Yesterday, Ubisoft announced it'd be removing The Crew — the original game in the series — from sale. Indeed, it's now not available on PS Store or any other digital platform. Furthermore, online servers for the open world racer will be switched off come 31st March, 2024.
Ubisoft shared the update on its website, along with memories and messages about the 2014 title from developer Ivory Tower. "We understand this may be disappointing for players still enjoying the game, but it has become a necessity due to upcoming server infrastructure and licensing constraints," the team said. "Decommissioning a game, and especially our first one, is not something we take lightly. Our goal remains to provide the best action driving gameplay experience for players and to deliver on it, we are continuing to provide new content and support for The Crew 2 and the recently launched The Crew Motorfest."
It's not a surprising development, considering the game is nearly a decade old and has broadly been superseded by not one but two sequels. While it laid the foundation for the series, The Crew 2 and Motorfest take the concept further and improve on it — though we've no doubt the original still has its fans.
Will you miss The Crew 1? Tell us in the comments section below.
[source ubisoft.com, via videogameschronicle.com]
Comments 21
Does this make it unplayable?
@TheFakulty Yep, it's always online so won't even be able to log into it once they're turned off.
This is why I tend to stick to single player and local multiplayer games. They don't need servers to function. I'll still be able to play them years from now and my money was never wasted on something with an expiration date.
Terrible for the environment too with all those disc copies now becoming e- waste. Live services should stick to a free to play model.
@NinjaNicky I only played and clocked story earlier this year but never did the wild runs dlc. Guess I wont go back to it now. Will just progress withe number 2 before that gers shut down
@PixelDragon
"We understand this may be disappointing for players still enjoying the game,
I'm sure they'll both be very disappointed
Well I'm glad I didn't waste time & money on that game then.
Crazy how this game is nearly a decade old. Played it a while back and never really intended to go back to it, but hearing this news makes me kinda sad man.
This game that I played with a bunch of friends is gonna go poof. Vanish. Disappear.
Like again, I don't care about my crew save data like that but it's just weird knowing that a game that I have in my PHYSICAL library can't even be played despite being on disc😂
@Vil That's what makes this scenario quite odd. The crew has a traditional single player mode/campaign, that you can complete by yourself. Multiplayer isn't a must, yet one still has to be connected to online servers🤔
Probably a good reason for all live games, to be free. I certainly won't spend a dime on anything that has a chance to be shut down, especially a Ubisoft game.
This is a great advertisement to not buy the other two games because with the servers shut down the game is unplayable. I like to reinstall games from time to time and play through them, can’t do that with games like this that rely on servers, and a lot of Ubisoft games released in the past 10 years rely on servers to function
This is why you don’t buy games with an always online requirement
I was expecting a longer notice period, like Sony did with Driveclub. I missed yesterday's announcement, but are you seriously saying someone could have bought the game last week for £19.99 (or £44.99 for the Ultimate Edition) which will be unplayable in just over 3 months.
That can't be right, can it?
For what it's worth, I enjoyed The Crew more than the two sequels, so it's a shame they couldn't have developed a patch to allow the single-player mode to function offline.
They could easily patch it to be playable offline
There definitely needs to be obvious disclaimers at point of purchase on games that says that if the servers shut down the game will be rendered unplayable.
It's definitely going to be a problem for Trophy Hunter.
oh what’s this ? another game i couldn’t play online anyway because of console scamming paywall ??
Whats the point of buying anything? (digitally}
This is shameful can't even play a game on disc now 😕
outlived Babylon's fall...
I will miss The Crew. I actually preferred that game over Crew 2.
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