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Windows Central

Technology

Richard Devine

Ubisoft finally learned a valuable lesson about always online games, but it's still too late

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What you need to know

In a livestream dedicated to its The Crew franchise, Ubisoft has made a series of important announcements, but one stands out to most.
The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest will both, at some point, be updated to include an offline mode.
This comes after community outrage that the first game in the series was completely killed when Ubisoft turned off the servers without adding an offline mode to allow players to keep playing a game they'd bought.

Ubisoft continues to find ways to generate headlines, but at least this one is for good reason. Even if it comes too late for some of us. Following the absolute storm that followed the company's decision to turn off the servers for The Crew, the first title in the open-world racer series, the follow-up games will not be facing the same fate.

The issue wasn't so much turning off the servers, after all, it's an inevitability that when older games no longer warrant the costs involved in such an enterprise, this is what will happen. The issue was that The Crew had no offline mode, which meant that when the servers went dark, the game was no longer playable in any form. A game a lot of people had paid good money for.

Ubisoft has learned from that, at least, and made a statement regarding an offline mode coming to The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest in the future.

Finally, Ubisoft Ivory Tower committed to long-term access for both The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest, ensuring that both games will be playable for many years to come, including in an offline mode coming in the future.

Ubisoft

What isn't on the cards, alas, is a surprise return to life for the original game in the series. That one is still dead, and my disc, like many others, will simply sit there as a reminder of something I gave Ubisoft my money for, but that I never actually owned.

Unfortunately, our fallen hero will not be coming back from the dead. (Image credit: Ubisoft)

When I originally covered the news of The Crew's impending shutdown, I headlined it with the term "one of gaming's worst trends" and I stand by that. It's come to mind once more this week with the total mess that has been the Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown launch, with servers that were completely hosed during the paid for early access period.

There's absolutely no excuse for games like these not to have an offline mode. Shared open worlds are fun, but ultimately, a racing game doesn't need real people, you can race against computer opponents just fine. The original game in The Crew series had a heap of content that's no longer accessible because the servers went off. Thank god that Ubisoft actually listened to its players and decided to keep the newer titles alive.

Game preservation should be a topic we all care about. We have to fight enough against live service, always online requirements, and the dreaded expiration date of licenses. That final point hit home most recently with the influx of interest in the old Activision-made Deadpool game, something that can now only be bought on the used market and for increasingly extortionate prices.

With services such as Xbox Game Pass, we can accept that we don't own the games we play. It's literally a part of using it. But we all deserve better when it comes to titles we buy outright.

So thank you, Ubisoft, for at least ensuring that I, and many others, can still play The Crew 2 when it's time for the servers to get turned off. A valuable lesson seems to have been learned. Now, can you also think up something for The Division, because I'm already nervous enough that one of my favorite franchises in gaming will be lost forever through not having any form of offline mode.