The fact that even games primarily focused on online play don't last forever is nothing new in the gaming industry. Servers for older games are shut down regularly, and while this sometimes annoys small groups, the practice hasn't changed. But the racing game The Crew could now change that.
Pirates demand longer-lasting games
Background: Ubisoft announced on April 1st that the servers for the 2014 open-world racing game were shut down. The Crew After almost ten years, it will be shut down. As a result, players will naturally lose access to their earned content and can essentially no longer use the product they may have purchased for a considerable sum. In the meantime, two successors have been released. The Crew The game was released and the player numbers for the first part must have been quite low recently, otherwise Ubisoft would hardly have decided to take this step.
According to the German Pirate Party, the publisher could be violating applicable EU consumer protection law. At least, the party wants the relevant commission to examine this, as Pirate Party MEP Patrick Breyer told [source missing]. Heise Online explained. In a statement, Breyer writes:
Ubisoft's shutdown of 'The Crew 1' is an alarming example of how players' interests are ignored. It is unacceptable and likely illegal for companies to sell popular games for a profit and then abruptly disable them.
One solution Breyer proposes for the problem is that communities could take over software abandoned by publishers and develop it independently. This would allow them to keep games alive even if the publishers no longer have any interest in them. Whether the party's inquiry will actually lead to a change in practice is currently unclear.
The example of The Crew This might sound trivial to many at first, but in the future, there could be entirely different points of contention. Microtransactions are now commonplace in many games, and there's still no universally accepted regulation regarding what happens to such content if it's shut down. Imagine if Fortnite shut down its servers and millions of purchased skins suddenly became unavailable overnight.
Ubisoft should have offered everyone who bought the first game a discounted/free copy of the second game; that might have prevented this shitshow.
Otherwise, in the case of Genshin Impact, I'm always aware that if I spend money there, the game could be shut down at some point, not only for financial reasons but also for political ones, since Mihoyo is a Chinese company and companies there can be quickly ousted if they don't toe the line.
And it's good that some politicians are finally addressing the issue, even if the chances of success are low.