2014’s The Crew was the primary venture for developer Ivory Tower, which was based in Lyon, France, in 2007 and later acquired by Ubisoft in late 2015. Whereas it could have been the debut recreation for the studio, plenty of Ivory Tower’s workers previously hailed from Lyon’s Eden Video games (together with Ivory Tower’s three founders) and had earlier expertise on the primary three instalments of the V-Rally collection, the PlayStation model of Want for Pace: Porsche Unleashed, and the trendsetting Check Drive Limitless. As such, there was a great deal of optimism round The Crew.
Whereas The Crew was a racing recreation of impressively preposterous proportions – with a map that spanned a condensed model of all the continental USA – it was admittedly shy of good.
Its unprecedented dimension (an atmosphere so huge it took a number of hours to drive round) took a transparent toll on its finer particulars, and contemporaneous rival racers like Forza Horizon 2 and Driveclub have been much more good-looking choices. Its rubberband AI was repeatedly exasperating, with low-level opponents nonetheless capable of rocket previous high-level vehicles they need to don’t have any enterprise maintaining with. It additionally had a surprisingly stingy financial system, the place you may end up on the degree cap, out of story missions, and nonetheless with out ample credit to truly purchase any of its most-desirable vehicles.
Nevertheless, regardless of this, its staggering dimension actually was one thing to behold and, because of that, it was undeniably brimming with racing alternatives and exploration potential.
In fact, the operative phrase right here is ‘was.’ The Crew was a complete bunch of issues. However it’s not any of these issues anymore.
As a result of it’s gone.
Lengthy-time racing avid gamers are little question accustomed to the concept their favorite racers received’t be that can be purchased without end. A minimum of for video games that includes licensed automobile fashions and tracks, there’ll be a wad of signed contracts someplace that place a time restrict on a writer’s potential to promote them. Even the largest racing franchises have been victims of those automotive langoliers, munching by way of the historical past of the style and chewing up something previous its expiration date. There are extra racing video games that you may not purchase digitally – or new at retail – than I’ve area right here to checklist.
For probably the most half, nonetheless, you possibly can completely nonetheless play them. Used copies can nonetheless be purchased, traded, and stashed without end in your private collections. Digital house owners can nonetheless re-download them from the cloud. Proper this second I might simply boot up my copy of Undertaking CARS 2, or Forza Horizon 3, or Driver: San Francisco, and play any one in every of them indefinitely.
Alongside “upcoming server infrastructure”, “licensing constraints” are the opposite cause cited by Ubisoft for The Crew’s shutdown. What I don’t grasp is what precisely makes The Crew any totally different to… each different licensed racing recreation I’ve ever owned. I merely don’t perceive why Ubisoft’s incapacity to proceed to promote The Crew additionally means no person can play it anymore, both. It’s like Codemasters sending employed goons to my home to confiscate my outdated copies of Colin McRae. Being delisted from sale is a disappointing however in any other case regular circumstance for racers with expired automobile licenses, however since when are publishers underneath obligation to nuke all present copies of them from existence?
The Crew hasn’t simply been delisted, it’s been deactivated. Completely. That’s a full-price recreation, with microtransactions and DLC, that not capabilities. Not simply the multiplayer and co-op; the one participant performance has been killed too. With The Crew requiring an web connection to run – even when taking part in totally solo in opposition to the AI – the second Ubisoft switched off the servers The Crew was kaput. This can be a recreation that was potential to play alone from starting to finish in opposition to the pc, with out ever partaking with the multiplayer. Hell, all the prologue of The Crew couldn’t be executed in multiplayer.
We have been instructed that this was going to occur. Ubisoft delisted The Crew from all digital storefronts late final 12 months and confirmed “the sport won’t be accessible anymore” after March 31, 2024. However the superior warning doesn’t make this any extra palatable.
In July final 12 months, the Video Recreation Historical past Basis published a study on the commercial availability of classic video games in the US, discovering that solely a dismal 13% of online game historical past is obtainable within the present market. The remaining 87% is considered basically inaccessible to those that don’t preserve vintage {hardware}, can’t journey to a bodily library software program archive, or received’t obtain pirate variations. The Video Recreation Historical past Basis describes these video games as “critically endangered.”
Because it stands, nonetheless, The Crew is past endangered; it’s extinct.
All the time-online video games are clearly massively problematic in the case of recreation preservation. I’m not going to fake for a second that I understand how The Crew works underneath the hood, however from an exterior perspective it’s laborious to not query why a passable compromise wasn’t obtainable. 2017’s Gran Turismo Sport, as an illustration, was additionally an online-only recreation. Elements of the sport could possibly be accessed offline, however you weren’t even capable of save your progress. Nevertheless, when Sony pulled the plug on on-line companies for GT Sport in January this 12 months, developer Polyphony Digital revealed one last patch for the sport that eliminated this requirement.
This meant that GT Sport’s single-player modes would nonetheless be accessible after the servers vanished, and that gamers would nonetheless be capable of entry the marketing campaign and any beforehand bought DLC. Going ahead they might additionally be capable of save their progress domestically. The arrival of this replace bodes effectively for Gran Turismo 7. In any case, GT7 has a equally inflexible (and, admittedly, equally unwelcome) on-line connection requirement to entry most of its content material for now. It does, nonetheless, appear protected to imagine that when GT7 involves face its personal retirement, it’ll in all probability obtain the identical remedy. I don’t get the sensation that Polyphony Digital could be content material in having an instalment of such a storied collection rendered fully unplayable, without end. GT7 gamers, on this occasion, can in all probability relaxation simple that each one their progress received’t be misplaced within the ether.
The identical actually can’t be stated for The Crew 2 or The Crew Motorfest gamers. The erasure of The Crew definitely units a poor precedent for its sequels, on the very least. Are there now gamers reconsidering spending any extra time (or, importantly, cash) on The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest contemplating historical past now means that, sooner or later, all the things they’ve executed will in all probability be deleted together with the video games themselves?
In a baffling twist, a number of gamers of The Crew have reported finding evidence of an offline mode in The Crew, with potential native save performance. Digging round in The Crew’s code, hidden menu choices that reference choices like ‘Play Offline’, ‘Save recreation’, and ‘Load recreation’ seem to have been uncovered. Nevertheless, hypothesis that this might imply The Crew’s single-player gameplay would survive the server shutdown – very like GT Sport did – has amounted to nothing.
In fact, like an island stuffed with feminine dinosaurs determining breed, it does really feel possible {that a} fan venture will discover a solution to carry The Crew again to life in some capability. Following the shutdown of EA’s underwhelming free-to-play MMO Want for Pace: World again in 2015, enterprising followers have been finally capable of resurrect the sport in 2017. It stays playable immediately and, to its credit score, EA has made no try and intervene over the previous seven years.
In distinction, within the wake of The Crew’s shutdown, Ubisoft is definitely underneath additional hearth for making extra actions that will solely hamper any future fan revival. Because the server shutdown, some players are now reporting discovering their digital ownership of The Crew has actually been terminated, eradicating the flexibility to even re-download the sport information within the occasion of a mod that makes it playable once more. Will that fan repair ever come if a major a part of the potential neighborhood for it received’t even be capable of retrieve the sport software program for it? A Want for Pace: World-style second coming not feels inevitable on this occasion.
The Crew isn’t distinctive within the driving MMO area. There are different examples of driving MMOs which have gone by way of server shutdowns and stay playable as single-player experiences. Check Drive Limitless’s server connection was severed effectively over a decade in the past, and but I’ve booted that up on a number of events whereas working at IGN for retro protection functions. It’s nonetheless playable solo, which is truthfully how I performed it again within the day.
So was The Crew.
The complete decommissioning of The Crew is a critical step again for recreation preservation. Regardless of what you or I could take into consideration The Crew general, it was somebody’s first racing recreation. It was somebody’s favorite racing recreation. It was particular to somebody, for some cause. And now they will’t ever play it once more, no matter how a lot time they sunk into it, or how a lot money they dropped on DLC.
They don’t need to be okay with it, and nor ought to we.
Luke is a Senior Editor on the IGN opinions staff. You’ll be able to chat to him on Twitter @MrLukeReilly.