Buy Your Game, Own Your Game: One YouTuber’s Mission

The Crew is a 2014 street racing game produced by Ubisoft…and it’s online-only. That means you have to connect to a server in order to play it. However, because it’s old and they’re currently at the third version of the game they’ll be shutting down those servers. Apparently people still play the original but Ubisoft doesn’t care. They aren’t making money on it, and they aren’t going to refund you for a game they’ll stop you from playing.

None of my games at this time require you to be online, either for multiplayer or simply as an anti-pirating measure (allegedly), though I still can’t get Batman: Vengeance to play on Windows 10 and finally start that let’s play series I announced YEARS AGO! Still upset about that. However, The Crew is not unique as a game no longer playable for those who bought it. Gaming YouTube channel Accursed Farms has been chronicling games about to die or already dead, even without multiplayer, not because you can’t find the hardware to run it or having whatever issue I’m having with Batman: Vengeance but because some server was shut down without the game being patched officially to work on fan servers or simply offline, and channel host and creator Ross Scott has gotten tired of that ever growing list.

Having done a few videos on The Crew, Scott has decided to use it as the test subject for a mission to reverse this trend of games ending without a patch to play it, forcing you to spend money on the sequel without any benefit of owning what becomes a bunch of useless junkware otherwise. In the following video, he describes his plan to save these games from the grim reaper and how other gamers and gaming fans can take part in preserving these older games.

Over at The Clutter Reports I defend physical media even as I declutter. If you trust online to video, audio, and reading sources you better make sure it’s something that will always be available somewhere you can access it or you’re out of luck. This is a problem because even if you own a physical copy of the game, you can’t play it. With the third game in the series out last year that may actually be Scott’s biggest battle. Ubisoft wants the money. They could send a patch or give some other group, fan or business…imagine a company who sells patches like this or continue to advance older games to fight bugs, or allowing a fan group to continue an abandoned franchise the company doesn’t see as viable enough for them to continue. Except Ubisoft doesn’t make money from these older games or I’d have a patch that runs Batman: Vengeance on Windows 10. Yes, I just realized it’s the same company. I registered it and everything and that’s when I had trouble running it on my Windows XP computer at the time. (The driving level wouldn’t properly load, even in the demo.) There’s no money in such patches so Ubisoft isn’t going to run it.

I also wonder if they’d get the hint? Corporate types and marketing people are rather thick and lazy. They’ll see people trying to save The Crew and rather than see it as an attempt to keep old games still playable they’ll assume it’s because they love The Crew so much and try to push the new game instead. If they don’t even want you owning their own games, going to Ubisoft is going to be a waste of time.

As far as the government, considering how many US senators try to build their rep off of blaming “violent video games” every time there’s a shooting and they found out the shooter was into anything from Doom to Candy Crush, I don’t expect a lot of help out of them until the old fogeys that should have retired years ago but love all the privileges that comes with being a member of Congress are replaced by people who play and understand video games comes along (which has done nothing to benefit comics, the previous boogeyman of the government ruling class). If he has any uphill battle in the US that’s going to be the cause of it, apathy or downright antagonism. I can’t speak for the other countries.

Here’s a link to the Stop Killing Games website if you want to follow or participate in the mission. I don’t have The Crew because I’m not a big racing game fan, but as this will be the start to protect even games that I might be interested or at least fit the BW mission statement I can at least get the word out and wish Ross Scott luck in his quest. It may be the hardest one he’s ever faced.