Full title: Ubisoft says you “cannot complain” it shut down The Crew because you never actually owned it, and you weren’t “deceived” by the lack of an offline version “to access a decade-old, discontinued video game”
Ubisoft’s lawyers have responded to a class action lawsuit over the shutdown of The Crew, arguing that it was always clear that you didn’t own the game and calling for a dismissal of the case outright.
The class action was filed in November 2024, and Ubisoft’s response came in February 2025, though it’s only come to the public’s attention now courtesy of Polygon. The full response from Ubisoft attorney Steven A. Marenberg picks apart the claims of plaintiffs Matthew Cassell and Alan Liu piece by piece, but the most common refrain is that The Crew’s box made clear both that the game required an internet connection and that Ubisoft retained the right to revoke access “to one or more specific online features” with a 30-day notice at its own discretion.
If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing.
I gotta thank Ubisoft for saving me money by consistently saying dumbass shit so I don’t buy their crappy games. The one Elon tweet was still pretty funny though I won’t lie.
Ubisoft cannot complain when gamers “pirate” their games then.
If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t theft and all that.
Goddammit… get the quote right:
If buying ain’t owning, piracy ain’t stealing.
Whose exact quote do you think you’re quoting? Every time i hear this phrase it’s always said the way OP said it, never the way you said it. Also please try to talk to people in a less pissy way
Piracy was never stealing, in so far as legality is concerned in the USA, at least.
Stealing requires the owner of the stolen thing to be deprived access of that thing. If someone steals your car, you cannot access it anymore, since it was removed from you by the thief.
Piracy copies your car, meaning you still can access your car but someone else can drive a copy of your car. The first example is a major inconvenience to you, the second example has absolutely no negative effect on you.
It is why instances of piracy that make it to a court of law are tried as Copyright Infringement cases, and not theft or piracy cases. When your ISP spies on you and sends you a letter after you pirate something in an insecure manner, you get sent a Notice of Copyright Infringement, not a Notice of Theft.
In fact, I downloaded a Rimac Nevera just yesterday.
For Cyberpunk 2077, but still. Would, could, did.
The way of the future…VCRs went away. DVDRs went away, replaced with DVRs and membership streaming, where you can “buy” a movie on Amazon Prime, but if they lose the rights to the movie, so do you - oh well. Your Tesla will brick, if Elon gets mad at you, and your video games will stop working if “the man” unplugs the server. Oh, and dont get caught pulling out your old dusty VCR to record the Super Bowl to watch later…thats a copyright violation. The oligarchs want to make sure the plebes eventually own nothing. If the masters can take it all away, the peasants will do what they’re told, be quiet about it, and smile when in sight of the masters.
And people will still defend this company
They could always release the source code.
Deny. Defend. Depose.
I think there is an implication that if you buy a game which is online by nature (e.g. an MMO) that the servers can and will shut down eventually. My cupboard is filled with defunct MMOs. And people do not “own” any commercial software per se, they run it under licence.
So I don’t see that Ubisoft has any legal obligation here. But as a good will gesture they really should put the server code in escrow, or open source chunks of it so that games can continue to enjoy life after the company itself has no economic incentive to continue running it.
If you never actually own a Ubisoft game that logically pirating them isn’t theft right? Right?
It’s a nice sentiment but seriously - the whole “if buying isn’t owning then pirating isn’t stealing” thing is both overused and has always annoyed me. How are the two related? You can still be stealing regardless of if you have an option to buy or not. You could still steal an item that isn’t for sale.
What we really should be focusing on is whether pirating in and of itself is stealing, and whether it should be a crime. This overused phrase is distracting from the issue at hand, imo.
How are the two related?
A user obtains the game through legitimate means by “buying” the game. However, they do not own the game, and are in fact, just renting something. This is despite decades and decades of game buying, especially pre-Internet, equating to owning the game and being able to play the game forever, even 100 years from now.
By pirating the game, a user has clawed back the implied social construct that existed for decades past: Acquiring a game through piracy means that you own the game. You have it in a static form that cannot be taken away from you. There’s still the case of server shutdowns, like this legal case is arguing. But, unlike the “buyer”, the game cannot suddenly disappear from a game’s store or be forcefully uninstalled from your PC. You own it. You have the files. They cannot take that away from you.
The phrase essentially means: You have removed my means of owning software, therefore piracy is the only choice I have to own this game. It’s not stealing because it’s the only way to hold on to it forever. You know, because that’s what fucking “buying” was supposed to mean.
I think Ubisoft is clearly in the wrong, but you’re not making a good case. You’re conflating very different meanings of the word “own”.
In terms of legal ownership, only the copyright holder owns the intellectual property, including the right to distribute and license it. When a consumer “buys” a piece of media, they’re really just buying a perpetual license for their personal use of it. With physical media, the license is typically tied to whatever physical object (disc, book, ROM, etc.) is used to deliver the content, and you can transfer your license by transferring the physical media, but the license is still the important part that separates legal use from piracy.
When you pirate something, you own the means to access it without the legal right to do so. So, in the case at hand, players still “own” the game in the same sense they would if they had pirated it. Ubisoft hasn’t revoked anyone’s physical access to the bits that comprise the game; what they’ve done is made that kind of access useless because the game relies on a service that Ubisoft used to operate.
The real issue here is that Ubisoft didn’t make it clear what they were selling, and they may even have deliberately misrepresented it. Consumers were either not aware that playing the game required Ubisoft to operate servers for it, or they were misled regarding how long Ubisoft would operate the servers.
Ultimately I think what consumers are looking for is less like ownership and more like a warranty, i.e. a promise that what they buy will continue to work for some period of time after they’ve bought it, and an obligation from the manufacturer to provide whatever services are necessary to keep that promise. Game publishers generally don’t offer any kind of warranty, and consumers don’t demand warranties, but consumers also tend to expect punishers to act as if their products come with a warranty. Publishers, of course, don’t want to draw attention to their lack of warranty, and will sometimes actively exploit that false perception that their products come with a perpetual warranty.
I think what’s really needed is a very clear indication, at the point of purchase, of whether a game requires ongoing support from the publisher to be playable, along with a legally binding statement of how long they’ll provide support. And there should be a default warranty if none is clearly specified, like say 10 years from the point of purchase.
I’m not trying to frame this in the context of the lawsuit, even though that’s the point of the original article. The Crew’s nonfunctionality is just a consequence of our lack of ownership.
Perhaps this article would explain things better than I could.
Ultimately I think what consumers are looking for is less like ownership and more like a warranty
No. That’s not true. Otherwise people wouldn’t be reciting this phrase over and over again.
Consumers want to fucking own shit again! Renting everything is the entire fucking problem.
My point is they never have and never will.
This is why I will always have some nostalgia for physical media. I still got CDs I bought in the 90s (which I’ve copied onto my hard drives a long, long time ago) and while they need a like coaxing to work at times, they are forever mine and no one can take them from me.
I was very hesitant to go on steam specifically for their ‘you don’t own shit even if you paid and followed the rules’ garbage.
Steam is crazy in how it’s still usable and not completely enshittified after existing for so many years. I don’t know how they do it
It’s called staying away from venture capital. It really is as simple as that. Because Valve has a lucrative business model they have no need or desire to raise capital from outside investors, therefore there is nobody to squeeze them for value at the expense of their customers.
If you watch Cory Doctorow’s talk where he coined the word “enshittification” he explains how the process works, and it starts with outside investment. Enshittification is just a catchy term for value extraction, from the perspective of the customer.
Damn, now I understand the hype!
Ubisoft cannot complain if I pirate their games, because they never actually sold them. And I’m not deceiving them with my intention of never, ever, give them a dime.
Yeah I’d really like to know how this ‘you don’t ever own the game’ fits in with their other line ‘piracy is theft’.
how can you have stolen something if you haven’t actually gotten it?
You are right you can’t steal something that is not ownable, but paying for the game is what allows you to play so playing without stealing is still breaking their rules. Instead of buy to own they made it pay to play. But that sucks so fuck them anyway
“You wouldn’t download a car”
Fuck you, I would if I could.
one can dream
Give it another 5 years and Ubisoft will be dead, what was the last Ubisoft game without controversy/bad gameplay? I gotta go back 10 years or so
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown was well received.
Their “AAAA” output is pure slop, but the smaller games can be OK.
Their Mario + Rabbids games are also great.
I always assumed they were shit since they’re the only Nintendo branded games that go on sale for more than 10% off without a bundle.
I think it’s only Nintendo published games that basically never go on sale.
Rabbids is unusual because it’s got Mario in but it’s not by Nintendo.
Their whole policy on never having a sale makes me not want a Switch 2 at all.
Don’t like this? Sign the EU petition Stop Killing Games.
I wish I could sign. Sadly, not all european citizens are EU citizens.
EU cutizens can sign European Citizens’ Initiative that aims to prevent publishers using killswitches to permanently disable games. If it gets 1M signatures, it will be discussed in European Comission.
That’s 1 million signatures, not 100k.
