One of Ubisoft’s most popular games might be coming back to life soon, but not thanks to the publisher…
Games come and go. If we tend to believe them to be immortal, we must get it into our heads that this is not the case. Whether the game is purchased in physical version or not, publishers and development studios reserve the right to end their support and even online services, now omnipresent in our daily lives as gamers. That’s what happened with one of Ubisoft’s most popular games, but it will soon be brought back to life… by the players themselves.
Ubisoft Kills One of Its Games, But Fans Decided Otherwise
An open-world, massively multiplayer car game, does that ring a bell? We’re talking about The Crew, of course. And while the franchise is now in its third episode with The Crew Motorfest, hardcore fans swore by the more down-to-earth first episode. Unfortunately, Ubisoft decided to shut down the game’s servers earlier this year. But that doesn’t seem to have stopped some fans who are determined to bring it back to life at all costs.
An army of modders is indeed working on the subject with the project named The Crew Revival. “It’s still the same game that everyone was playing before, except instead of connecting to Ubisoft’s servers, they will be connected to ours or on a local server for those who want to play offline,” says one of the team members in the columns of Eurogamer. And this revival is still quite advanced since these amateur developers began their work as soon as Ubisoft announced at the end of 2023.
The Crew saved by players, to combat an “alarming trend”
The modder adds that publishers shutting down their games’ servers is a growing and alarming trend. He goes so far as to call Ubisoft’s decision a “completely unacceptable”. “If the trend continues, within a decade we will have tons of unplayable and dead video games that people once loved and played, which is why preserving video games is extremely important, before things get out of hand”he declares.
If we can understand the discontent, we must not forget that keeping a game alive has a cost, a cost in money and resources that is sometimes preferable to transfer elsewhere. Even if, unfortunately, it sometimes hurts my heart. Online components are not guaranteed for life. Either way, it looks like you’ll soon be able to play The Crew again with friends if you feel like it.
