Two Californians are suing Ubisoft over fraud, and several other complaints, due to the publisher's shutdown of The Crew in April, which left players unable to access even the singleplayer portion of this online-only racing game. While the lawsuit (spotted by Polygon) only includes two plaintiffs, the claims are also being made on behalf of other players as well, with the plaintiffs hoping the court will approve it as a class action.
Both plaintiffs purchased The Crew late into its lifecycle, in 2018 and 2020, and picked up physical copies. This plays a significant role in the lawsuit. "Plaintiff Cassell was under the impression that by purchasing the physical Game disk," the lawsuit reads, "he acquired the full bundle of ownership rights over the Game, and that he would be able to use the disk to play the game whenever he wanted in the future."
Ubisoft misled the plaintiffs, the lawsuit claims, through language on the game's packaging. "Defendants also reinforced this belief by including language on the Product packing stating that the online portion of the Game could be retired, thereby representing to consumers that an offline portion of the Game existed that would be unaffected. Second, through the totality of the Product’s packaging, Defendants falsely represented that The Crew itself was encoded onto physical disks consumers could buy or the digital files consumers could pay to download."
By not making it clear they were purchasing a digital licence, or that they could lose access to the entirety of the game, the plaintiffs' lawyers argue that Ubisoft has violated California's Unfair Competition Law and committed fraud. Here's the full list of claims:
- Violation of the Consumer Legal Remedies Act
- Violation of California's Unfair Competition Law
- Violation of California's False Advertising Law
- Fraud
- Fraudulent Inducement
- Fraudulent Misrepresentation
- Breach of Express Warranty
- Breach of Implied Warranty
The lawsuit highlights other instances where online games were shut down, but not before the developers deployed a patch to let players continue to access them, including Ubisoft games like Assassin's Creed 2 and 3. After the initial backlash after The Crew's shutdown was announced, Ubisoft also promised to include offline versions of The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest. Just not the original game.
It's an exhaustive lawsuit that includes the history of The Crew, the definition of gaming servers, quotes that show the consumer backlash, and background on YouTuber Ross Scott's Stop Killing Games campaign. Upon reading it, however, the thing that really stood out was the absolutely wild analogy the lawyers use to get the court to understand what Ubisoft's shutdown of The Crew's servers actually means. Apparently it's just like Ubisoft breaking into your home and stealing bits of your pinball machine.
"Imagine you buy a pinball machine, and years later, you enter your den to go play it, only to discover that all the paddles are missing, the pinball and bumpers are gone, and the monitor that proudly displayed your unassailable high score is removed. Turns out the pinball machine manufacturer decided to come into your home, gut the insides of the pinball machine, and remove your ability to play the game that you bought and thought you owned. Even though you paid full price to receive this game, you never knew that the manufacturer could come in one day, and, without your control, leave you with a skeleton of what you thought you paid for."
The complaint doesn't seem unreasonable, but the comparison with pinball machine theft is baffling, not least because considerably more people play online games than own pinball machines. This is not some weird, esoteric case that needs a pinball analogy to ground it and make it more relatable. The value disparity makes it all the stranger. The lawsuit doesn't mention how much the plaintiffs paid for their copies of The Crew, though at least one of them purchased it during a sale—regardless, I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that a copy of The Crew in 2018 did not cost quite as much as a pinball machine.
Quite a few sections elevate this lawsuit above your standard, extremely dry legal document. There's a section, for instance, that tries to break down the history of videogames, titled 'Video Games; From Past to Present'. It begins like a high school essay: "Home-use videogame consoles emerged in the 1970s." It then goes on to explain the rise of console cartridges, the birth of MMOs and the use of servers.
The section dedicated to the consumer backlash also contains a few gems, including tweets like, "What about the crew 1? Mfs the crew 1 looks way better than the crew 2". And "Crew 1 just dead then?". I bet Twitter user MGS never thought their tweet calling Ubisoft motherfuckers would make it into a legal document.
Despite the lawsuit over-egging things a bit—"Plaintiff Cassell suffered, and continues to suffer, economic injuries"—the plaintiffs are primarily looking to get a refund: "The return of the full premium price will ensure that Plaintiffs are in the same place they would have been in had Defendants' wrongful conduct not occurred". However, it also asks the court to require Ubisoft to "disgorge all revenues obtained as a result of their violations of the UCL [Unfair Competition Law]", as well as cover the legal fees. That bumps up the cost to Ubisoft considerably, and that's just with two plaintiffs. If it becomes a successful class action, Ubisoft is going to be facing a steep bill.
