access your purchased digital games without an internet connection. Truly bringing the "you'll own nothing" to fruition

Gamers will always be the biggest threat to gaming itself, so many gamers allow so much bullshit and scummy business practices it’s absurd.

I'm still sad I can't play active worlds europe anymore. They've shutdown their servers years ago and only kept the main AW servers up. So much memories that can't be relived.

I remember when the gamespy thing happened. Many devs, including those with 'recent' games just couldn't be bothered to implement offline patches. Games as a service needs to stop. They're a product that is purchased, companies need to be held accountable.