Ubisoft has responded to a California class action lawsuit around the shutdown of 2014 racing game The Crew, filing a motion to dismiss the case.
Filed back in February by Ubisoft’s legal team at Paul Hastings LLP – and captured by Polygon this week – the publisher’s legal team explains that the plaintiffs allege they were purchasing “unfettered ownership rights in the game”, when the reality is they were “purchasing a license.”
“Frustrated with Ubisoft’s recent decision to retire the game following a notice period delineated on the product’s packaging,” the response says, “Plaintiffs apply a kitchen sink approach on behalf of a putative class of nationwide customers, alleging eight causes of action including violations of California’s False Advertising Law, Unfair Competition Law, and Consumer Legal Remedies Act, as well as common law fraud and breach of warranty claims.”
Ubisoft’s representatives also said the plaintiffs’ claims are “time-barred” and therefore beyond the four-year statute of limitations for a claim from when they purchased The Crew.
Plaintiffs Alan Liu and Matthew Cassell say they bought physical copies of the game in November 2018 and early 2020 respectively. The lawsuit was filed in November 2024.
The decision to delist the game was announced by Ubisoft in December 2023, before the game was taken offline in March 2024.
Ubisoft’s representatives stated that the packaging of The Crew made the limited licence element clear, and that the plaintiffs do not allege a “cognizable injury”.
Ubisoft then drew attention to numerous notices on images it provided of physical packaging for the game, including a 30-day shutdown notice and online play requirements.
There’s also a rebuttal to a specific point about Ubisoft closing The Crew’s servers without creating an offline version of the game. “After making their purchases, Plaintiffs enjoyed access to The Crew for years before Ubisoft decided in late 2023 to retire and shut down the servers of the ten-year-old video game.
“Plaintiffs received the benefit of their bargain and cannot complain now that they were deceived simply because Ubisoft did not then create an offline version of the discontinued video game.”
In September 2024, in response to community requests, Ubisoft announced it was adding offline modes to The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest. The original 2014 game wasn’t included in that move.
According to Polygon, the plaintiffs responded to Ubisoft with an amended complaint on March 18 (a copy of which is no longer online). This apparently refutes the statute of limitations argument by saying that there was no reason to believe the game’s servers would be shut down until it was announced in late 2023.
There’s reportedly an additional point about how gift cards can’t expire in California, which the complaint connects to The Crew’s digital currency. They also provide an additional packaging image which claims the download code for the game would expire in 2099, and “implied that [The Crew] would remain playable during this time and long thereafter”.
There’s a total of nine counts of wrongdoing in the amended complaint, according to the report. Ubisoft has until April 29 to respond.
Game ownership in the age of digital software has become a more contentious issue, with a California state law passed in September 2024 prohibiting digital storefronts from using terms like ‘buy’ or ‘purchase’ when they’re only obtaining a licence for a piece of media.
