French Lawsuit Targets The Crew Shutdown

Two years after Stop Killing Games first raised alarms, Ubisoft now faces a consumer lawsuit in France over pulling the plug on The Crew. On March 31, 2024, the publisher removed all access to its online-only racer, and the French advocacy group UFC-Que Choisir says that move crossed a legal line.

The case was flagged by YouTuber Ross Scott (Accursed Farms), who helped launch the Stop Killing Games campaign in 2022 after warning that server shutdowns erase purchased games overnight. UFC-Que Choisir, which is also based in France, argues that Ubisoft’s decision “brutally deprive[d] players of all access to The Crew,” a change it says violates “essential consumer rights.” The group’s statements come from its website and were translated from French.

At the heart of the filing are Ubisoft’s End User License Agreement terms. The advocacy group takes aim at language that frames game purchases as a revocable “user license,” rather than property. “It is unacceptable that Ubisoft considers, in its general conditions, that players only acquire a simple ‘user license’ for the game, which would then be revocable at any time by the publisher,” UFC-Que Choisir wrote. “The legality of all clauses limiting players’ rights must be questioned.”

According to the group, the legal action seeks to challenge several EULA clauses and push for concrete protections. UFC-Que Choisir says it primarily wants to:

  • Allow users to claim property rights over video game copies;
  • Disallow publishers from withdrawing all access to a game without “maintaining an alternative mode of operation” (such as an offline option);
  • Prevent games from being tied to online services that can be interrupted at any time by the publisher.

Why This Fight Reaches Beyond One Game

Once Ubisoft turned off The Crew’s servers, players lost everything—campaign, free drive, and any purchased content. There was no official offline fallback, because the game required a server connection by design. That’s exactly the scenario Stop Killing Games has warned about since it formed in response to Ubisoft’s shutdown plans: if your game depends on servers, your purchase can disappear the day support ends.