One of Ubisoft’s most popular games could soon be coming back to life, but not thanks to the publisher…
Games come and go. If we tend to think of them as immortal, we must get it into our heads that this is not the case. Regardless of whether the game is purchased in a physical version or not, publishers and development studios reserve the right to discontinue their support and even online services that have become ubiquitous in our daily lives as gamers. This is what happened to one of Ubisoft’s most popular games, but it will soon be brought back to life… by the gamers themselves.
Ubisoft is discontinuing one of its games, but fans have decided otherwise
Does an open-world massively multiplayer car game mean anything to you? We’re talking about The Crew, of course. And if the license is already in its third installment with “The Crew Motorfest,” hardcore fans swear by the first installment, which is more down-to-earth. Unfortunately, Ubisoft decided to shut down the game’s servers earlier this year. But that doesn’t seem to stop some fans from bringing it back to life at any cost.
In fact, an army of modders is working on the topic with the mentioned project The crew revival. “It’s still the same game everyone played before, except instead of connecting to Ubisoft’s servers, they connect to ours or to a local server for those who want to play offline.” says one of the team members in the columns ofEurogamer. And this revival is still quite advanced, as these amateur developers had already started their work when Ubisoft announced it in late 2023.
The crew was rescued by players to combat an “alarming trend”
The modder adds that publishers shutting down their games’ servers is a growing and alarming trend. He even goes so far as to describe Ubisoft’s decision as “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 it is extremely important to preserve video games before things get out of control.”he explains.
If we can understand the dissatisfaction, we must not forget that maintaining a game comes at a cost, at a cost of money and resources that are sometimes better transferred elsewhere. Even if it does hurt my heart sometimes, unfortunately. There is no lifetime guarantee for online components. Anyway, it looks like you will soon be able to play The Crew with friends again if you feel like it.