Ubisoft is shutting down The Crew. I have thoughts on this. The Crew map (JPG) mega.nz/file/nrISRY5J#wCxhd-d... The Crew map (PNG) mega.nz/file/fv4yxYoA#boBdGcj... accursedfarms.com
@@benja_324 The Crew has DRM. Even without DRM, it requires you to connect to Ubisoft servers in order to get past the *main menu*. Unless Ubisoft releases an offline mode patch, the game will be unplayable once April arrives. OP's comment still stands, piracy isn't stealing if buying isn't owning.
In Germany there's a organisation called "Verbraucherschutzzentrale" (literally a registerted society for consumer protection). Basically you can file them a complaint in case of a potential violation. Also there's a very popular German UA-cam channel called 'WBS Legal'. They're basically lawyers picking up popular or trending topics and approach them from a legal perspective. I messaged them about Ubisoft's plans to shut down The Crew and also linked them this video. Maybe they'll pick up on it and make a video about it so the problem receives more public attention.
Is this the same Germany that allows its citizens to be abducted and taken to CIA black sites located in Poland and other EU states? The same Germany that allows foreign 5-eyes governments to spy on its elected officials? That Germany? lol. Fuck Germany. It's a lost cause. If you want consumer protections turn to some talented hacker groups and piracy advocates.
A better thing would be to do it with a similar organisation in France since Ubisoft is French. I know that one exists for food stuff so maybe one also exists for these kinds of products.
A lawyer would rather defend a sex offender or serial killer before fighting for the rights of gaymers lol. Lawyers are dumb, evil clout seeking vain people in suits.
"We might teach kids that you will own nothing" Unfortunately that's what happened to me... luckily with free Facebook videogames back in the early 2010s, but that's it. I think the ideal analogy is a treehouse where everything you take in, can't be taken from the treehouse. Then the builders burn the treehouse with everything you left in it. That's games as a service for you.
It is still against our rights as a human being that we won’t even own a house anymore, doomerposting will get you nowhere if you only just realize they’re playing a trick to get to you. Break apart that fallacy. Even putting down the person burning your treehouse is all it takes to stop it. Doing nothing helps THEM burn YOUR house and YOURSELF down too.
@@godzilla9782 Seems like you didn't read lmao. I was a kid in the early 2010s. I am 24 right now. Nowadays I mainly play online by hosting the servers myself, because at the very least, I don't find myself losing my capability to play a game to a greedy corporation.
The game footage of a car weaving in and out of oncoming traffic, running red lights, and nearly running over pedestrians leaves me imagining Ross behind the wheel ranting with a slight muffled effect.
I'm getting a lot of emails so far with advice I'll look through later + dozens of purchase claims for the game at the other address. Thanks for the help so far, keep them coming! I'll also have periodic updates later on once I've had time to sift through everything.
A good strategy could be to also hope for a younger judge An old judge i doubt that he would in any form relate to games and would probably just discard the lawsuit as frivolous and a waste of time I personally don't even own The Crew but i have some extra money and a great spite for these practices...
@@lordfriedrick7911 You're right about some older folks seeing "game" and not taking this seriously. Still, an older judge might have a more traditional view of ownership. Younger judges raised in a world where everything is streaming or a rental might not feel the same revulsion to this kind of bait-and-switch. It's hard to say which would weigh more heavily on their opinion.
I feel like one thing to consider is that if we did somehow manage to make it so that selling a "perpetual license" required it to be playable after support ends, it might lead to publishers just not selling their game as a perpetual license or as goods anymore. If it forced them to be upfront about how long the license will last, then this will probably be a victory, because it would be a hard sell to tell people to pay full price if they can only own the game for 10 years, when most other game companies are reasonable enough to sell games with a truly perpetual license. However, if companies were able to easily relabel their license as something else that would give them the means to sell a game and take it down when they like, then it's important to make sure that we go beyond just changing what's allowed to be listed as a good or perpetual license.
Yes. My idea for how to fix this is pass laws saying that if you take money for a game, then you have to enable the player to run the game locally, without support from the company.
We can always vote with our collective wallet. Companies seem to forget that children don't have credit cards. True, you can get gift cards to use for game stuff or have your parent's credit card on file, but what parent is going to go for that when it seems there's a new security breach every week? I think we'll see games like Palworld become more popular. Hell, that's just a new example. Terraria and Stardew Valley have been around for ages now and still get updates. But both are labors of love.
Thinking of this game shutting down makes the music from sine wave digital "Lost Continent" play in my head, while little flash backs to long drives and adventures I had along the way. All the friends I made from this game. Dropping a marker from one end of the map to the other and just going. This is tragic. Something needs to be done for damn sure. This game don't deserve it, No game does, they are art.....
That line about us "just having to get comfortable with the idea" is a disgustingly elite attitude. That's something you hear from someone who's been at the top for too long and is disconnected from reality.
The sad thing is that opinion isn't without validity. The government and corporations have ramrodded countless things down the public's throat over the years and people have just learned to accept it. To name just a few examples: slow, invasive airport security; all the COVID rules that never got clawed back; Microsoft's 'telemetry' data; pretty much everything Apple does; the NSA's domestic spying.. the list goes on. Companies will find a way around any law that gets passed to stop GaaS from defrauding consumers and consumers have demonstrated their unwillingness to boycott these companies for their malicious practices. Without running the risk of fed posting, there is only one way these elites will stop what they're doing and don't think the general public is at a point where they're willing to make that happen.
I guess publishers will just have to be comfortable with less and less revenue as more people decide to pirate their games instead of wanting to own them.
I know people are clowning on him, well-deservedly so, but he's not "at the top". He's the director of subscriptions, a made-up job whose sole purpose is to do stuff with subscriptions. The context would be that, for Ubisoft+ to get more successful, gamers need to be more comfortable with it. Of course, I really disagree with that. Ubisoft just doesn't have the content or reliability to justify asking for monthly fees as high as they are for their collection of games. But it's not really that the entire company wants their old games to be "pay to play".
Thanks for suing Ubisoft! I made a complaint to them, and sent them an email. They responded to me saying "we do not ensure that our services can be used without interruptions"
They might as well be saying "we do not ensure that our products will work properly." Everything has an expiry date on how long it lasts. People aren't stupid, nobody is going to buy a power drill and expect it to last longer than the Roman Empire. Things get disheveled with use, break down, or become inadequate for what they were meant to do as times change. We understand this. The problem is, this isn't the case with digital products. Again, nobody expects a game company to keep servers running FOREVER, that's ridiculous. But there is a special sort of maliciousness here not really found in other industries. Game companies will not just kill games that still have massive communities because they'll save a fraction of a point of stock, they will then act in what I can only honestly describe as with malice in pursuing and shutting down people who try to keep the game alive by creating custom servers, essentially allowing for that company's game to still run but they no longer have to pay to support it which - you would think - would be ideal. "I no longer have to pay overhead on my own product? And people still might buy it? That's great!" But, unfortunately, no.
AngryJoe covered it on his gaming news show, and while he felt like it was an uphill battle he also wished Ross the best of luck and said they'd keep an eye on how the suit progresses.
You do realized he has become a bit of a shill now? Defending corporates? You might not realize they’re not the same person you once knew them anymore.
@@aquilliusranger2137 Putting aside that the accusation has little to do with him saying "rock on, wish you the best" to Ross; we have different perceptions on the man and I don't think he's a shilling for any corporation (let alone corps in general) since he still give them shit from the top of his lungs pretty regularly for dumb and/or shady practices. Mostly game-related ones, of course, but nonetheless. The most I can give is that he shills G-fuel or whatever it is as part of a sponsorship, which is fine if he actually believes in the product (I have no reason to assume he doesn't; with the caveat that i skip the ads segments whenever I watch a vid). I don't expect I'll sway anyone with a youtube comment, so from here I think the best we can do is agree to disagree until further notice.
Two ideas: 1. you should get in touch with Louis Rossmann. Literally just call him at work. He's super against the "you'll own nothing" thing and he works for FUTO, an organization that supports causes like this sort of thing. It's run by some billionaire, so he'll have good legal funding to pull this off. 2. stop calling the object in your considerations "game". Don't even call it "software". Instead, always use the word "product". Talking about a "product" makes people's thoughts about what should and should not be possible with it default to a different set of preconceptions than when you say "game". For example, "the company made the game unusable" has a different ring to a layman than "the company made the product unusable". So, you want to distance yourself from the product being a game, as much as possible. Don't talk about "lost media" and "games are art" and all that other nerdy sh!t. Just talk about ownership of a product, like a spatula or a diaper. It has to be extremely basic and understandable to people.
As a law student I have to agree on this, especially since this practice clashes against the very fundamentals of what a transaction does, not to mention being a complete violation of a person's right of ownership. Of course, US laws tend to be so corrupt and bendable about these things, especially given the fleeting and intangible nature of software, that you'd have better luck convincing a jury of theft if someone actually stole a physical copy of your game since it's, well, a physical object. After all, imagine the hoops you'd have to jump through to convince people a company stole your software or is denying you access to it. It's rather disheartening to imagine a court would care more about the plastic and paper rather than the stuff that's on it, where its true value is being stored.
I'd also like to add another comment which i already posted a poorer version of separately: Suing Ubisoft, one of the biggest French tech companies and a national pride, in France, an extremely proud country, would be extremely stupid. You should sue them in Germany, a country the courts and people of... have no pride for the French, and which the French have an innate disdain for. That's a huge "home field" advantage vs "enemy territory" disadvantage. The French gov is extremely protective of its rich, which is why when things go wrong, the French don't go to court or file petitions - because that doesn't work - they immediately skip over to putting cars on fire, blocking all of paris with tractors, dumping manure in front of govt buildings, and battling the police.
Totally agree with both points. It seems like something @rossmanngroup would agree with and should be able to help with both publicity and practical advice.
Contact the institute for justice! They're an american nonprofit focused on fighting legal battles for those who otherwise can't or have opponents with insurmountably deep pockets. They focus on issues like constitutional rights, consumer protection, and civil liberties. Please upvote for Ross to see.
@@keyboardstalker4784 Argh, of course I get to that point right after I comment. That's what I get for jumping the gun (not something I usually do). I do still think they're a good avenue to pursue, if only they'd respond to his requests. Clearly someone with a louder megaphone needs to get their attention.
As someone who played The Crew 1, its infuriating to see my copy of the game, with the entire game inside the disc, not work because it can't connect to shut down servers. Disgusting.
As an australian we can call the ACC (consumer protection) which is a government agency designed to protect australian consumers. If we can get them to pressure ubisoft with legal action we can at least set the precident that this will not be tolerated
I side with this as someone in the EU. They have much more to lose fighting in their home turf. Just don't play within their own yard (France) directly if possible. Not sure if the French Gov't would be willing to pull a fast one since at the end of the day, Ubisoft is still bringing some money into France's GDP, so I'd like to be on the lookout in that regard.
10 years since release. We’re reaching the 10 year mark of a bunch of live service games since 2014-2016 is when the boom started. Expect the Division 1 to be next in 2 years.
Oh no, not that multiplayer-focused bullet-sponge shooter set in New York that doesn't actually show you many landmarks in New York. Whatever will we do?
We all knew it was going to happen, time to see how much people care about it, I can't even say I don't buy games as a live service because there are a couple I play because my friends want to play and I'll maybe be pissed when they die
@@gladspooky9455I woupd be sad if that snowy game with nice views that I had to uninstall because it is online only and starts to lag after 20 minutes on my connectiob so I just cant play it.
Funny you mention the car analogy, because in Poland I think some hackers found out trains from NewAG had software on them to intentionally break their trains and render them unusable if you either haven't used them in a month, or the GPS detects you're near a third-party repair place. Trains are hella expensive, so those hackers were doing Poland a favor by exposing them.
In the U.S. the tractor company John Deere has something similar going on. I can't remember if anything was done, but the general audience for farming tractors are more the 'screw it, I'll just get something else' sort of crowd. Kubota and Massey Fergusson did pretty well off that.
@@rayanderson5797 Deere and Co. signed off an agreement last year to compromise on it and allow independent servicing and repairs (mostly because right-to-repair bills were passing through various state legislatures and it was a losing battle)
I also had an incident like this here in the US where in the early 2000's I had a flat screen Samsung crt TV that stopped working not because anything was wrong with but because it just literally out of nowhere started blocking out the entire screen with the Samsung logo while whatever channel you had it on was playing behind the logo pretty much turning it into a radio. I was a tech savvy kid too there was genuinely no way to turn that off my parents had to go out and buy me a new TV which backfired on Samsungs end because we haven't bought anything that brand since
ACCC in Australia actually has a document outlining just this. When Doom Eternal introduced Denuvo Anticheat (which I see as invasive malware), I sited this to Steam, who then refunded. The actual wording is on ACL (Australian Consumer Law)/ ACCC website, and goes along the lines of... (paraphrasing) "A good sold, cannot be later altered in such a way as to reduce value or functionality, without prior agreement to this action. Modifying access or features sold, without consent is illegal" Pretty sure ACCC would like to hear this.
Enforcement has to happen before a product goes to market, because the lowest common denominator will always outnumber the informed consumer by a hundred times. If it's left to individual people to boycott/refund/sue, it's an automatic loss every time.
@@ThatZenoGuysoftware engineering or mechanical engineering, either way the claim is that they're engineered to be infallible in some way. Cracking DRM "locks and keys" is just a matter of how much value comes from accomplishing it. It will be done when it's deemed worth it to the right group or person's time. It's obviously not going to be easy or or realistic to expect a reliable way to sidestep it, but it is possible.
So happy to hear you're trying to fight the good fight for all us gamers out here who don't have a platform or a voice to really get anything moving. I totally support what you're doing and would be happy to donate if you're serious about going forward with something.
The crew isn't the sort of game I normally enjoy, but I have real respect for it. It was a top 3 game dungeon episode. It is sad when any game shuts down, but this one is particularly tragic.
@@UsefullPigI have to give Bip Bop the shoutout here for my fave. Lots of great ones, but that’s the one that got me into the series, and I remember exactly how magical it felt to see the “never before seen” ending in the follow up episode
Oh yeah, it's easily my favourite Game Dungeon episode. My top 5 would be The Crew, Realms of the Haunting, The Black Mirror, Trackmania 2 and The Journeyman Project. But there are lots of great episodes aside from those.
If it was just The Crew's multiplayer shutting down? Crappy, but a fiscally understandable move. The Crew being entirely taken away from people even though singleplayer can be saved with what must be a simple flip of the switch on Ubisoft's side? That's just being actively malicious. In light of Ubisoft's recent comments about wanting people to "get comfortable with the idea of not owning games", this sort of thing comes across as a nasty humiliation ritual for their customers rather than a calculated business move.
I think they would say that ON PAPER the crew is a multiplayer game with $0 monthly fee. And there a lot of dead multiplayer games. Why do you think no one took actions against them? I don't know why but I think there is something there that would allow companies to get away with shutting down multiplayer games.
@@Emoziga I'm afraid we might be in a goldie-locks zone, they try to sell live service crap on discs, so it's obvious they sold something to you that they're taking away. Proper high-effort single player content dies along with it. With free2play titles and streaming only there's not much case of "ownership rights".
Thanks for undertaking this Ross, I’ve been following your channel for a while. I don’t game as much anymore, but I do think this does have wider potential for consumer law and the concept of ownership.
This video is more important than anyone realizes, and for the reasons you touched on. Our youth are being brainwashed that ownership is a lie, not just a myth. It is disgusting, and our young generations don't even have a chance in hell at success in their life because of it... rather any success would be in spite of it.
Imagine if movies or books were treated like how games are treated. That suddenly To Kill a Mockingbird or some other classic novel suddenly stops being sold, and any copy that exists gets destroyed. There would be riots.
I know someone else mentioned it but I second getting in contact with Louis Rossmann. He's a tech guy so he'd understand more than a layman what this entails and he's been a major proponent for consumer rights in multiple things; the largest being "Right to Repair." He's taken/taking on companies like Apple and John Deere so he's no slouch to heavyweight legal battles and would be a great resource to go up against a company like Ubisoft.
Quite fittingly, car manufacturers are already testing subscription models for physical features of cars. BMW did a test run of putting the seat heating on a subscription. We're talking about wires that get heated by electricity here, not some high-tech stuff. They had to pull back, obviously, because people were up in arms about it. But still, they're testing the waters.
@@fabiofanf3e813Apparently it's cheaper to only make one option with heated seats rather than giving an option without because why would they think adding a subscription service is a good idea? It's not, it's only to make them extra money. There's no way they'll keep doing that, sounds like a future where you get charged for everything, just imagine it lol. IVe heard of BMW doing this in the past already locking down certain software features if you don't have a more expensive model even though it's all in the car already, just software locked. I'm by no means an expert on any of this just what I've heard, and my step dad had owned a lot of them from his lease and apparently was able to enable some of these features doing a few tricks I think with only a USB stick. No idea if he flashed custom head unit firmware or what but it's definitely scummy that they can get away with it.
The best model to base the campaign upon would be Planned Obsolescence. From the Wiki: In 2015 the French National Assembly established a fine of up to €300,000 and jail terms of up to two years for manufacturers planning the failure of their products. Seems pretty cut and dry to me. The fine probably won't matter but the jail terms probably would change Ubisoft's French executives minds. :)
@@georgeoldsterd8994 I don't think a case could be made that the "small-fry workers" of a billion dollar corporation were at fault for a corporate mandate. The real reason execs won't get jail time is because governments simply don't want to punish them.
@@oligarchiesthere have been cases when mid-level execs would convince (including through coercion) lower level workers to take the blame and go to jail in their stead, so it's not all so far-fetched. But of course it depends on the situation.
I hate that quote so much. "You will own nothing and you'll be happy about it. " It seriously make my blood boil. Edit:It honestly should be illegal to kill games like this. Including taking away ownership of games from the customer. And that hole "gamers should be comfortable not owning their games" should've IMMEDIATELY piss off gamers across the board. Cause why would they ever think that we ever be okay with that at all.
Man, I was so hyped for the new Prince of Persia. Then I read that "be more comfortable of not owning games" headline and remembered that I almost gave Ubisoft my money. Phew close call. Impeccable timing UbiCringe!
@@payhemsehtI played the demo. It's not the prince. Your part of some group trying to rescue the prince or smth idk. While I usually find this haircut cringe as well, this wasn't a problem for me here.
The best way to tackle this legally would be to tie it into a bigger case, like Apple's Deathtimers or John Deere's Right to Repair, under the umbrella of Planned Obsolescence. Geriatric judges are never going to understand video games, never-mind "live services" or whatever other names there are for this kind of practice. It would have to be a tacked add-on to a bigger case.
That ignorance could work in its favor. Not understanding how big a deal games are compared to Apple or John Deere might make lawmakers sweat a bit less to influence them, especially because it's just against Ubisoft and not the gaming industry as a whole.
Rather than planned, it's more like abuse of ownership through Internet control and intellectual property rights. These companies do have a case if going by the law, but this behaviour directly clashes with the spirit of the constitutional right to ownership.
I saw someone talk about how you should describe it as a product. “This product we paid for is now unusable” sounds better than “this game we paid for is now unusable”
@@Cyann33andaThird calling it a "product" and thinking that's gonna change how it's perceived, is moronic. Imagine if you took your internet provider to court and told the judge , "I've been paying for this product for 3 years. I can't afford to pay for it anymore and they TOOK AWAY THE PRODUCT IVE BEEN PAYING FOR. I paid for that product so they shouldn't be allowed to take it away since I've been paying for it for 3 years. DO SOMETHING". That's what y'all sound like. The only way to go here is just vote with your wallet. Stop buying games from these AAA companies that are known to do this sort of thing. There are so many great indie games out there , especially if you game on PC , there is no excuse to be giving these companies your money just to bitch and moan about their practices that they've been doing for years now. They aren't breaking any laws. When you pay for a game , you are paying for a license to use that game. You never "owned" any games. If anybody read the fine print on the back of the games , you would know this. Same goes for movies. That's why you can't charge people to come view your movies on your TV. You don't own the movie , you've just paid for a license to view it yourself. But tbh , even voting with your wallet probably isn't going to work either , because most gamers don't give a shit enough to stop buying new AAA games. I know it probably seems like most game enjoyers are up in arms , but in reality it's just a loud minority. I think it's best to just get over it and stop buying from these particular companies if you can't handle the idea of not being able to play your $70 game for more than 10 years. I personally don't give a shit. I mean yea id prefer it if I could play the games I've paid for as long as I'd like , but $70 for hundreds to thousands of hours of enjoyment is not a bad value. And there will be new games that Ill want to play anyway. Most of these games I'm not going to really care about 10 years from now. Of course there are some that I'll always come back to. But not most. As long as the value proposition is good , I'm not stressing over it. It's really in your best interest if you just get over it. Don't buy their games if you don't like it. That's literally all you can do to even have a hope for change. And your luck with that is slim to none.
It was my understanding that class action suits are usually taken on pro bono if there is a good case. They’re also usually seeking damages in the form of currency. The law firm will then take a percentage of whatever is won and damages will be doled out to the class members.
13:26 - The general public will soon become painfully aware of Cars As A Service. The first time an automaker sells someone a car with a specific feature set >included in the purchase price< and then an over-the-air update removes that already paid-for feature without the owner's clear permission, the lid will blow off of this scam. The government tends to pay attention when car owners are upset.
It's absolutely the same grift in another industry. Unfortunately, like Ross said, the law is always painfully lagging behind technology and someone has to make the legal stand first.
@@Wo1fbite. Unfortunately, gamers are far easier to ignore/dismiss than car owners. The in 2023 the average transaction price for a new car was $48,759. That sort of expenditure gets the attention of attorneys general and tort lawyers.
That's already a thing. I don't remember which one, but there was some big company that sold a bunch of tractors where the software straight-up shut down and rendered them inoperable after the company "closed the service" even though physically the vehicles were still in full working order.
Tesla is already doing this. Also, as someone in the auto industry, there's a MASSIVE push to make everything software-defined and to turn all features into subscription services.
Spoiler alert, no they won't. Cars were making upwards to 700 or 800 HP back in the 80s and 90s till Congress created the EPA and emission requirements. Government didn't pay attention when car owners were upset back then. Back in 2021 Congress passed the massive Infrastructure Bill which included a KILL SWITCH for cars. Nobody even reported on it except for a few tech channels concerned about privacy or consumer rights, they didn't pay attention to car owners then. Thomas Massie tried to defund the Kill switch program back in 2023 and it failed in Congress, and Congress didn't car about Car owners then either. So spoiler, they don't care.
I'll never forget hearing "We feel that people have had more than enough time to enjoy our game before we shut it down" and I kept thinking of how good Driver San Francisco looked and how I only just discovered it
Maybe contact Louis Rossman? He does a lot of videos about similar issues dealing with hardware. He also does/used to do lobbying, so he might have some ideas about what to do.
He sounds like hes given up trying to. Now he still reports it but spends half the video saying that everything has gotten worse and nothing he's done has helped
He also just made a video regarding something closely related, titled: "Ubisoft executive suggests you become comfortable not owning things" So yeah, he might be interested.
Do you know Louis Rossmann? He has already been fighting similar battles. He also reported on Ubisoft not wanting you to own games. Not sure if can help in any way, but it never hurts if likeminded people know about each other.
God louis rossman is one of those fringe guys, that, i wanna kind of snuff out of my mind- but he has so many exact points legally, and he is pretty chill to match his style. Short and sweet 😂😂😂😂
Just a reminder, whenever a ToS/EULA, which isn't legally-binding on its own anyways, says that "we can take away your product for any reason at any time", this only rings true in a specific way due to legal reasons. See, it can be any reason, but it doesn't mean _no_ reason. And while they don't have to _disclose_ the reason why, the reason in question _still_ has to involve _you_ breaking their contract. Ubisoft shutting down servers has nothing to do with you breaking their contract.
@@Sewblonmeaning we could sue them or if we can't, don't buy Ubisoft games( well that's easy because they don't make good ass games like Nintendo, Sony, rockstar, fromsoft, square Enix and more. I can live not buying a game from them)
@@Sewblon I've contacted actual lawyers about this a little while back, as well as people with general legal education, and that's what most of them have claimed. Which makes sense. I mean think about it, it's the same reason as to why businesses have the right to refuse service to anyone, but they can't actually mean just _anyone._ Because that would be discriminatory. It's against the law to refuse service just because you feel like it, or because of race, gender, or religious belief. They have the right to refuse service, but in order to practice that right, they still need a _genuine_ reason as to why they can't. And said reason has to fall on the consumer, not on the company. For example they can't refuse service to you because they think you look funny, or just because they feel like it. They _can_ however, refuse service if you came into the store being rude and disrupting the business. Or if they just _think_ you're going to do something suspicious, they can't refuse service because of that, but they can if you _are_ doing something suspicious. An agreement on a software license basically says you must follow these guidelines, if not, we can take your product away. Well guess what, we followed their guidelines, and they're still taking our product away. We didn't provoke them by breaking the contract, they're just taking it away because they felt like it. They _cannot_ do that regardless of what the ToS says, for the very same reason why stores and actual businesses can't refuse service to someone just because they feel like it. We as consumers didn't provoke them in any way to allow them to refuse service. _Especially_ since this is obviously being done maliciously by not only refusing to make an offline patch so we could at least still play it, but then they also removed anything offline-related and encrypted what's left. They _really_ didn't want us being able to play the game we own even after shut down, and I don't think this is just coincidence. Especially with today's Ubisoft where they want gamers to be more comfortable with not actually owning their games, regardless of how much you spent on it or if you own it physically. But the best part is that none of this matters. A contract can say whatever it wants to, but as Ross said, a contract is not above the law.
TL;DR A company cannot truly take away a game you purchased for "any reason" for the same reason that a business cannot truly refuse service to just "anyone". There has to be a real reason involved and that reason must lie at the fault of the consumer. The consumer must provoke them, i.e. we break their contract. Just like how you won't get served at a convenience store if you walk in and start being a massive jerk, not because they feel like it or because of your race, gender, religion, etc.
It's been mentioned a couple of times in these comments already, but definitely contact Louis Rossmann, he deals pretty heavily in covering the legal drama of the tech world and has done lobbying before to protect consumer rights so he might know the best places and strategies to get the ball rolling if its possible at all.
For the Ppl living in canada who want to help toward this issue, we could ask for help from the Canadian NCP to ask to save the Crew, if you guys wana submit a request and help further whit this, id highly suggest you do this, so we can raise a new alarm to our government as consumers that we need to keep certain rights, especially whit a product that definitely still can work after its "planed obsolescence" which is technically not allowed in the electronic world, so i think it should be only right that its the same in the computing software world too.
The Supreme Court deciding that innocence is not enough is not just something that happened randomly. It happened because Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices with this twisted view of criminal justice. The justices appointed by Obama -- Kagan and Sotomayor -- dissented against this decision. Voting matters.
@@Maddrax 1894 is a book about a distopian dictatorship in the victorian era written by Orw Georgewell. You boomers really should read more instead of just saying Okay Generation-Steam when we try to enlighten you.
It's a natural next (evil) step for a company like Ubisoft. Plenty of games companies already are doing this with game content. Limited time battle passes, limited time buyable/earnable content, etc.
There's a few examples of this already, though mostly as lead-ups to bigger releases. The biggest example of this I could think of is Curiosity: What's Inside the Cube. It was a limited run game leading up to the announcement of Godus (and some say playing Curiosity was better than Godus). There's a lot of other BS that happened in relation to that, mostly because Peter Molyneux is a real trash bag of a promoter and studio head. ARGs are another example of this, though the case for them being able to be played ad infinitum is probably much less, as it takes effort on the side of the game runner to run them, and people don't pay to play. Usually.
@@Guags Well Nintendo just sold it for a limited time. But you can still play it fine. And since it released physically you can still buy it 2nd hand if you really want. Kinda what Disney did with the Disney Vault for VHS tapes. You aren't missing out on the game. In the end it's not that different from any other game except they give you the exact time when they wont make any more copies beforehand.
This would definitely be the best case for class action lawsuit, so go for it. Fundraiser while important for the money, would as side effect bring the media attention to whole case, blowing it out of proportions even more so this could work. Sure, I still hope Ubisoft would somehow come to their senses and create offline mode at least (like Bluebyte did with Anno 2070 after similiar backlash) but in case they don't I say we shouldn't blindly accept it - we should make ourself be heard to create some sort of judical precedent. Two things: a) in case of class lawsuit they would probably try to reason with expired music licenses as one of the reason of taking this game down (they could prolong them with no issues still), b) EU has better consumer protection and it even has digital goods ownership laws for first buyer of digital item so might be good filing the lawsuit there (the moreso since Ubisoft if French company).
ive been watching your content for years and years and years... for as long as i can remember, since I was very little. Thanks for the content. RIP the crew btw!!!
4:26 I lost almost all faith in physical copies after I bought Skyrim the first time it released. I bought a physical copy on release day, even went to wait for the local Gamestop to open so I could pick it up immediately, brought it home, and once I opened the package, the first thing that caught my eye was a *Steam code.* At the time, I was more naive and thought "oh cool, that's convenient, my physical copy means I don't need to buy a digital copy for Steam." But I still put the disc in my PC to try to install it...only for the disc to immediately bring up Steam's game key entry window. I went ahead and installed via Steam, and for a while I just didn't think about what just happened, but it sat in the back of my mind. Some time later, it hit me that they didn't put the game on the disc at all, or a game launcher to install and update it. It was just a disc that prodded Steam directly to get the digital platform to do all of the work. The gravity of that revelation came in full force years later, with the disappointment that was Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5. While I didn't buy it (just didn't have a PS4 at the time), I heard all the outrage over how poorly it was made, and specifically about how the game disc itself didn't actually have the whole game, it only had the tutorial level. Everything else in the game was all attached to a "patch" that tripled the space the game required. Sure, this was caused by some weird circumstances (they had to have the game complete and selling before the rights expired, so they figured they'd get the bare bones out and patch it in post), but it immediately set off several thoughts that any casual observer would call paranoid. 1) Physical copies can now have part or all of a game's data tied to a digital server, rendering the physical copy meaningless without internet and the relevant online service 2) This is not limited to PC games, now that console games all use internet services for updating and online features 3) It is literally impossible to tell the difference between a physical copy that has all the game data and one that just has *enough* data to poke the digital servers, before putting the physical copy in the machine, unless they actually label the packaging to make that clear 4) Physical copies for modern digital media are no longer a reliable method to ensure the safety of your own purchases 5) We need customers rights for digital products years ago, but I know no one with a time machine to fix that (This was before I found Accursed Farms, but Ross has stated he doesn't like using it so) Sorry for the rambling tangent, I know that Ross's point was that the physical copies still won't work when the server shuts down, but I wanted to bring up the unreliability of physical media today.
Too late to cry now, what you shouldve did back then is to give this physical copy back, you and everyone else who bought it. We cant stop it now, not anymore.
PC games have required online activation etc since, like, at least half life 2. Not having the game data came not long after. The only reason earlier pc games didnt do it, is because the internet wasnt really fast enough to download all that data efficiently. PC physical copies have always been a minefield since the internet got big.
@@bigboysdotcom745 Im playing on PC since early 90s so you dont need to tell me how it was back then. But I can find my old CDs and most of them are gonna be in working order unless few with the worst possible DRMs, but even in this case you can... find other sources lets call it. With games like The Crew there are no other sources. Point is - need to be always online, especially in a game like The Crew where multiplayer is a joke is worse than StarForce even.
@@Haarba1 I did that with Half Life 2 and that was the last time I bought anything from Valve and started to p rating everything. I'm just one guy so it doesn't matter, the sheep will keep the corporations alive and they will in the future.
There should be laws to protect game preservation. Companies should be requierd to have Lan options and make games drm free after shutdown. Its the artistic work of so many people killed.
To add to the car allegory, if this goes anywhere, try to appeal to a jury in the USA if you do anything here. Juries love the facts of the matter, and the fact is we're losing something we were told we could own. Judge care about the law and technicalities. This is also useful, but less so in our case.
Perhaps, but in my experience talking to people I know about these sort of topics, their response is often some form of "I assumed that's always how it worked" or "no point in fighting it, we've already lost" and if you get a Jury filled with people that cynical about digital ownership it might be worse than judging solely based on the law. The Corpos just need to convince everyone they're too big to fail and they can win without fighting; for many this is already the case.
I don't like the car analogy, as it muddies the conversation a bit. Detractors can easily go to frivolous questions like, "Wouldn't that be unsafe if I was currently driving" or that "Games are an entertainment and not an everyday need". I'm just what-if-ing but it's possible. I think a smart TV is the closest everyday parallel. They're pay once, no recurring fee. They have a menu software that can possibly connect to corporate servers. What if that fails due to corporate actions or discontinuation?
I can't really help in this endeavor, but man I wish you the best of luck, Ross. If you're successful in this, well.. who knows, maybe we can finally get some good news.
I still think it should be a law that requires every developer to either make the game offline or release the server software when they shut down the game
100% yes, I see absolutely no detriment to the game company either. They already planned to stop taking money for the game, so the server software should have no value to them. Of course, this isn't how corpo F's see things... because they can't lose control of anything, and everything is a trade secret to them.
A UA-cam channel to look into is Louis Rossmann, which makes lots of videos about right to repair and right to own. Specifically, he’s made many videos on companies taking functionality away from consumers after purchase, so if you could find a way to collaborate in some way, then it would likely be mutually beneficial, since he is almost certainly interested in making sure that companies legally can’t take away things you’ve purchased.
Just a note, a single law suit *could* start a chain reaction in other countries, and even kick of an investigation. So lets hope we can do at least something!
For the car analogy, we have companies building kill switches into vehicles now, meaning they're becoming more software-like and ownership can be removed at any time. At this point, we're likely better trying to fight to have cars remain usable regardless of whether it's updated or not and then using that understanding to attack games being shut down.
One issue I immediately see about this going to any sort of court in the US is that company lawyers here love to play a game of attrition. They'll request a change of court to a different state at every opportunity until it's accepted. Either the state they choose will be one with less consumer protections than another, or they'll rinse and repeat until they either get a state with less consumer protections and a guarantee that a judge will say "go fuck yourself", or the plaintiffs run out of money. They'll aim for the former being an option, but they'll have the resources to bankroll the latter.
Or there'll just be some settlement where they give people who had a copy of the game a $10 uplay coupon or something. Usually how things seem to go unfortunately.
>They'll request a change of court to a different state at every opportunity until it's accepted. Can't do that. There must be a basis for a change of venue such as a fair trial not being guaranteed in the current locale. Plus if a suit came to them it would be due to something that crossed state lines, which makes it squarely within Federal jurisdiction.
@@refutonefandus >There must be a basis for a change of venue such as a fair trial not being guaranteed in the current locale. I'd imagine that's what they'd try for. I'm mixed about it being a federal case. It would help in that regard, certainly, but I'd also imagine it would take longer and they could use that time to bleed money out of the plaintiffs somehow.
I think this is may be something to do with the cost-benefit for them to still have to maintain OS compatibility if they're still selling it, and don't even want to bother with that, plus getting people move over to their new game.
I think it might have to do with the kinds of licenses they paid to get the licensed content in the game. Maybe it was cheaper for them to 'rent' car brands rather than to buy a license for it to forever stay there?
As an engineer, one of the most important programs we deal with is Programmed Logic Controller software in factories, power-plants, airports etc. If Rockwell Automation just randomly decided you shouldn't have RS Studio 5000 (which i'm just using as an example) suddenly entire supply chains and power grids shut down. If the laws on games were applied to that scenario, software companies can just arbitrarily push the off button on the economy and cause shortages with a whole slew of dystopian consequences and the law would just say "sucks to be you peasant, have fun starving LMAO!" Now imagine this same scenario but with a program used by Defense. Suddenly the PRC or Russia or any other entity just bribes the program's supplier to just arbitrarily shut down Radar and communications software. By allowing this trend in games to continue you give that sort of bullshit legal precedent to defend itself with. I think everyone, big corporations and the government included, can all agree that's probably not a precedent we want floating around, where we just structure laws so that silicon valley has 1984 levels of control on everything.
I remember was it Solarwinds, some sort of centralized software management for many companies, was injected with backdoors like you suggest and thus attacker, likely nation state(hostile) got access to huge variety of organizations. This is software example but could very well be like you describe applied to manufacturing/infrastructure. This has happened in some cases browser plugin dev suddenly put malware in their plugin, possibly similar scenario to earn some cash.
At least I beat my first real driving game before it was shut down. R.I.P The Crew, you had so much potential. And your old title music rocked so hard. Thank you for being a little piece of my childhood, even if I sucked and gave up before the first area was done. R.I.P
We all need to remember “games” are still products that we’re purchasing, so they should be held up the same scrutiny of any other product we purchase as consumers. We have to remember we do have some rights in this fucked up world we live in.
Meanwhile Inquisitor Martyr is closing servers down yet the developers are making it work offline so it never dies. Plus recently (Just before the DRM drama... Darn it...) I got in to Capcom's Megaman Dive Offline too... Another online gacha game that got saved and turned in to a single player game (Slightly different, but neat seeing a gacha game saved... Even if they sell it?). You'd think a huge company like Ubisoft would be able to save their games too... >_>
Well, I think the whole point is that they don't want their games saved. They want to crank out commercial cookie-cutter digital MREs that are arbitrarily connected to online servers, and then pull the plug on them when they want to start the process again with a new sequel. I'm not even sure Ubisoft cares about player engagement; I barely see any Ubisoft titles being touched by streamers.
Their ability to save a game hinges on their forethought to preserve it in the first place. Building an online-only game makes it harder to pirate, and generally lets the company have full control (like if they want to downgrade the graphics a couple of months before a sequel is announced, hypothetically). There's a lot of work that has to happen in the background to preserve a game once it's build with online-only functionality, and why spend money on that when Ubisoft has the option to not do that?
Steam originally did not offer refunds, and it was the ACC (australia consumer protection) that overruled them and is why they offer refunds now. Don't rule out trying this in aus as there is strong legal precedent there already, even regarding video games.
Hey Ross, I recently found out that when my friend and I tried to play the old LAN multiplayer on Splinter Cell: Conviction, we discovered that it had been disabled by Ubisoft. The game requires a handshake with a server before opening the menu for it on PC. Additionally, they've been messing with the servers for Blacklist ever since they switched over to Ubisoft Play.
Omfg ngl i thought you sounded like the guy who did the freemans mind og UA-cam game playthrough on half life but you are him your a legend imo you made my child hood
I heard about this and thought you might make a vid about it. Hope this issue gets more attention at some point. Could also be good with the whole planned obsolescence debate. Either that moving forward and positively affecting this issue or vice versa.
Yknow, a little while ago there was an online only game called Megaman X Dive that got shut down. A couple weeks after, the company (capcom) released the Megaman X Dive Offline, which was just the entire game modified to remove microtransactions and work properly offline. Granted, it still cost $30 to essentially play an offline gacha game you may have already paid money for, but I thought it was interesting that they even thought to do it in the first place where other devs would simply pull the plug and leave it. I wish more games, especially MMOs, did this more. Every once in a while I get an urge to play Tera, but since it's shut down I can't. I know it's not a very good game, but a lot of work and stuff was put into its art and its combat and its aesthetic and it feels like such a huge shame to just have it evaporate one day.
This is still hugely anti-consumer as far as I'm concerned. Most studios killing games today likely intend to sell them again at a later date in some form. Some companies turn around and sell them again right away. It's still crap. The worst-case scenario is always the game being dead forever, though.
For fans of Defiance, we had the same issues. Defiance was a great MMO. But due to Gamigo's business practices, it spit the fanbase between two different copies of the same game and caused the playerbase to be down for both, leading to Defiance being closed down. Fans right now haven't given up. The game world is back up and running to be able to run around in (without NPCs and enemies and such, and solo at best), but the fans are also working on a remake of the game using Unreal Engine also. And we've managed to unpack the game files to get access to models, textures and sounds, leaving it possible for us to make game mods for other games using those assets (in fact, one person I know took a couple of weapons from the game and made them as modded weapons in PayDay 2, even recreating the ammo types from the original MMO) as a means of keeping Defiance alive in some way. So, there are always a chance someone can crack The Crew. Ubisoft's CEO recently said that players need to "get used to not owning their games" on physical release. Well, fans have cited what author Cory Doctorow, a man who happens to be copyright hostile, has said in regards to the idea of companies pulling features on devices that have already been sold: "If purchasing isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing." I'm sure someone will figure out the crack in the encryption, but will take time to do.
This whole thing is a dark reflection of what happened to me just a week ago. I bought Need for Speed Hot Pursuit for the Xbox 360. It was advertised with the Autolog feature, an online leader/message board to which the game is always connected. The game released about a decade ago. I put it on my Xbox 360. It tried connecting to autolog. It didn't. It still plays fine. If Ubisoft can't do the damn same thing it's because they don't WANT to, because it's well possible.
Yeah man, you're still basically the only creator I frequent who seems to CARE about games dying, I wish that weren't the case, and I am damn sure behind you on this.
Yep fully knew the risk when i was getting this game in early December, news came 10 days later, the risk was worth it, will believe that the community will come up with some magic patch and keep the game from going into digital void.
I have been playing this game since 2015/16 and today April 1st 2024 I booted up the game only to find out the servers were shut down, seeing this video gave me hope and i wish you the best luck if there's a way i can help let me know
Have you talked with Louis Rossmann about this? He's very vocal about how our ownership rights are being eroded. One of his latest videos is even about that horrible Ubisoft CEO quote. He has a lot of lobbying experience and currently works for a non-profit organization - FUTO - that might have some interest in your case. Idk if FUTO would actually do anything since this isn't exactly the kind of thing they normally focus on, but it might at least be worth reaching out to Louis about if you haven't already. It's sad the EFF isn't doing anything about this issue.
12:50 I reckon a more accurate analogy would be to say that they only melt the car's engine via signal, so they can say you "technically" still have a car, it just doesn't work anymore... Or even more realistic what with cars becoming more electronic, they just remotely disable your ability to turn on the engine, even though all the parts of it are still completely functional.
@@throwawaydetective9080 Now imagine if Tesla decided to shut down their update servers, so after the last expiration date of the latest software, every Tesla dies. Not sure if that's how Tesla cars work, but that's how THIS works.
That’s a worse analogy. Some people buy certain cars because they look cool. If the actual car is still there to look at, then they would still have some value to some people.
@@paulaccuardi9071 It would have to include some way to analogize the DMCA protections. In this case, it's impossible to remove the wrecked engine without destroying the car... in some way. There really isn't a good physical analogy for how complete encryption can be, which is why it tends to stump or go over the heads of legislators and judges. The closest I can think of would be stating that the DMCA makes it illegal to sell or share the particular kind of tool that can remove the bolts holding the engine to the car's chassis, so that even if it's possible to still use the car and replace the engine technically, it's a felony to do so once Ubisoft has disabled the engine.
@@paulaccuardi9071 thats not the main purpose of a car though. if you sell someone a car you have to explain to them that it doesnt work or face legal action. You couldnt feasibly sell someone a car and then say one day youre going to make the engine permanently melt and that its illegal to put a new engine in it. You could buy the disc for The Crew because you like the cover art but the disc for a dead game has almost no value for its intended purpose- to be played
I am really glad that you brought this up. I am A FAN for The Crew Game and as it diminished and lost players over the years, I asked myself "why?" Because it is such an amazing game. If you want to take action to keep this game from going anywhere, why not get users to come back and maybe tell Ubisoft it's in their best interest to update the game than get rid of it?
I have to say I see a fair bit of crossover between your goals and Louis Rossmann's goals with right to repair. I would suggest seeing if you can get in contact with his team for assistance. A joint force could accelerate things!
I will just say.. Thank you Ross for staying angry about this nonsense. A lot of creators who used to inform consumers about this sort of thing years ago have moved away from the industry, have been bought out or straight-up died (rip TotalBiscuit). Ross is one of the few reasonable people out there rallying for consumer protection in the game industry. Keep it up, your efforts are appreciated.
After all these years, the only one I've found that comes even close to TB is Louis Rossmann, and he doesn't cover games. (But used to play Dota2 too (4?), coincidentally)
Top lad. I'm glad there are people out there putting in the work. Also, I have a feeling that pirates would step up out of pure spite. The internet takes no losses. (I know you addressed this already, its a little bit of cope because I did buy and enjoy The Crew.)
The technology to play singleplayer games locally just does not exist yet.
single player ? locally?
u got me confused?
i play zelda all the time
@@Kinggenton I think he's just joking and mocking the companies.
If you could play by yourself then they couldn’t be with you
Don't worry, soon, the technology to own singleplayer games locally won't exist!
Oooh, I remember that one! EA and SimCity!
Didn't work out that well for the franchise, hm?
If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing.
Yeah, but you can't pirate this one
my ass @@zone_braker
Why?@@zone_braker
@@benja_324 The Crew has DRM. Even without DRM, it requires you to connect to Ubisoft servers in order to get past the *main menu*. Unless Ubisoft releases an offline mode patch, the game will be unplayable once April arrives.
OP's comment still stands, piracy isn't stealing if buying isn't owning.
@@JT1031 is thay only for the crew cus there are a lot of assasin's creed games that are pirated
In Germany there's a organisation called "Verbraucherschutzzentrale" (literally a registerted society for consumer protection). Basically you can file them a complaint in case of a potential violation.
Also there's a very popular German UA-cam channel called 'WBS Legal'. They're basically lawyers picking up popular or trending topics and approach them from a legal perspective.
I messaged them about Ubisoft's plans to shut down The Crew and also linked them this video. Maybe they'll pick up on it and make a video about it so the problem receives more public attention.
Is this the same Germany that allows its citizens to be abducted and taken to CIA black sites located in Poland and other EU states? The same Germany that allows foreign 5-eyes governments to spy on its elected officials? That Germany? lol. Fuck Germany. It's a lost cause. If you want consumer protections turn to some talented hacker groups and piracy advocates.
A better thing would be to do it with a similar organisation in France since Ubisoft is French. I know that one exists for food stuff so maybe one also exists for these kinds of products.
@@whannabi At the best we'd do in in every country we can.
The more courts come in on this issue the better.
that is acutally true. i didnt thought about that, but if somebody with more time would be able to hang on that stuff: go for it!
A lawyer would rather defend a sex offender or serial killer before fighting for the rights of gaymers lol.
Lawyers are dumb, evil clout seeking vain people in suits.
"We might teach kids that you will own nothing"
Unfortunately that's what happened to me... luckily with free Facebook videogames back in the early 2010s, but that's it.
I think the ideal analogy is a treehouse where everything you take in, can't be taken from the treehouse. Then the builders burn the treehouse with everything you left in it.
That's games as a service for you.
It is still against our rights as a human being that we won’t even own a house anymore, doomerposting will get you nowhere if you only just realize they’re playing a trick to get to you. Break apart that fallacy. Even putting down the person burning your treehouse is all it takes to stop it. Doing nothing helps THEM burn YOUR house and YOURSELF down too.
Ok kid
@@godzilla9782 Seems like you didn't read lmao. I was a kid in the early 2010s. I am 24 right now. Nowadays I mainly play online by hosting the servers myself, because at the very least, I don't find myself losing my capability to play a game to a greedy corporation.
@@ibisskb
Ok kid Don't cry, I will tell your mother that you have grown up and no longer drink milk
????????? @@gabygaby5648
The game footage of a car weaving in and out of oncoming traffic, running red lights, and nearly running over pedestrians leaves me imagining Ross behind the wheel ranting with a slight muffled effect.
It’s Freeman going on a rant.
I'm getting a lot of emails so far with advice I'll look through later + dozens of purchase claims for the game at the other address. Thanks for the help so far, keep them coming! I'll also have periodic updates later on once I've had time to sift through everything.
Thanks for fighting the good fight Ross!
A good strategy could be to also hope for a younger judge
An old judge i doubt that he would in any form relate to games and would probably just discard the lawsuit as frivolous and a waste of time
I personally don't even own The Crew but i have some extra money and a great spite for these practices...
@@lordfriedrick7911 Compare it to books for an older judge. The argument is the same despite the medium.
@@lordfriedrick7911 You're right about some older folks seeing "game" and not taking this seriously. Still, an older judge might have a more traditional view of ownership. Younger judges raised in a world where everything is streaming or a rental might not feel the same revulsion to this kind of bait-and-switch. It's hard to say which would weigh more heavily on their opinion.
C'mon, Ross!! You're the man! Step aside, Ubisoft. Games for gamers.
I feel like one thing to consider is that if we did somehow manage to make it so that selling a "perpetual license" required it to be playable after support ends, it might lead to publishers just not selling their game as a perpetual license or as goods anymore. If it forced them to be upfront about how long the license will last, then this will probably be a victory, because it would be a hard sell to tell people to pay full price if they can only own the game for 10 years, when most other game companies are reasonable enough to sell games with a truly perpetual license. However, if companies were able to easily relabel their license as something else that would give them the means to sell a game and take it down when they like, then it's important to make sure that we go beyond just changing what's allowed to be listed as a good or perpetual license.
Yes. My idea for how to fix this is pass laws saying that if you take money for a game, then you have to enable the player to run the game locally, without support from the company.
We can always vote with our collective wallet. Companies seem to forget that children don't have credit cards. True, you can get gift cards to use for game stuff or have your parent's credit card on file, but what parent is going to go for that when it seems there's a new security breach every week? I think we'll see games like Palworld become more popular. Hell, that's just a new example. Terraria and Stardew Valley have been around for ages now and still get updates. But both are labors of love.
Thinking of this game shutting down makes the music from sine wave digital "Lost Continent" play in my head, while little flash backs to long drives and adventures I had along the way. All the friends I made from this game.
Dropping a marker from one end of the map to the other and just going.
This is tragic. Something needs to be done for damn sure.
This game don't deserve it, No game does, they are art.....
i still remember my first raid spec and taking mustle cars basher running through the mountains to new objectives. good times good times.
I remember so much with this game, it just needs to live and not be thrown to the abyss like they want to...
Man I don't care if people disliked this game, driving nowhere while the games soundtrack played was a different feeling
That line about us "just having to get comfortable with the idea" is a disgustingly elite attitude. That's something you hear from someone who's been at the top for too long and is disconnected from reality.
From reality and any sort of empathy probably.
The sad thing is that opinion isn't without validity. The government and corporations have ramrodded countless things down the public's throat over the years and people have just learned to accept it. To name just a few examples: slow, invasive airport security; all the COVID rules that never got clawed back; Microsoft's 'telemetry' data; pretty much everything Apple does; the NSA's domestic spying.. the list goes on. Companies will find a way around any law that gets passed to stop GaaS from defrauding consumers and consumers have demonstrated their unwillingness to boycott these companies for their malicious practices.
Without running the risk of fed posting, there is only one way these elites will stop what they're doing and don't think the general public is at a point where they're willing to make that happen.
@@Daniel__Nobre I've heard of studies done that show statistically most CEO's are sociopaths.
I guess publishers will just have to be comfortable with less and less revenue as more people decide to pirate their games instead of wanting to own them.
I know people are clowning on him, well-deservedly so, but he's not "at the top". He's the director of subscriptions, a made-up job whose sole purpose is to do stuff with subscriptions. The context would be that, for Ubisoft+ to get more successful, gamers need to be more comfortable with it.
Of course, I really disagree with that. Ubisoft just doesn't have the content or reliability to justify asking for monthly fees as high as they are for their collection of games. But it's not really that the entire company wants their old games to be "pay to play".
Ross on being offered a settlement:
“It’s not about the money. It’s about sending a message.”
Thanks for suing Ubisoft! I made a complaint to them, and sent them an email. They responded to me saying "we do not ensure that our services can be used without interruptions"
What a terrible business model.
@@neth77 Welcome to the future
@@neth77Same goes for Steam and all these other online shops
Lol, email back and say "I cannot ensure that I will financially compensate you for playing your other games"
They might as well be saying "we do not ensure that our products will work properly."
Everything has an expiry date on how long it lasts. People aren't stupid, nobody is going to buy a power drill and expect it to last longer than the Roman Empire. Things get disheveled with use, break down, or become inadequate for what they were meant to do as times change. We understand this.
The problem is, this isn't the case with digital products. Again, nobody expects a game company to keep servers running FOREVER, that's ridiculous. But there is a special sort of maliciousness here not really found in other industries. Game companies will not just kill games that still have massive communities because they'll save a fraction of a point of stock, they will then act in what I can only honestly describe as with malice in pursuing and shutting down people who try to keep the game alive by creating custom servers, essentially allowing for that company's game to still run but they no longer have to pay to support it which - you would think - would be ideal. "I no longer have to pay overhead on my own product? And people still might buy it? That's great!" But, unfortunately, no.
AngryJoe covered it on his gaming news show, and while he felt like it was an uphill battle he also wished Ross the best of luck and said they'd keep an eye on how the suit progresses.
You do realized he has become a bit of a shill now? Defending corporates? You might not realize they’re not the same person you once knew them anymore.
@@aquilliusranger2137 Putting aside that the accusation has little to do with him saying "rock on, wish you the best" to Ross; we have different perceptions on the man and I don't think he's a shilling for any corporation (let alone corps in general) since he still give them shit from the top of his lungs pretty regularly for dumb and/or shady practices.
Mostly game-related ones, of course, but nonetheless. The most I can give is that he shills G-fuel or whatever it is as part of a sponsorship, which is fine if he actually believes in the product (I have no reason to assume he doesn't; with the caveat that i skip the ads segments whenever I watch a vid). I don't expect I'll sway anyone with a youtube comment, so from here I think the best we can do is agree to disagree until further notice.
Two ideas:
1. you should get in touch with Louis Rossmann. Literally just call him at work. He's super against the "you'll own nothing" thing and he works for FUTO, an organization that supports causes like this sort of thing. It's run by some billionaire, so he'll have good legal funding to pull this off.
2. stop calling the object in your considerations "game". Don't even call it "software". Instead, always use the word "product". Talking about a "product" makes people's thoughts about what should and should not be possible with it default to a different set of preconceptions than when you say "game". For example, "the company made the game unusable" has a different ring to a layman than "the company made the product unusable". So, you want to distance yourself from the product being a game, as much as possible. Don't talk about "lost media" and "games are art" and all that other nerdy sh!t. Just talk about ownership of a product, like a spatula or a diaper. It has to be extremely basic and understandable to people.
tough love at the end, but fair. "products as a service" does sound suitably dystopian, more so than GaaS anyway.
As a law student I have to agree on this, especially since this practice clashes against the very fundamentals of what a transaction does, not to mention being a complete violation of a person's right of ownership.
Of course, US laws tend to be so corrupt and bendable about these things, especially given the fleeting and intangible nature of software, that you'd have better luck convincing a jury of theft if someone actually stole a physical copy of your game since it's, well, a physical object. After all, imagine the hoops you'd have to jump through to convince people a company stole your software or is denying you access to it.
It's rather disheartening to imagine a court would care more about the plastic and paper rather than the stuff that's on it, where its true value is being stored.
I'd also like to add another comment which i already posted a poorer version of separately: Suing Ubisoft, one of the biggest French tech companies and a national pride, in France, an extremely proud country, would be extremely stupid. You should sue them in Germany, a country the courts and people of... have no pride for the French, and which the French have an innate disdain for. That's a huge "home field" advantage vs "enemy territory" disadvantage. The French gov is extremely protective of its rich, which is why when things go wrong, the French don't go to court or file petitions - because that doesn't work - they immediately skip over to putting cars on fire, blocking all of paris with tractors, dumping manure in front of govt buildings, and battling the police.
Yeah. Crossover episode with Rossmann would be epic rad!
Totally agree with both points. It seems like something @rossmanngroup would agree with and should be able to help with both publicity and practical advice.
Contact the institute for justice! They're an american nonprofit focused on fighting legal battles for those who otherwise can't or have opponents with insurmountably deep pockets. They focus on issues like constitutional rights, consumer protection, and civil liberties.
Please upvote for Ross to see.
You could try emailing him
The Electronic Frontier Foundation also shares a lot of interests in these kinds of cases, and might be worth contacting as well.
@@JosephDavies Ross says in the video, he attempted to contact the Electronic Frontier Foundation, but they never got back to him.
@@keyboardstalker4784 Argh, of course I get to that point right after I comment. That's what I get for jumping the gun (not something I usually do).
I do still think they're a good avenue to pursue, if only they'd respond to his requests. Clearly someone with a louder megaphone needs to get their attention.
@@keyboardstalker4784 Seems to make the EFF's existence a bit pointless if they won't reply to (or even acknowledge) something like this
As someone who played The Crew 1, its infuriating to see my copy of the game, with the entire game inside the disc, not work because it can't connect to shut down servers. Disgusting.
As an australian we can call the ACC (consumer protection) which is a government agency designed to protect australian consumers. If we can get them to pressure ubisoft with legal action we can at least set the precident that this will not be tolerated
ACCC cannot help if you agreed to a EULA.
@@ThatZenoGuy EULA isn't legally binding
@@almightysamwhich4203
Oh, it isn't? Well then go get a lawyer and win yourself an easy case!
The EULA does not represent a legally binding contract@@ThatZenoGuy
@@tearem9703
Oh I certainly agree. But go ahead and try that in the court lmao.
Since Ubisoft is based in France, the EU has more laws to protect consumers from this type of fraud, so this might be something to look into.
Agreed, if there is hope its in france
*LAUGHS IN EU*@@notfreeman1776
What you sell in the EU you has to follow the EU law, it doesnt mather where you are based
Someone with legal chops needs to follow this up and put the screws to Ubitrash.
I side with this as someone in the EU. They have much more to lose fighting in their home turf. Just don't play within their own yard (France) directly if possible. Not sure if the French Gov't would be willing to pull a fast one since at the end of the day, Ubisoft is still bringing some money into France's GDP, so I'd like to be on the lookout in that regard.
10 years since release. We’re reaching the 10 year mark of a bunch of live service games since 2014-2016 is when the boom started. Expect the Division 1 to be next in 2 years.
Jeez I didn't even think of that and I still love playing it every Christmas 😮
Oh no, not that multiplayer-focused bullet-sponge shooter set in New York that doesn't actually show you many landmarks in New York. Whatever will we do?
@gladspooky9455 Haha. I mean you do have some valid points there...but I would still be sad if I couldn't play it.
We all knew it was going to happen, time to see how much people care about it, I can't even say I don't buy games as a live service because there are a couple I play because my friends want to play and I'll maybe be pissed when they die
@@gladspooky9455I woupd be sad if that snowy game with nice views that I had to uninstall because it is online only and starts to lag after 20 minutes on my connectiob so I just cant play it.
the offline mode flags found in the files turned out to be completely unrelated, so that's a lot of hope gone
I love that you have the energy to actually try something like this. I'd love to help if I can, I'll keep watching your channel with great interest.
Funny you mention the car analogy, because in Poland I think some hackers found out trains from NewAG had software on them to intentionally break their trains and render them unusable if you either haven't used them in a month, or the GPS detects you're near a third-party repair place. Trains are hella expensive, so those hackers were doing Poland a favor by exposing them.
In the U.S. the tractor company John Deere has something similar going on. I can't remember if anything was done, but the general audience for farming tractors are more the 'screw it, I'll just get something else' sort of crowd. Kubota and Massey Fergusson did pretty well off that.
@@rayanderson5797 Oh yeah, heh, forgot about the John Deere BS.
@@rayanderson5797 Deere and Co. signed off an agreement last year to compromise on it and allow independent servicing and repairs (mostly because right-to-repair bills were passing through various state legislatures and it was a losing battle)
Oh hey its the apple way
I also had an incident like this here in the US where in the early 2000's I had a flat screen Samsung crt TV that stopped working not because anything was wrong with but because it just literally out of nowhere started blocking out the entire screen with the Samsung logo while whatever channel you had it on was playing behind the logo pretty much turning it into a radio. I was a tech savvy kid too there was genuinely no way to turn that off my parents had to go out and buy me a new TV which backfired on Samsungs end because we haven't bought anything that brand since
ACCC in Australia actually has a document outlining just this. When Doom Eternal introduced Denuvo Anticheat (which I see as invasive malware), I sited this to Steam, who then refunded.
The actual wording is on ACL (Australian Consumer Law)/ ACCC website, and goes along the lines of... (paraphrasing) "A good sold, cannot be later altered in such a way as to reduce value or functionality, without prior agreement to this action. Modifying access or features sold, without consent is illegal"
Pretty sure ACCC would like to hear this.
Enforcement has to happen before a product goes to market, because the lowest common denominator will always outnumber the informed consumer by a hundred times. If it's left to individual people to boycott/refund/sue, it's an automatic loss every time.
"Without prior agreement," oh man wait until you read the EULA
ACCC can't do a thing because you agreed to the EULA, which states your game can be taken away for any/no reason.
the golden age of piracy is about to make a big comeback if this continues
That would be absolutely wonderful. Sucks that it always comes about as a result of crappy providers.
Uhh no it isn't? These games cannot be pirated.
@@ThatZenoGuythey said the titanic was unsinkable too
@@racdude01
Nonsensical, titanic wasn't software.
@@ThatZenoGuysoftware engineering or mechanical engineering, either way the claim is that they're engineered to be infallible in some way. Cracking DRM "locks and keys" is just a matter of how much value comes from accomplishing it. It will be done when it's deemed worth it to the right group or person's time. It's obviously not going to be easy or or realistic to expect a reliable way to sidestep it, but it is possible.
So happy to hear you're trying to fight the good fight for all us gamers out here who don't have a platform or a voice to really get anything moving. I totally support what you're doing and would be happy to donate if you're serious about going forward with something.
The crew isn't the sort of game I normally enjoy, but I have real respect for it. It was a top 3 game dungeon episode. It is sad when any game shuts down, but this one is particularly tragic.
#1 definitely being Armed and Delirious
@@UsefullPigdisagree, i like spiderbot much more than that creepy bad point and click game
@@UsefullPigI have to give Bip Bop the shoutout here for my fave. Lots of great ones, but that’s the one that got me into the series, and I remember exactly how magical it felt to see the “never before seen” ending in the follow up episode
Oh yeah, it's easily my favourite Game Dungeon episode. My top 5 would be The Crew, Realms of the Haunting, The Black Mirror, Trackmania 2 and The Journeyman Project. But there are lots of great episodes aside from those.
@@UsefullPig I'm partial to phantasmagoria 2
If it was just The Crew's multiplayer shutting down? Crappy, but a fiscally understandable move.
The Crew being entirely taken away from people even though singleplayer can be saved with what must be a simple flip of the switch on Ubisoft's side? That's just being actively malicious.
In light of Ubisoft's recent comments about wanting people to "get comfortable with the idea of not owning games", this sort of thing comes across as a nasty humiliation ritual for their customers rather than a calculated business move.
I think they would say that ON PAPER the crew is a multiplayer game with $0 monthly fee. And there a lot of dead multiplayer games. Why do you think no one took actions against them? I don't know why but I think there is something there that would allow companies to get away with shutting down multiplayer games.
@@Emoziga I'm afraid we might be in a goldie-locks zone, they try to sell live service crap on discs, so it's obvious they sold something to you that they're taking away. Proper high-effort single player content dies along with it. With free2play titles and streaming only there's not much case of "ownership rights".
Thanks for undertaking this Ross, I’ve been following your channel for a while. I don’t game as much anymore, but I do think this does have wider potential for consumer law and the concept of ownership.
This video is more important than anyone realizes, and for the reasons you touched on. Our youth are being brainwashed that ownership is a lie, not just a myth. It is disgusting, and our young generations don't even have a chance in hell at success in their life because of it... rather any success would be in spite of it.
This is a reason I don't buy online only games anymore. But at least people are working on a single player mode from what I read.
Now Ubisoft thinks players not owning their games is a good thing.
And I agree with them! After a fashion, anyway. I stopped buying Ubisoft games a long time ago.
They dont think anything, they're trying to push for something that will make them more money long term with zero passion
Hey they'll give them away for free after a couple years, I literally don't buy Ubisoft because of this lol
@@1famekoubyWho is doing that here exactly? Someone you made up?
It is tho, more sales to Crew 2...
Imagine if movies or books were treated like how games are treated. That suddenly To Kill a Mockingbird or some other classic novel suddenly stops being sold, and any copy that exists gets destroyed. There would be riots.
It wouldn't surprise me if in the far future, all books became e-books that have DRM and can get digitally erased after a period of time.
Movies are already there.
Uhh... Amazon and "1984" (irrespective of if Amazon had the right to 'sell' the book in the first place).
Didn't SoturdNy remove stuff from people's consoles, even tho they bought those things?
"Problematic" movies are already being destroyed. Old books are being rewritten so as to not offend.
"You WILL have your game disabled, & you WILL be happy."
You vill eat ze programming bugs
I know someone else mentioned it but I second getting in contact with Louis Rossmann. He's a tech guy so he'd understand more than a layman what this entails and he's been a major proponent for consumer rights in multiple things; the largest being "Right to Repair." He's taken/taking on companies like Apple and John Deere so he's no slouch to heavyweight legal battles and would be a great resource to go up against a company like Ubisoft.
Quite fittingly, car manufacturers are already testing subscription models for physical features of cars.
BMW did a test run of putting the seat heating on a subscription. We're talking about wires that get heated by electricity here, not some high-tech stuff. They had to pull back, obviously, because people were up in arms about it. But still, they're testing the waters.
Car manufacturers must be in the top 5 most manipulative and evil industry in the world.
Well, the customers are part of the problem.
@@fabiofanf3e813 well yeah the NA market (the biggest one) is their bitch cuz they have no public transit lmao
@@fabiofanf3e813yea just look at the crazy ass prices to fix said cars
@@fabiofanf3e813Apparently it's cheaper to only make one option with heated seats rather than giving an option without because why would they think adding a subscription service is a good idea? It's not, it's only to make them extra money. There's no way they'll keep doing that, sounds like a future where you get charged for everything, just imagine it lol. IVe heard of BMW doing this in the past already locking down certain software features if you don't have a more expensive model even though it's all in the car already, just software locked. I'm by no means an expert on any of this just what I've heard, and my step dad had owned a lot of them from his lease and apparently was able to enable some of these features doing a few tricks I think with only a USB stick. No idea if he flashed custom head unit firmware or what but it's definitely scummy that they can get away with it.
The best model to base the campaign upon would be Planned Obsolescence.
From the Wiki: In 2015 the French National Assembly established a fine of up to €300,000 and jail terms of up to two years for manufacturers planning the failure of their products.
Seems pretty cut and dry to me. The fine probably won't matter but the jail terms probably would change Ubisoft's French executives minds. :)
The execs will go scott free because they can afford good lawyers. It's the small-fry workers that'll get jail time, sadly. 😒
@@georgeoldsterd8994 "superstar CEOs" are a shitty trend for sure
@@georgeoldsterd8994 I don't think a case could be made that the "small-fry workers" of a billion dollar corporation were at fault for a corporate mandate. The real reason execs won't get jail time is because governments simply don't want to punish them.
@@oligarchiesthere have been cases when mid-level execs would convince (including through coercion) lower level workers to take the blame and go to jail in their stead, so it's not all so far-fetched. But of course it depends on the situation.
But its a service not a product 😅
I hate that quote so much.
"You will own nothing and you'll be happy about it. "
It seriously make my blood boil.
Edit:It honestly should be illegal to kill games like this. Including taking away ownership of games from the customer.
And that hole "gamers should be comfortable not owning their games" should've IMMEDIATELY piss off gamers across the board. Cause why would they ever think that we ever be okay with that at all.
These bastards absolutely need a lawsuit, either keep it live or make it available offline. This kind of corporatic behavior is unacceptable
Man, I was so hyped for the new Prince of Persia. Then I read that "be more comfortable of not owning games" headline and remembered that I almost gave Ubisoft my money. Phew close call. Impeccable timing UbiCringe!
My hype vanished when I saw the douchebag haircut they gave the Prince. Got flashbacks to the DMC: Devil May Cry game.
@@payhemsehtI played the demo. It's not the prince. Your part of some group trying to rescue the prince or smth idk. While I usually find this haircut cringe as well, this wasn't a problem for me here.
The best way to tackle this legally would be to tie it into a bigger case, like Apple's Deathtimers or John Deere's Right to Repair, under the umbrella of Planned Obsolescence. Geriatric judges are never going to understand video games, never-mind "live services" or whatever other names there are for this kind of practice. It would have to be a tacked add-on to a bigger case.
That ignorance could work in its favor.
Not understanding how big a deal games are compared to Apple or John Deere might make lawmakers sweat a bit less to influence them, especially because it's just against Ubisoft and not the gaming industry as a whole.
Rather than planned, it's more like abuse of ownership through Internet control and intellectual property rights. These companies do have a case if going by the law, but this behaviour directly clashes with the spirit of the constitutional right to ownership.
This
I saw someone talk about how you should describe it as a product. “This product we paid for is now unusable” sounds better than “this game we paid for is now unusable”
@@Cyann33andaThird calling it a "product" and thinking that's gonna change how it's perceived, is moronic. Imagine if you took your internet provider to court and told the judge , "I've been paying for this product for 3 years. I can't afford to pay for it anymore and they TOOK AWAY THE PRODUCT IVE BEEN PAYING FOR. I paid for that product so they shouldn't be allowed to take it away since I've been paying for it for 3 years. DO SOMETHING". That's what y'all sound like. The only way to go here is just vote with your wallet. Stop buying games from these AAA companies that are known to do this sort of thing. There are so many great indie games out there , especially if you game on PC , there is no excuse to be giving these companies your money just to bitch and moan about their practices that they've been doing for years now. They aren't breaking any laws. When you pay for a game , you are paying for a license to use that game. You never "owned" any games. If anybody read the fine print on the back of the games , you would know this. Same goes for movies. That's why you can't charge people to come view your movies on your TV. You don't own the movie , you've just paid for a license to view it yourself. But tbh , even voting with your wallet probably isn't going to work either , because most gamers don't give a shit enough to stop buying new AAA games. I know it probably seems like most game enjoyers are up in arms , but in reality it's just a loud minority. I think it's best to just get over it and stop buying from these particular companies if you can't handle the idea of not being able to play your $70 game for more than 10 years. I personally don't give a shit. I mean yea id prefer it if I could play the games I've paid for as long as I'd like , but $70 for hundreds to thousands of hours of enjoyment is not a bad value. And there will be new games that Ill want to play anyway. Most of these games I'm not going to really care about 10 years from now. Of course there are some that I'll always come back to. But not most. As long as the value proposition is good , I'm not stressing over it. It's really in your best interest if you just get over it. Don't buy their games if you don't like it. That's literally all you can do to even have a hope for change. And your luck with that is slim to none.
It was my understanding that class action suits are usually taken on pro bono if there is a good case. They’re also usually seeking damages in the form of currency. The law firm will then take a percentage of whatever is won and damages will be doled out to the class members.
by the way, just found your channel, will support in any way i can bro really. this is an important fight
13:26 - The general public will soon become painfully aware of Cars As A Service. The first time an automaker sells someone a car with a specific feature set >included in the purchase price< and then an over-the-air update removes that already paid-for feature without the owner's clear permission, the lid will blow off of this scam. The government tends to pay attention when car owners are upset.
It's absolutely the same grift in another industry. Unfortunately, like Ross said, the law is always painfully lagging behind technology and someone has to make the legal stand first.
@@Wo1fbite. Unfortunately, gamers are far easier to ignore/dismiss than car owners.
The in 2023 the average transaction price for a new car was $48,759.
That sort of expenditure gets the attention of attorneys general and tort lawyers.
That's already a thing. I don't remember which one, but there was some big company that sold a bunch of tractors where the software straight-up shut down and rendered them inoperable after the company "closed the service" even though physically the vehicles were still in full working order.
Tesla is already doing this. Also, as someone in the auto industry, there's a MASSIVE push to make everything software-defined and to turn all features into subscription services.
Spoiler alert, no they won't.
Cars were making upwards to 700 or 800 HP back in the 80s and 90s till Congress created the EPA and emission requirements. Government didn't pay attention when car owners were upset back then.
Back in 2021 Congress passed the massive Infrastructure Bill which included a KILL SWITCH for cars. Nobody even reported on it except for a few tech channels concerned about privacy or consumer rights, they didn't pay attention to car owners then. Thomas Massie tried to defund the Kill switch program back in 2023 and it failed in Congress, and Congress didn't car about Car owners then either.
So spoiler, they don't care.
On time for Ubisoft's recent "Be glad you won't own your games" debacle.
Very WEF-esque...
I'll never forget hearing "We feel that people have had more than enough time to enjoy our game before we shut it down" and I kept thinking of how good Driver San Francisco looked and how I only just discovered it
I'm all in with you on this. Subbed + notifs on. Really hoping this gains the traction it needs. GG
Maybe contact Louis Rossman? He does a lot of videos about similar issues dealing with hardware. He also does/used to do lobbying, so he might have some ideas about what to do.
Came to mind as well
Seconded. I did a ctrl + f to see if anyone mentioned him.
Link him this video!
He sounds like hes given up trying to. Now he still reports it but spends half the video saying that everything has gotten worse and nothing he's done has helped
He also just made a video regarding something closely related, titled: "Ubisoft executive suggests you become comfortable not owning things"
So yeah, he might be interested.
A Ross-Action Lawsuit.
G-Man shall be our collective representative.
Any updates on this case?
Do you know Louis Rossmann? He has already been fighting similar battles. He also reported on Ubisoft not wanting you to own games. Not sure if can help in any way, but it never hurts if likeminded people know about each other.
God louis rossman is one of those fringe guys, that, i wanna kind of snuff out of my mind- but he has so many exact points legally, and he is pretty chill to match his style. Short and sweet 😂😂😂😂
Just a reminder, whenever a ToS/EULA, which isn't legally-binding on its own anyways, says that "we can take away your product for any reason at any time", this only rings true in a specific way due to legal reasons. See, it can be any reason, but it doesn't mean _no_ reason. And while they don't have to _disclose_ the reason why, the reason in question _still_ has to involve _you_ breaking their contract.
Ubisoft shutting down servers has nothing to do with you breaking their contract.
Where are you getting this?
@@Sewblonmeaning we could sue them or if we can't, don't buy Ubisoft games( well that's easy because they don't make good ass games like Nintendo, Sony, rockstar, fromsoft, square Enix and more. I can live not buying a game from them)
@@Sewblon I've contacted actual lawyers about this a little while back, as well as people with general legal education, and that's what most of them have claimed. Which makes sense.
I mean think about it, it's the same reason as to why businesses have the right to refuse service to anyone, but they can't actually mean just _anyone._ Because that would be discriminatory. It's against the law to refuse service just because you feel like it, or because of race, gender, or religious belief. They have the right to refuse service, but in order to practice that right, they still need a _genuine_ reason as to why they can't. And said reason has to fall on the consumer, not on the company. For example they can't refuse service to you because they think you look funny, or just because they feel like it. They _can_ however, refuse service if you came into the store being rude and disrupting the business. Or if they just _think_ you're going to do something suspicious, they can't refuse service because of that, but they can if you _are_ doing something suspicious.
An agreement on a software license basically says you must follow these guidelines, if not, we can take your product away. Well guess what, we followed their guidelines, and they're still taking our product away. We didn't provoke them by breaking the contract, they're just taking it away because they felt like it. They _cannot_ do that regardless of what the ToS says, for the very same reason why stores and actual businesses can't refuse service to someone just because they feel like it. We as consumers didn't provoke them in any way to allow them to refuse service. _Especially_ since this is obviously being done maliciously by not only refusing to make an offline patch so we could at least still play it, but then they also removed anything offline-related and encrypted what's left. They _really_ didn't want us being able to play the game we own even after shut down, and I don't think this is just coincidence. Especially with today's Ubisoft where they want gamers to be more comfortable with not actually owning their games, regardless of how much you spent on it or if you own it physically.
But the best part is that none of this matters. A contract can say whatever it wants to, but as Ross said, a contract is not above the law.
TL;DR A company cannot truly take away a game you purchased for "any reason" for the same reason that a business cannot truly refuse service to just "anyone". There has to be a real reason involved and that reason must lie at the fault of the consumer. The consumer must provoke them, i.e. we break their contract. Just like how you won't get served at a convenience store if you walk in and start being a massive jerk, not because they feel like it or because of your race, gender, religion, etc.
@@JackFoxtrotEDM The problem is that legal matters are often settled by the amount of money you can burn.
It's easier to just boycott. Healthier, too.
It's been mentioned a couple of times in these comments already, but definitely contact Louis Rossmann, he deals pretty heavily in covering the legal drama of the tech world and has done lobbying before to protect consumer rights so he might know the best places and strategies to get the ball rolling if its possible at all.
More coverage for this call for help is definitely help in itself
Louis Rossmann is a GOAT, dude is great for this kind of thing. We need to take the power back@!
It may not be exactly a right to repair case, but it is still adjacent. Should be given a try at least.
@@morpherd2tmlLouis cares about right to ownership
For the Ppl living in canada who want to help toward this issue, we could ask for help from the Canadian NCP to ask to save the Crew, if you guys wana submit a request and help further whit this, id highly suggest you do this, so we can raise a new alarm to our government as consumers that we need to keep certain rights, especially whit a product that definitely still can work after its "planed obsolescence" which is technically not allowed in the electronic world, so i think it should be only right that its the same in the computing software world too.
Keep up the good work! It's one of the only games I was really playing throughout the pandemic.
innocence isn't enough to overturn a conviction is maybe the most dystopian thing I've heard all week and I've been playing cyberpunk
Our dystopias are utopian compared to reality...
1894 was a satire, not a manual, god dammit.
The Supreme Court deciding that innocence is not enough is not just something that happened randomly. It happened because Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices with this twisted view of criminal justice. The justices appointed by Obama -- Kagan and Sotomayor -- dissented against this decision. Voting matters.
One day you will understand Cyberpunk is not cyberpunk enough.
@@Maddrax 1894 is a book about a distopian dictatorship in the victorian era written by Orw Georgewell. You boomers really should read more instead of just saying Okay Generation-Steam when we try to enlighten you.
I fear we may be seeing the starting signs of "Limited Time Games" or "Fear of Missing Out Games"
It's a natural next (evil) step for a company like Ubisoft. Plenty of games companies already are doing this with game content. Limited time battle passes, limited time buyable/earnable content, etc.
Didn't Nintendo already do something like that with that Mario collection for Switch?
I read both of those as "games to pirate".
If they're even worth that, which, regarding what ubirap1st craps out, is no, imo
There's a few examples of this already, though mostly as lead-ups to bigger releases. The biggest example of this I could think of is Curiosity: What's Inside the Cube. It was a limited run game leading up to the announcement of Godus (and some say playing Curiosity was better than Godus).
There's a lot of other BS that happened in relation to that, mostly because Peter Molyneux is a real trash bag of a promoter and studio head.
ARGs are another example of this, though the case for them being able to be played ad infinitum is probably much less, as it takes effort on the side of the game runner to run them, and people don't pay to play. Usually.
@@Guags Well Nintendo just sold it for a limited time. But you can still play it fine. And since it released physically you can still buy it 2nd hand if you really want. Kinda what Disney did with the Disney Vault for VHS tapes. You aren't missing out on the game. In the end it's not that different from any other game except they give you the exact time when they wont make any more copies beforehand.
This would definitely be the best case for class action lawsuit, so go for it. Fundraiser while important for the money, would as side effect bring the media attention to whole case, blowing it out of proportions even more so this could work. Sure, I still hope Ubisoft would somehow come to their senses and create offline mode at least (like Bluebyte did with Anno 2070 after similiar backlash) but in case they don't I say we shouldn't blindly accept it - we should make ourself be heard to create some sort of judical precedent.
Two things: a) in case of class lawsuit they would probably try to reason with expired music licenses as one of the reason of taking this game down (they could prolong them with no issues still), b) EU has better consumer protection and it even has digital goods ownership laws for first buyer of digital item so might be good filing the lawsuit there (the moreso since Ubisoft if French company).
ive been watching your content for years and years and years... for as long as i can remember, since I was very little. Thanks for the content. RIP the crew btw!!!
Ubisoft also recently stated that people will have to be more comfortable of not owning games
I'd love to see a long form talk episode with Ross and Louis Rossmann, about owning stuff, right to repair perhaps, and copyright laws etc.
I'm not worried, I've already become very comfortable *not* giving ubisoft (or any other company that think alike) *any* of my money ever again.
I am pretty comfortable not buying Ubisoft games
@@user-ck5ns1mp5oThat would be a great collab, hah
Haven't bought any game of theirs in years, this puts them on my hostile boycott list until I hear that guy was fired.
4:26 I lost almost all faith in physical copies after I bought Skyrim the first time it released. I bought a physical copy on release day, even went to wait for the local Gamestop to open so I could pick it up immediately, brought it home, and once I opened the package, the first thing that caught my eye was a *Steam code.* At the time, I was more naive and thought "oh cool, that's convenient, my physical copy means I don't need to buy a digital copy for Steam." But I still put the disc in my PC to try to install it...only for the disc to immediately bring up Steam's game key entry window. I went ahead and installed via Steam, and for a while I just didn't think about what just happened, but it sat in the back of my mind. Some time later, it hit me that they didn't put the game on the disc at all, or a game launcher to install and update it. It was just a disc that prodded Steam directly to get the digital platform to do all of the work.
The gravity of that revelation came in full force years later, with the disappointment that was Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5. While I didn't buy it (just didn't have a PS4 at the time), I heard all the outrage over how poorly it was made, and specifically about how the game disc itself didn't actually have the whole game, it only had the tutorial level. Everything else in the game was all attached to a "patch" that tripled the space the game required. Sure, this was caused by some weird circumstances (they had to have the game complete and selling before the rights expired, so they figured they'd get the bare bones out and patch it in post), but it immediately set off several thoughts that any casual observer would call paranoid.
1) Physical copies can now have part or all of a game's data tied to a digital server, rendering the physical copy meaningless without internet and the relevant online service
2) This is not limited to PC games, now that console games all use internet services for updating and online features
3) It is literally impossible to tell the difference between a physical copy that has all the game data and one that just has *enough* data to poke the digital servers, before putting the physical copy in the machine, unless they actually label the packaging to make that clear
4) Physical copies for modern digital media are no longer a reliable method to ensure the safety of your own purchases
5) We need customers rights for digital products years ago, but I know no one with a time machine to fix that (This was before I found Accursed Farms, but Ross has stated he doesn't like using it so)
Sorry for the rambling tangent, I know that Ross's point was that the physical copies still won't work when the server shuts down, but I wanted to bring up the unreliability of physical media today.
Too late to cry now, what you shouldve did back then is to give this physical copy back, you and everyone else who bought it. We cant stop it now, not anymore.
Sadly, outside of piracy the only way to own your games is GOG, and it doesn't have all games Steam has.
PC games have required online activation etc since, like, at least half life 2. Not having the game data came not long after. The only reason earlier pc games didnt do it, is because the internet wasnt really fast enough to download all that data efficiently. PC physical copies have always been a minefield since the internet got big.
@@bigboysdotcom745 Im playing on PC since early 90s so you dont need to tell me how it was back then. But I can find my old CDs and most of them are gonna be in working order unless few with the worst possible DRMs, but even in this case you can... find other sources lets call it. With games like The Crew there are no other sources. Point is - need to be always online, especially in a game like The Crew where multiplayer is a joke is worse than StarForce even.
@@Haarba1 I did that with Half Life 2 and that was the last time I bought anything from Valve and started to p rating everything.
I'm just one guy so it doesn't matter, the sheep will keep the corporations alive and they will in the future.
Oh man, this voice is blast from the past. I'm very happy to have rediscovered your content.
There should be laws to protect game preservation. Companies should be requierd to have Lan options and make games drm free after shutdown. Its the artistic work of so many people killed.
To add to the car allegory, if this goes anywhere, try to appeal to a jury in the USA if you do anything here.
Juries love the facts of the matter, and the fact is we're losing something we were told we could own.
Judge care about the law and technicalities. This is also useful, but less so in our case.
Perhaps, but in my experience talking to people I know about these sort of topics, their response is often some form of "I assumed that's always how it worked" or "no point in fighting it, we've already lost" and if you get a Jury filled with people that cynical about digital ownership it might be worse than judging solely based on the law. The Corpos just need to convince everyone they're too big to fail and they can win without fighting; for many this is already the case.
I'd just replace 'signal that melts your car' with 'they come and torch your car to ashes'
I don't like the car analogy, as it muddies the conversation a bit. Detractors can easily go to frivolous questions like, "Wouldn't that be unsafe if I was currently driving" or that "Games are an entertainment and not an everyday need". I'm just what-if-ing but it's possible.
I think a smart TV is the closest everyday parallel. They're pay once, no recurring fee. They have a menu software that can possibly connect to corporate servers. What if that fails due to corporate actions or discontinuation?
"Innocence isn't enough"??? That's some Imperial Inquisition sh*t.
A con dominated Supreme Court is little more than just that.
I can't really help in this endeavor, but man I wish you the best of luck, Ross. If you're successful in this, well.. who knows, maybe we can finally get some good news.
I still think it should be a law that requires every developer to either make the game offline or release the server software when they shut down the game
100% yes, I see absolutely no detriment to the game company either. They already planned to stop taking money for the game, so the server software should have no value to them. Of course, this isn't how corpo F's see things... because they can't lose control of anything, and everything is a trade secret to them.
A UA-cam channel to look into is Louis Rossmann, which makes lots of videos about right to repair and right to own. Specifically, he’s made many videos on companies taking functionality away from consumers after purchase, so if you could find a way to collaborate in some way, then it would likely be mutually beneficial, since he is almost certainly interested in making sure that companies legally can’t take away things you’ve purchased.
Just a note, a single law suit *could* start a chain reaction in other countries, and even kick of an investigation. So lets hope we can do at least something!
I WANT MAH GAME BACK
I admire your decidication! I'll surely support the fight for game-preservation if we manage to come up with some plan!
For the car analogy, we have companies building kill switches into vehicles now, meaning they're becoming more software-like and ownership can be removed at any time. At this point, we're likely better trying to fight to have cars remain usable regardless of whether it's updated or not and then using that understanding to attack games being shut down.
One issue I immediately see about this going to any sort of court in the US is that company lawyers here love to play a game of attrition. They'll request a change of court to a different state at every opportunity until it's accepted. Either the state they choose will be one with less consumer protections than another, or they'll rinse and repeat until they either get a state with less consumer protections and a guarantee that a judge will say "go fuck yourself", or the plaintiffs run out of money. They'll aim for the former being an option, but they'll have the resources to bankroll the latter.
Or there'll just be some settlement where they give people who had a copy of the game a $10 uplay coupon or something. Usually how things seem to go unfortunately.
Surely this can be made a federal case? But I'm not American so for all I know maybe it doesn't work that way.
>They'll request a change of court to a different state at every opportunity until it's accepted.
Can't do that. There must be a basis for a change of venue such as a fair trial not being guaranteed in the current locale. Plus if a suit came to them it would be due to something that crossed state lines, which makes it squarely within Federal jurisdiction.
When it comes to jurisdiction, remember that Ubisoft is a french company.
@@refutonefandus >There must be a basis for a change of venue such as a fair trial not being guaranteed in the current locale.
I'd imagine that's what they'd try for. I'm mixed about it being a federal case. It would help in that regard, certainly, but I'd also imagine it would take longer and they could use that time to bleed money out of the plaintiffs somehow.
The weird thing to me is if they just patched the game to be playable offline, they could also keep selling it and making at least some money off it
I think this is may be something to do with the cost-benefit for them to still have to maintain OS compatibility if they're still selling it, and don't even want to bother with that, plus getting people move over to their new game.
@@Wo1fbite. OS compatibility? Nah, that's either the OS's job or the users job.
@@Wo1fbite. What are you talking about? Steam sells old games without fixes, you are on your own to make them work.
@@lucasLSD At least half of the Ubisoft catalog that they sell is a crap-shoot whether it'll work or not.
I think it might have to do with the kinds of licenses they paid to get the licensed content in the game. Maybe it was cheaper for them to 'rent' car brands rather than to buy a license for it to forever stay there?
I appreciate you doing something about this! Game presentation should always be priority number 1
creating a whole game with offline mode then locking it away it is crazy
It would probably fly in EU courts if not the US. They tend to be more "pro-consumer".
As an engineer, one of the most important programs we deal with is Programmed Logic Controller software in factories, power-plants, airports etc. If Rockwell Automation just randomly decided you shouldn't have RS Studio 5000 (which i'm just using as an example) suddenly entire supply chains and power grids shut down.
If the laws on games were applied to that scenario, software companies can just arbitrarily push the off button on the economy and cause shortages with a whole slew of dystopian consequences and the law would just say "sucks to be you peasant, have fun starving LMAO!"
Now imagine this same scenario but with a program used by Defense. Suddenly the PRC or Russia or any other entity just bribes the program's supplier to just arbitrarily shut down Radar and communications software. By allowing this trend in games to continue you give that sort of bullshit legal precedent to defend itself with.
I think everyone, big corporations and the government included, can all agree that's probably not a precedent we want floating around, where we just structure laws so that silicon valley has 1984 levels of control on everything.
This is my thought process as well. It's why I keep an eye on this series.
I remember was it Solarwinds, some sort of centralized software management for many companies, was injected with backdoors like you suggest and thus attacker, likely nation state(hostile) got access to huge variety of organizations. This is software example but could very well be like you describe applied to manufacturing/infrastructure. This has happened in some cases browser plugin dev suddenly put malware in their plugin, possibly similar scenario to earn some cash.
I never saw it that way. That's definitely a precedent I don't want floating around.
RS Studio 5000 is a one off purchase of $20 I assume?
As usual, silicon valley is the root of most modern problems.
At least I beat my first real driving game before it was shut down.
R.I.P The Crew, you had so much potential. And your old title music rocked so hard.
Thank you for being a little piece of my childhood, even if I sucked and gave up before the first area was done.
R.I.P
Please, anyone with the skills and/or knowledge. Try and crack this game. Fuck Ubisoft and their anti-consumerism. We need to preserve this game.
We all need to remember “games” are still products that we’re purchasing, so they should be held up the same scrutiny of any other product we purchase as consumers. We have to remember we do have some rights in this fucked up world we live in.
Meanwhile Inquisitor Martyr is closing servers down yet the developers are making it work offline so it never dies. Plus recently (Just before the DRM drama... Darn it...) I got in to Capcom's Megaman Dive Offline too... Another online gacha game that got saved and turned in to a single player game (Slightly different, but neat seeing a gacha game saved... Even if they sell it?). You'd think a huge company like Ubisoft would be able to save their games too... >_>
Damn, I jusr wrote my own comment about Martyr
Well, I think the whole point is that they don't want their games saved. They want to crank out commercial cookie-cutter digital MREs that are arbitrarily connected to online servers, and then pull the plug on them when they want to start the process again with a new sequel. I'm not even sure Ubisoft cares about player engagement; I barely see any Ubisoft titles being touched by streamers.
@@mc_zittrer8793 "I barely see any Ubisoft titles being touched by streamers."
Good
Their ability to save a game hinges on their forethought to preserve it in the first place.
Building an online-only game makes it harder to pirate, and generally lets the company have full control (like if they want to downgrade the graphics a couple of months before a sequel is announced, hypothetically).
There's a lot of work that has to happen in the background to preserve a game once it's build with online-only functionality, and why spend money on that when Ubisoft has the option to not do that?
They don't make money doing that, so they won't. Companies are simple like that.
Damn, I knew this was coming ever since the Game Dungeon episode on it, but it's really sad to see it go
Link to video?
UA-cam hates when I post URLs, but just type in “Ross crew” in that bar up there and you’ll find a picture of him in sunglasses looking sideways
@@Lyoko42o
ua-cam.com/video/8KZwcHOSRgQ/v-deo.htmlsi=N6O3DqKoY2si4pDw
Steam originally did not offer refunds, and it was the ACC (australia consumer protection) that overruled them and is why they offer refunds now. Don't rule out trying this in aus as there is strong legal precedent there already, even regarding video games.
If buying isnt owning piracy isnt stealing.
April Fools should never be this telegraphed, Ubisoft.
Hey Ross, I recently found out that when my friend and I tried to play the old LAN multiplayer on Splinter Cell: Conviction, we discovered that it had been disabled by Ubisoft. The game requires a handshake with a server before opening the menu for it on PC. Additionally, they've been messing with the servers for Blacklist ever since they switched over to Ubisoft Play.
Well there goes my last hope on playing conviction with someone else
The same with Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 1 and 2
I also discovered this last year, with chaos theory. It might work with Nucleus and two controllers, but uhh, I don't have two controllers.
Omfg ngl i thought you sounded like the guy who did the freemans mind og UA-cam game playthrough on half life but you are him your a legend imo you made my child hood
I heard about this and thought you might make a vid about it. Hope this issue gets more attention at some point. Could also be good with the whole planned obsolescence debate. Either that moving forward and positively affecting this issue or vice versa.
Yknow, a little while ago there was an online only game called Megaman X Dive that got shut down. A couple weeks after, the company (capcom) released the Megaman X Dive Offline, which was just the entire game modified to remove microtransactions and work properly offline. Granted, it still cost $30 to essentially play an offline gacha game you may have already paid money for, but I thought it was interesting that they even thought to do it in the first place where other devs would simply pull the plug and leave it.
I wish more games, especially MMOs, did this more. Every once in a while I get an urge to play Tera, but since it's shut down I can't. I know it's not a very good game, but a lot of work and stuff was put into its art and its combat and its aesthetic and it feels like such a huge shame to just have it evaporate one day.
This is still hugely anti-consumer as far as I'm concerned. Most studios killing games today likely intend to sell them again at a later date in some form. Some companies turn around and sell them again right away. It's still crap. The worst-case scenario is always the game being dead forever, though.
For fans of Defiance, we had the same issues. Defiance was a great MMO. But due to Gamigo's business practices, it spit the fanbase between two different copies of the same game and caused the playerbase to be down for both, leading to Defiance being closed down. Fans right now haven't given up. The game world is back up and running to be able to run around in (without NPCs and enemies and such, and solo at best), but the fans are also working on a remake of the game using Unreal Engine also. And we've managed to unpack the game files to get access to models, textures and sounds, leaving it possible for us to make game mods for other games using those assets (in fact, one person I know took a couple of weapons from the game and made them as modded weapons in PayDay 2, even recreating the ammo types from the original MMO) as a means of keeping Defiance alive in some way. So, there are always a chance someone can crack The Crew.
Ubisoft's CEO recently said that players need to "get used to not owning their games" on physical release. Well, fans have cited what author Cory Doctorow, a man who happens to be copyright hostile, has said in regards to the idea of companies pulling features on devices that have already been sold: "If purchasing isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing." I'm sure someone will figure out the crack in the encryption, but will take time to do.
Wait, what, really? I remember asking around a while ago and was told nobody was working on anything like that for the game.
@@AlphaGargthere’s a team called the crew Unlimited
If fans need to get used to not owning their games, then publishers need to be get used to nobody wanting to buy new games
Imagine the landfil from 21m+ cd's and cases that are uselss from them doing this.
My point
I was waiting for you to talk about this!!!
This whole thing is a dark reflection of what happened to me just a week ago.
I bought Need for Speed Hot Pursuit for the Xbox 360. It was advertised with the Autolog feature, an online leader/message board to which the game is always connected. The game released about a decade ago.
I put it on my Xbox 360. It tried connecting to autolog. It didn't. It still plays fine. If Ubisoft can't do the damn same thing it's because they don't WANT to, because it's well possible.
Yeah man, you're still basically the only creator I frequent who seems to CARE about games dying, I wish that weren't the case, and I am damn sure behind you on this.
Started happening a long time ago. We just didn't bother reading the small print. Now we pay the price.
Yep fully knew the risk when i was getting this game in early December, news came 10 days later, the risk was worth it, will believe that the community will come up with some magic patch and keep the game from going into digital void.
I have been playing this game since 2015/16 and today April 1st 2024 I booted up the game only to find out the servers were shut down, seeing this video gave me hope and i wish you the best luck if there's a way i can help let me know
Have you talked with Louis Rossmann about this? He's very vocal about how our ownership rights are being eroded. One of his latest videos is even about that horrible Ubisoft CEO quote. He has a lot of lobbying experience and currently works for a non-profit organization - FUTO - that might have some interest in your case. Idk if FUTO would actually do anything since this isn't exactly the kind of thing they normally focus on, but it might at least be worth reaching out to Louis about if you haven't already.
It's sad the EFF isn't doing anything about this issue.
12:50 I reckon a more accurate analogy would be to say that they only melt the car's engine via signal, so they can say you "technically" still have a car, it just doesn't work anymore... Or even more realistic what with cars becoming more electronic, they just remotely disable your ability to turn on the engine, even though all the parts of it are still completely functional.
That’s not even an analogy. That’s actually what happens if you don’t get the latest Tesla firmware update. Car just won’t start!
@@throwawaydetective9080 Now imagine if Tesla decided to shut down their update servers, so after the last expiration date of the latest software, every Tesla dies. Not sure if that's how Tesla cars work, but that's how THIS works.
That’s a worse analogy. Some people buy certain cars because they look cool. If the actual car is still there to look at, then they would still have some value to some people.
@@paulaccuardi9071 It would have to include some way to analogize the DMCA protections. In this case, it's impossible to remove the wrecked engine without destroying the car... in some way. There really isn't a good physical analogy for how complete encryption can be, which is why it tends to stump or go over the heads of legislators and judges. The closest I can think of would be stating that the DMCA makes it illegal to sell or share the particular kind of tool that can remove the bolts holding the engine to the car's chassis, so that even if it's possible to still use the car and replace the engine technically, it's a felony to do so once Ubisoft has disabled the engine.
@@paulaccuardi9071 thats not the main purpose of a car though. if you sell someone a car you have to explain to them that it doesnt work or face legal action. You couldnt feasibly sell someone a car and then say one day youre going to make the engine permanently melt and that its illegal to put a new engine in it. You could buy the disc for The Crew because you like the cover art but the disc for a dead game has almost no value for its intended purpose- to be played
I am really glad that you brought this up. I am A FAN for The Crew Game and as it diminished and lost players over the years, I asked myself "why?" Because it is such an amazing game. If you want to take action to keep this game from going anywhere, why not get users to come back and maybe tell Ubisoft it's in their best interest to update the game than get rid of it?
Ubisoft would never announce that if they were not sure.
Convincing them to turn back is out of reach now.
I have to say I see a fair bit of crossover between your goals and Louis Rossmann's goals with right to repair. I would suggest seeing if you can get in contact with his team for assistance. A joint force could accelerate things!
It finally happened.
That ur mom left u for adoption center?
@@madhunter6420 Where are your parents?
@@madhunter6420 cringe, delete this comment.
@@madhunter6420 Jesus, did _your_ mom get a pregnancy discount at the liquor store or something?
@@madhunter6420skill issue detected
I will just say.. Thank you Ross for staying angry about this nonsense. A lot of creators who used to inform consumers about this sort of thing years ago have moved away from the industry, have been bought out or straight-up died (rip TotalBiscuit). Ross is one of the few reasonable people out there rallying for consumer protection in the game industry. Keep it up, your efforts are appreciated.
After all these years, the only one I've found that comes even close to TB is Louis Rossmann, and he doesn't cover games. (But used to play Dota2 too (4?), coincidentally)
One of my favorite games that I sunk days into. I seriously hope the modding community keeps it alive. I appreciate making a video on it
Top lad. I'm glad there are people out there putting in the work. Also, I have a feeling that pirates would step up out of pure spite. The internet takes no losses. (I know you addressed this already, its a little bit of cope because I did buy and enjoy The Crew.)