50 second version here: ua-cam.com/users/shortsiH7k0IZ5PYE UPDATES: 1. UK petition is up! petition.parliament.uk/petitions/659071/ 2. Australian petition is up! (The wording accidentally ended up too broad, but we think we can still recover it): www.aph.gov.au/e-petitions/petition/EN6080 3. All Australian owners of "The Crew": Try to send me an email or twitter message so I can contact you later. I don't need your personal info, but later we'll have a law firm you can send it to which will help on getting the ACCC's attention on game destruction. 4. I've just learned that it's safe to wait only 1 week with no response from Ubisoft about The Crew before contacting the DGCCRF instead of 2. The guides will get updated on it later.
You need to contact local youtubers in all the EU and make them translate your video or collaborate with them in other ways. The language barrier is the major hurdle for the video to go viral in Europe. No matter what they say, the majority of people in most European countries don't speak English. I also advise to use T-1K T-0K, it's very popular in the EU and it's not weirdly p0Iit1cal like the American one.
as silly as the meme is, gamers are largely working class. This issue of corporations trying to control ownership of commodities as far as they can go is a part of the larger problem of the profit motive's immense influence on decisions. Decisions like to not preserve games. In a way, it is ironic because always having access to older titles on every platform would mean higher profits for them. Our economic system is one of rationality and irrationality.
Not even just gamers. I imagine whatever the outcome of this lawsuit will at least set some precedent towards all digital media, Movies, Music, and TV shows. The problem is definitely most egregious with games but this is a problem in all mediums. I mean a few months back Warner Bros just decided that anyone who bought movies and tv content on the Sony store no longer can access it.
Overwatch 1 was artificially terminated in a transparent ploy to help Overwatch 2. But nothing like showing you can't be trusted when you destroy the immediate prior game your team released. This is a rare example of planned obsolescence, they literally stop the old product working in hopes you'll get the new one.
'Help' Overwatch 2? OW2 is OW1. It's the same content, they just stuck a 2 on the end of it so they could sell it a second time. It was a balance patch they released pre-orders for. They didn't even honor the pre-orders, by the way, they sold a special edition for the PvE aspect, and then when they scrapped the dedicated PvE mode, they took the opportunity to sell the scraps of that mode for another $15.
And now they recently changed their EULA saying you don't own any of their games, they're at the front of this practice, Ubisoft and EA following behind.
@@KarazolaX Not really, they fundamentally changed the game and how it works into an arguably worse product with no way of reverting back to the original model for the sake of profits. Overwatch 1 was taken out back, shot in the head and replaced with a Free to Play Battle Pass shooter riddled with microtransactions.
@@KarazolaXmore like OW 0.5. They took 1 and just made it stutter more and basically made a storefront for shitty skins. They even wiped all ranked data from ow1 so you really dont have any history left besides some bs qp stats.
UPDATE! 15th april 2024: I've discovered that Ubisoft have removed the game from the store, my library, and even in my playtime statistics! So I can't even see I've ever played the game!!!
If you had it on steam, you can still see it: 1. click on your username in the top-right corner of steam, account details. 2. click on "View purchase history", first option to the right of your "Wallet Balance" 3. Scroll down until you find the purchase for "The Crew", click on it. 4. Click on "I would like to view or print the receipt for this purchase". You should be good to go.
Remember how large corporations also said it was somehow "impossible" for their business to be setup to work from home? Enter Year 2020, took less than 24 hours.
That still holds true. People making games have a average or even a less performing computers to make games than they have in studios. I mean, I ain't defending AAA games but Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War suffered from this issue. Otherwise, obviously with more time, you get same results. But that's the thing, "time".
@@CoolManCoolMan123 In regards to the game industry, you're absolutely right. It isn't possible everywhere, and for game development, WFH could a mess for several technical reasons. I was alluding more to the idea that all companies will lie to you if it suits their agenda. It's another instance where they said "impossible" when it really wasn't, it's just a convenient lie for them. Ironically though, Cold War was one of my favorite entries in the series for multiplayer, against all odds and expectations from me! I know a lot of people disliked it, but the mechanics and gunplay felt like 2nd nature to me in that game, it was a CoD where I was consistently top of the board in almost every single round, and it hasn't been that way since lol. Though I'm a huge fan of DMZ from MW2, so sad they quit development on that.
@@onwardparasites2644 don't be offended but you seem like the oddest person who like BOCW. I mean, you top BOCW consistently while liking DMZ(which wasn't well received by Treyarch community)
@@CoolManCoolMan123 No offense taken! My CoD preferences are pretty odd, I'd be the first to admit that lol. The Raven Software one's I avoid like the plague (except for MW3, and there is definitely regret there), Treyarch releases are OK but usually a bit gimmicky for my tastes, Cold War was the exception, but I loved BO1 back when. Zombies I could personally either take or leave, I don't dislike the mode, but I find myself getting bored after 20 rounds and intentionally downing myself. DMZ felt like a completely different game than anything CoD has put out before, so it's a bit hard for me to make comparisons to other games in the franchise. I won't claim to have mad skills in DMZ, but I do enjoy the mode A LOT and can hold my own as a solo player. I think the best part about DMZ was how dynamic it was, every time you infilled it was different, maybe a player team will push you immediately, and you're stuck in a 30 minute rotation sniper fight, or maybe you'll hop on comms and do a truce with another team, it was very exciting. It's super heavy on PVP now that it's no longer being developed. And as far as I am aware, there isn't any other game out there like it aside from Escape from Tarkov, which is more much "hardcore". I like hardcore tactical games, but I enjoyed that DMZ was more casual. I'd love to see another game utilize the core gameplay style as DMZ had. With talking this much about DMZ, it's also worth noting that I'm definitely not a warzone fan, nothing against it, just not my thing, don't have as much fun with it as others seem to. MW 2019 was also top tier rated for me, and that's also another unpopular opinion it seems. Map design in MP was soooo good!
I'm surprised at Ross' strength of character. He doesn't work in the games industry, has no legal background and definitely didn't want to be the guy leading this whole movement, but here he is. He rose up to the task when no one else would, and he might actually make a difference. He's going through the hero's journey.
As an LBP fan who recently got hit the horrible news that Sony officially shut down LBP as a whole, rendering millions of user generated levels, games, and even movies lost forever. I’m definitely all for this movement.
A potential legal avenue to follow in US courts: Attack the legality of EULAs as a whole. In the 90's, phone companies stuck arbitration agreements inside the sealed boxes of new cellphones. Anyone who tried to sue the company was being told they agreed to arbitration when they bought the phone. The courts, however, ruled that because there was no way for the customer to see the agreement before they bought the phone, the agreement wasn't legally binding. So we have an established legal precedent to work from. Likewise, it's not really possible to view the EULA before you buy a videogame... So how can an agreement you are forced to agree to in order to play a game you've already bought and paid for be legally enforceable? You've literally already bought the game the first time you have a chance to see the EULA. They literally force you to sign the EULA under duress ("you can't use this item you paid for already without agreeing to this"), which on it's face makes it not legally enforceable. Would likely need to be handled as a class action lawsuit. Also likely only valid for people who bought physical copies of a game. This video by Steve Lehto talks about it some: ua-cam.com/video/RR9g1KsDtD0/v-deo.html
@@mechm1nd Which is why I said it would probably only apply to people who bought physical copies of the games, because they don't get any digital EULAs until after the purchase.
The case of ProCD vs Zeidenberg says that EULAs are enforceable even if you can't read them until after you make the purchase, as long as you have the opportunity to read them afterwards, and reject them by returning the product. But most stores don't accept returns in real life once you open the product. So that might not apply. But the lawyer that Ross talked to said "This cannot be fixed by a lawsuit. It has to be an act of Congress." So the best route to fixing this in the U.S. is probably tracking down your Congressperson and getting right in their face physically where they can't ignore you.
@@Sewblon ProCD vs Zeidenberg doesn't apply, because the inherent facts of the case are different. ------ The CD-ROM package purchased by Zeidenberg included an external notice (within the shrink wrap that covered the box) that a license was enclosed within the package. --- The Seventh Circuit overturned the lower court decision and ruled that a shrinkwrap license is in fact an enforceable contract. The circuit court held that while the message on the outside of the CD-ROM package was merely a notification of the full contract to be found inside, this did not force a purchase as Zeidenberg claimed. ------ The key here is there was notification on the outside of the package that a EULA was enclosed. I just checked a whole slew of my games (granted, my newest system is PS3), and as far as I can tell, none of them have a notice about an enclosed EULA. Also, and this is vitally important, that ruling only applies to the 7th Circuit Courts. It is NOT legal precedent in any other Circuit. Also, it wasn't seen by the Supreme Court, so a case with the exact same facts could still be filed in the 7th Circuit if the plan is to go all the way to SCOTUS from the start. And one last key fact, that case only applies if you can return the product opened for a full refund. Most game stores will not accept returns of new game purchases once they're opened, which is another thing that makes ProCD vs Zeidenberg not apply.
i would absolutely love a EULA-limiting case to be brought and won. they have a reasonable purpose hypothetically, but should absolutely be very limited in what they can disclaim away and/or do.
Ross, you should consider reaching out to the Video Game History Foundation, whose entire mission is related to recognizing games as art that needs to be preserved. They might be able to signal boost this project or provide other resources to help!
I plan to, I just saw most publicity as not that helpful until I had a place to direct people to. Even now, it might make more sense to get them once the damn petitions have opened.
@@Accursed_Farms Gotcha. Aside from publicity they might be able to help you organize various details so I think the sooner the better. You can always coordinate on any publicity pushes. Good luck with the campaign!
@@Accursed_Farms When the petitions open, you might want to try and contact Louis Rossmann (@rossmanngroup) to help bring more people in. He does not talk about computer games, but he fights for right to repair hardware and may just help spread the word. Then there is Linus Tech Tips with a large audience of gamers, but they are probably hard to reach (and I'd be surprised if You haven't considered this approach yet).
Ross, I wonder if you could reach out to Louis Rossman about this? He's been tackling consumer rights for a while now, from laptop repair to being allowed to repair your own john deere tractor. I don't think he's much of a gamer, but he'd definitely understand the challenges and reasons this needs to get some wind in its sails.
YEAH I have been spamming the same thing to both of them, so they both would connect to each other. Especially since Louis has testified against Apple and is a more experienced and has a lot more resources / fan-base that also supports consumer rights. I hope he sees this.
This matches pretty well with what Louis has been covering recently and through him we might be able to reach a lot of like-minded non-gamers so getting him to make a video about this is absolutely worth it. Louis himself used to play LoL IIRC so it shouldn't take much explaining for him to understand the situation.
In one of his video chat streams Ross said he could talk to him but only after he gets some more "concrete" stuff, saying that he didn't want to waste Louis's time with hypotheticals
@@awsomebot1 If I remember correctly, Ross said in his "Early plans for stopping companies from destroying games" video that the EULA in US is interpreted/written differently than in EU, which makes companies in the US basically untouchable.
There is an article on Kotaku that mentions stopkillinggames, so this is a start already. And now that Ubisoft is sneakily removing people's keys from their accounts too, something tells me this campaign has reached their attention.
I've filed a complaint to Ubisoft, Signal Conso, the German Verbraucherzentrale, I have tweeted about it, told all of my friends about it, and will be vocal about it to anyone I meet in the next coming weeks. I'm doing all I can, best of luck to all of us.
Keep up the hustle. When the time comes for the European Citizens' Initiative make sure to talk about it even with your non-gamer family members, friends and collogues unless they happen to hate video games for some reason.
"While it's debatable that video games are art, they undeniably contain art." Ross, you just slaughtered an entire swathe of internet armchair critics with that one phrase. Utter defeat. I hope this comes together. It could be the confluence of several events, just like the GME stock thing was. All of the dominos lining up at just the right time.
Best of luck. And yup. Video games may be more ripe for capitalistic exploitation to the consumer compared to film, but they can both be as cynically produced. And likewise, both can be fueled by talent, blood sweat and tears. Hell, games--being an interactive medium--can in some way be considered to have potential for MORE artistic expression than movies. Crappy celebrity magazines and Lord of the Rings are both printed on paper. It's just about what you do with it.
[UPDATE - UK PETITION] Unable to sign due to 20 people already signing. From the webpage: We’re checking this petition 20 people have already supported this petition. No more people can sign this petition until it has been approved. We need to check it meets the petition standards before we publish it. Please try again in a few days.
Ubisoft support basically told me "thanks for playing The Crew 1, now go buy The Crew Motorfest and/or The Crew 2"...... So I reported them to Signal Conso (The French consumer agency).
Jens Stoltenberg, Norway’s prime minister for 12 years and current secretary general of NATO, has stated in several interviews that he enjoys playing strategy games like Age of Empires and Medieval Total War. He even decided to use the nickname that the KGB supposedly gave him as his username ingame, “Steklov”.
Problem is, even if this campaign is successful streaming only games wouldn't end up in much worse position as they are likely to be sold as a subscription anyway
I'm actually a bit confident in Brazil's odds here. The only group allowed to screw the people over is the government, and our "fuck around" to "find out" turnaround rates are pretty high; as the saying goes: "Brazil is not for amateurs". Two examples I can give off the top of my head: Back when the PlayStation 5 released and Sony offered the PS Plus Collection for PS5 owners, people started account sharing to get the Collection for free on their PS4s without buying a PS5, which violated Sony's terms. PS5s were blocked; an affected consumer sued Sony for it. The judge ruled that the company didn't provide clear information on what the punishment would be and abused the innate power imbalance in the relationship between the provider and the consumer. And even if Sony informed the customer of the risks involved, blocking the whole console violates our Consumer Defense Code (damaging the customer's belongings irreversibly is a big no-no, as discussed in the video) and would be null anyways. The customer won the lawsuit. Not gaming-related, but tech-related and surprisingly recurring: Apple removing chargers and headphones from the IPhone box. This is a clear case of what we call a "married sale"*: you have to buy a second product to make the first one function; very illegal according to the Consumer Defense Code. Customers sued and won in 2021 and 2024 and the government sued in 2023 planning to hit them with a R$ 100 million fine, but legal precedence stopped that. As long as they keep selling phones with no charger, I don't see why customers couldn't just keep suing, as legal costs are paid by the loser here. Note that the same isn't happening with Samsung because they give chargers for free if you ask for one, though this only happened after they were also sued. * Just to preempt questions on this, since, in my experience, foreigners do not tend to grasp "married sales" immediately: Apple _can_ sell chargers without the phone, but not the other way around. It would be a married sale if they sold you just the brick and you had to buy the cable separately. You also _can_ sell a console without a packed game; as long as you can turn on the console and interact with the OS out-of-the-box, it's fair (whether you can see it or not doesn't matter here; companies don't have to sell consoles with a packed-in TV). The law also forbids cinemas that sell food from denying customers that bring in their own food, as they're forcing people to buy the establishment's food if they want to eat during the movie, which counts as a married sale, I guess.
Good, fuck sony. I have a number of purchases of micro transactions from them that are gone to the wind. Same thing with Microsoft and Google- I bought into multiple services and lo and behold those companies shut those services down and there hasn't been a thing I can do about it.
@@Manavine I'm not familiar with the PSP's warranty, but selling one without a charger would be a married sale regardless of what the warranty says; if there's no charger in the box, you can't use the device.
Another thing that can be done here is also proposing a popular initiative law through the legislative assembly site. Though it does ask for either large scale popular support or be sponsored by a recognized civil society entity, though the latter could fast track it directly to a comission that could start the internal process of the law. So our odds are positive, we just need to do a bit of legwork, though maybe broadening it to software in general might actually increase the chances of getting it through, since it would be easier to gather attention and support as a general measure against consumer abuse among or politicians and also the public than just something for gamers.
I have been using this (possibly bad) analogy for a while now "imagine one day the manufacture of your fridge stops production and replacing of any parts, THEN they walk into your house and take your perfectly working fridge from your house and tell you 'oh the food is ours too' and leave" THAT'S what game companies keep doing. Sell a product then if you pay extra for whats in the product they just scoop up the money and leave.
I would say that an improvement to this analogy would be that the producer of the fridge comes into your home and locks the fridge beyond your ability to ever open it again. I mean, you technically still own the game, you just can't access it anymore.
I've signed it for myself as well. 9,112 signatures at the time of writing. And for any on-lookers; "At 10,000 signatures, government will respond to this petition", so the first of two thresholds is just about within reach, with the second being "At 100,000 signatures, this petition will be considered for debate in Parliament". And, with the petition's deadline set to 16th October 2024, there's still almost exactly half a year to attain this number of signatures, if not more and, if nothing else, cause a little fuss about this particular issue within the region.
Won't do anything, and this is not me being pessimistic. Just a realist, gamers are stupid fucks who had chance after chance after chance to actually do something, yet set on there hands only to bitch and complain.
Yeah, but like... do you know what would be 1000% more effective? Stop buying games from psychopaths. I literally haven't purchased a non-fromsoft AAA game in over 10 years. If everyone was as smart as me, this wouldn't be a problem, micro transactions wouldn't even be a problem.
@@realityvanguard2052 "if everyone was as smart as me", jeez that is something. i'm sorry but gaming is entertainment and a lot of people don't care where it comes from or how it's sabotaged, which is why people like ross have to kick up a stink to try and fix this mess i hate mtx and all that too but that's a different can of worms that preys on every human bias in the book. if you want people to stop doing that then tell them, not us. we want this to change and it cant happen if we just ignore the problem
What outrages me the most : when owners of an IP/license suddenly have a game disappear from stores, because the license had a time limit (!). It is extremely brutal for the people who made the game, violent in terms of having that creation/art removed from access, and of course just uncool all around.
music license or even the whole IP. License that shit in perpetuity. Be it Alpha Protocol or Transformers Devastation, indefinite earnings potential is always superior to making it only available to pirates
Ubi is in the process of revoking licenses from the users that had The Crew assigned to their Ubisoft Connect account. I have nothing on my product's page, other than a brazen message that says: "You no longer have access to this game. Why not check the Store to pursue your adventure?" -- or in other words "We stole your fucking game. Why won't you purchase another one, so we can do that again, loser?"
I dont want them to go bankrupt i just want my childhood game back, TC1. i just found out today TC1 shut down and i boight a whole new xbox plug for it after like a year of not using my Xbox just to play YC1 tp find out they killed it. 8 years.. down the drain.@@sola4393
thats rich , robber barons all of the dam fat corps and their slug overlords at least it makes it simple to spread the loathing for ubi and its ilk , dont even need to give examples about how the products are borderline blackmail chopped up into 'dlc' etc to associates speaking of buying something from either its enough to just show how their sole reason to chain everything to an 'account' is so they can steal products you bought ala 'protection racket' style and force you to 'buy' it agen
Yeah, but like... do you know what would be 100% more effective? Stop buying games from psychopaths. I literally haven't purchased a non-fromsoft AAA game in over 10 years. If everyone was as smart as me, this wouldn't be a problem, micro transactions wouldn't even be a problem.
@@drearmouse9510 Because not everyone cares as much about games as we do. Like, legitimately. Most people just want to have fun for a few hours, they don't think about it as art. That's nothing to do with intelligence, they just don't care that much. I have many things in life where I care less than others. It's a normal thing. Just means you cannot expect them to stop acting like that.
@@michimatsch5862 Oh, I didnt correlate intelligence to it, that's the other dude. I just cant stand AAA games lacking so much substance despite their budget. But yeah, its understandable how little some care, just reallly sucks. Dx (Thankfully roms exist though for the time being. Preservationists rly are the unsung heroes of gaming)
lol, just checked out the UK petition and "Because 20 people have signed this, please wait several days while we check that it's legit." What a way to kill momentum.
@@LexYeen Sure, great idea. The corporations agree with you. Remove all centralized regulation and just let the rich enslave the poor without consequence.
@@delphicdescanttell me you don't know anything about anarchism but capitalist propaganda without saying you don't know anything about anarchism but capitalist propaganda.
to be fair with our current gouv it kinda that, senator and deputy voted themself a rise of 300-500 € ( on they salary of 5000 plus bonus of the job), and some week ago the president and /or it minister wanted to cut down the duration of aide for unemployed people ( those who HAD a work, and lose it, by beeing fired, or the company went under).) but i m not the most partial on that, the president sound more and more like Marechal petain from WW2, want french to make more babies ( when we are the third country in EU in birthrate), saying it is a infertility problem ... when in fact it is mostly because working full time doesnt pay enought...) sorry for the biiiig side tracking there
I own The Crew as a physical disk for PS4, and also got it free with gold on Xbox. You can't even find the game listed on the Xbox store, all it pulls up are the sequels, UNLESS you check for the store page from the game's management thing. I admit this is the first i'd heard that The Crew was basically taken down and whatnot. I'll happily be joining in on this.
Congrats, you just found out what "unlisted" means. There are plenty of games like that in my Steam library for example: Alpha Protocol & The OG GTA trilogy (not the garbage "Remasters"). Although I can still play those because they are still in my library and don't rely on servers.
@@EXiLExJD Believe me, I know what unlisted means. Spec Ops: The Line is a game I happen to thankfully own on both console and PC. You can no longer purchase this game for some reason, most likely music licensing. Marvel's Ultimate Alliance 1 and 2 were at one point ported to modern consoles. And were eventually made unable to be bought. Most likely due to the cost of the marvel licensing. Thankfully, I own those two.
He made a point about this on the last video chat. Said something along the lines of "I don't want people to think this is an April Fools joke, especially since I'm the kind of guy who would do that".
Part of the reason this is so important is because it reaches into ALL software and hardware. These companies believe that whoever holds the Internet server, controls anything linked to it. Microsoft straight up assassinated my Windows 7 cpu despite my stern resistance to convert over to Windows 10. Because I forgot to unplug my Ethernet cable one night after turning the machine off, thru reached in and lobotomized it during the night. All those software programs I paid good money for and still used, unusable. They didn’t force my cpu to Windows 10, but they definitely tampered with my machine to become useless. If we place this law into practice, we can protect our digital investments, regardless to shifting versions.
I'm guessing this is same for apple who purposely slow down their older iPhones and force people to get a new one. They did gave a reason that they are doing this to prolong the battery health, but this lacks explanations. Also this doesn't even seems like a proper reason. The user should be the one to balance the performance and efficiency on their devices.
In Canada, the platform (Ultraviolet) that all digital movies (regardless of the company) was on shutdown one day. Just "SORRY YOUR MOVIES ARE BYE BYE". Then they wonder why pirating is rampant in Canada? &%&^ you too, movie companies. That's why. I'll never pay again for a movie for as long as I live.
@@calmkittyhonestly, I’m inclined to believe apple on that one. Changed my battery in my 2016 iphone se last year and it literally sped back up to how it was when it was new again. Couldn’t believe it. Why it took apple so long to just admit that was the issue though, I have no idea
The hell is a "Windows 7 CPU"? CPUs aren't bound to any OS, you can install Linux or any Windows version under 11 onto most, if not all contemporary PCs.
@@calmkitty its not a proper reason because there is at least a couple things you can do to prolong battery life that don't involve ramping down performance. apple can implement slower charging during the night so that your phone will be fully charged in the morning but the phone wont be overloaded with power. heck, my nothing phone 1(supposedly) does that so I know its possible. heck, if that was the case they could of just had a option to ramp down performance during certain tasks or gave you the option to do that yourself.
Just submitted a 4300 character report with 5 attachments to that french fraud control thingy. Figured since it's fraud control I'd just casually sneak in the fact that Ubisoft is willingly creating an easily abusable environment where someone could sell a preowned physical copy of the game and the first time the buyer will find out something is sketchy is after installing the game, contacting support (because the error code upon launch doesn't say the servers are no longer operational) and being told by Ubisoft support that the crew no longer works. Also told my parents that something they paid for with their hard earned money now no longer exists and they're now against Ubisoft as well. As soon as the Australian petition comes up you already have 3 sugnatures ready😂
You make a good point about talking about this with your family members. When these government petitions go live we need to talk with non-gamers as well since unless someone is extremely pro big business the argument that a company shouldn't be able to stop a product that you bought from working is likely to get a lot of traction.
Ah, their strategy becomes clearer. Prevent secondhand copies being sold, and physical copies of games existing, and then they don't have to deal with the reports of the games not working, with the physical evidence they manufactured it. A fridge or washing machine is supposed to last ten years. Why not computers or computer games? Plus they can erase any evidence of the game existing by shutting down their website, servers, and forums like Bungie and 343 Industries did with everything prior to MCC.
I literally bought The Crew from a used game store a few weeks ago and now it's completely useless 🤷🏻♂️ this should not be allowed and I do hope some legislation is created to prevent this from happening.
I think about games kids are playing nowadays too. When I was a kid I played games like Unreal Tournament all the time. It is part of my childhood, and I can go back and play it whenever I want even to this day. But imagine being a kid now growing up playing games like Overwatch or Fortnite. When you grow up, there is absolutely no guarantee those games will even still be playable, let alone exist. You can never go back to play it ever again. I can't imagine growing up like that, but kids now *are* growing up used to this just being their reality. They're getting used to games just being snatched from them and moving on to the next. I was just thinking about how, when I have kids, I want to be able to show them all of the cool games I used to play when I was their age just like my father did for me. And while I can do that for some, there are definitely games I can't.
this is a big point - corporations are destroying the future childhood memories of an entire generation and locking them away so they can never be experienced again. i was lucky to grow up on a diet of my parents' old retrogames, but most modern kids are stuck in a world of ephemeral, time-limited experiences. many often don't initially realise that those experiences will one day be taken away from them forever. a lot of people get jaded when their most loved games start to get shut down, and i've seen quite a few people entirely fall out of the videogame market as a result of that disillusionment and loss of trust. a generationally-shrinking market for aaa titles is not something publishers (who have "line-go-up-eternally" financial imperatives) should want to risk. just another reason that preservation is healthy for the videogame industry's self-interest, not solely for artistic reasons.
Ross described this aspect as "(slowly) boiling a frog", and it's a very apt comparison. The "as-a-service" paradigm is an ongoing process of getting people used to the idea of not owning their software; when they will realize what they lost, it will be too late for them to act.
@@ratcarpet "line go up eternally" You mean DEI. All companies want Line to Go Up. Historically, Line Went Up by pleasing your customers. But that's capitalism. And some very powerful people HATE capitalism.
This is a big reason why this matters. Games are part of our culture and the transfer of culture from one generation to the next is key to how we came to be who we are. We may dislike Fortnite but for zoomers it is a key part of their culture which they might not be able to share with future generations due to Epic shutting it down eventually.
It's not just gamers who are known for having low time preference. Why do you think a lot of government services have you wait. They know what they're doing when they ask you to wait two weeks, or even when they ask you to deal with ubicrap first. They know most people won't have the willpower to go through the hurdles nor the time preference to stick to the plan in order to reap a reward.
Brazilian law student here, so you have more options,: Law of popular initiative - the requirement are harsh, like, you would need to elaborate a project of law and would need over a milion signatures in at least 5 states and a few more odd requirements to have the house vote on the project; There is representative who could sponsor the law. Im not his constituinte. he is now sponsoring a bill to recognize e-sports and those who work in the field as the same as regular sports and has gamers as part of his public, but he is pro corporations in most cases, the name is kim kataguiri representative for the state of são paulo; On the courts a class action can be sponsored by the public attonery, wich means free, but you would be at his discreation; At last is possible to flood the the specials judges (for simple and small cases) wiht cases wihtout the need for lawers or legal fees, but to generate a strong jurisprudencie would be needed to get the attention of higher courts, wich mean appeals and costs (and lawyers). With a great number of cases its possible for the supreme court to open a general question and create a obligatory jurisprudence. It would be case of civil and consumers law and Brazil draws heavy inspiration from france and europe
I feel like Ross is taking particular umbrage with Ubisoft's CEO and his cry of "Gamers need to get used to not owning their games." This whole movement started as a stand against EA and them shutting down game servers, and very swiftly pivoted to specifically countering the insanity that is the CEO of Ubisoft. Seriously, how has that man not been ousted yet? You'd think investors, even if they agree with his stances, would see the damage he's doing to the public perception of the brand, and start pulling out, stating they aren't coming back until he is removed from his position.
ubisoft has been in a years-long drawnout fight between its board and various stakeholders, and already fought off a couple of hostile takeover attempts. his time as ceo is limited and not solely because he's been increasingly bad at the job
@@ratcarpet The "stakeholders" would be the reason why Ubi are being so slimy. Shareholders care about money like capitalists should. Stakeholders are more fash, as a certain old German son-of-a-Nazi named Klaus described. Them losing money is worth it to them if you can't own stuff.
@@ratcarpet "Stakeholder capitalism" is just fascism under a prettier name to sell it to the self-proclaimed anti-fascists who serve as its enforcement arm, after all.
I must thank Tactical Bacon Productions for sending me here. Having a game be self-sustaining after being live-service is super easy and cheap. This has been a long time coming.
For the people saying that physical copies are the solution, nope, physical copies nowadays are often a lie: - The box only has a digital code to download the game. - There's a disc, but it only has a few files, the actual game must be downloaded and the disc is only a key. - Sometimes, only parts of the game are available on disc, you can play without internet, but not the full game. - You can play the game without internet with just a disc, but not the good version of the game, because at launch, the game is full of problems and you need to download a patch later or there's a patch since the launch day. - Sometimes, the patch is so big that you are almost downloading the whole game. - You still need to connect to the internet to buy and download DLC. - To play online, you need to download the most recent version. - Many games are online-only, require a constant connection to the internet, even on single-player, and to make things worse, the servers often close, making your physical copy a paperweight. That's what happened to The Crew, even those who had a physical copy lost the game they bought.
First off, physical copies, die eventually. So even IF they had no drm whatsoever, they wouldn't be a sollution unless companies kept manufacturing them forever, along with hardware capable of PLAYING said copies. When DRM, especially online DRM gets involved then? the idea of physical media as a genuine means of preservation becomes laughable. Freaking SOFTWARE PIRACY and TORRENT WEBSITES have done more to preserve video games than actual physical copies. And don't even get me started on day 01 patches, or games that are unplayable because they're designed around constant internet connections, like MMORPGs, a physical copy will do nothing for those games without a private server, which IS STILL CONSIDERED PIRACY EITHER WAY!
@@YayaFeiLong True physical copies still aren't enough, they die, and the hardware they were designed to be played on dies as well over time. Not to mention certain games, despite having physical copies, still require constant internet connection to be playable. (games like World of Warcraft, or Elder Scrolls Online, sure these games probably aren't in danger of being shut down right NOW, but what about the distant future? what if these games fall in popularity, or the comapnies go bankrupt?) The only way to trully preserve games, is by giving players a drm-free online archive where players are able to at the very least buy the games and legally own and donwload their digital copies, and are allowed to do whatever they want with it, including hosting private servers. Yes, it might sound outlandish, but outside that, our only other option is STRAIGHT UP PIRACY!
@@Anonymous-wb3nz Physical media is not the perfect solution for older consoles before the Xbox 360 either. - Phsyical media rots over time, even if never used. - The actual consoles also rot over time, eventually they can't be fixed anymore. - In recent years, retro gaming became very expensive, older cartridges and discs skyrocketed in price due to collectors. - Arcades, which only a few people can have at home and many games were never ported into home versions.
What pisses me off is how many excuses for always-online are made not by the companies, but by the PLAYERS. The sheer amount of people who think Helldivers 2 being always-online is okay when Helldivers 1 is pretty much the same and had an offline mode "because it's an online-focused game" is astounding. PS: I wanna reiterate that just saying "leaving games in a functional state" isn't going to be good enough legally. That can easily just mean taking you to the main menu, and leaving you there. The functional state has to be defined as something concrete or they can circumvent that law pretty easily.
"The functional state has to be defined as something concrete or they can circumvent that law pretty easily." Ross does mention in the video that he simplified down the psuedo-laws they (he and the volunteers) came up with, so it's very likely there's a pretty solid definition of 'functional' in there
Helldivers 2 is part of the reason I'm joining this campaign. It's a very good game, but I see the writing on the wall, and even if we can't save The Crew or other games, I want to at least try and save it.
Jesus christ the entire point of helldivers 2 is you're taking part in the war. Your battles influence the game. That's the entire point of the game, there is literally no way to make this offline. You people always choose the worst examples.
I got onto this train when, in 2013, a server based sci-fi mmo went under, good ol Starquest Online. (Name coopted since by Web 3.0 junk) The community then failed to save it, bid for it, even maintain most of the non-coded, off game info, the people who managed the servers (nexeon) just deleted it, the game dev company went under and uncontactable. All the works and data and community went poof beyond the saved scraps. This opened my eyes to how transient data and info and access can be. I went on an info saving spree since. Internet archive and abandonia and other such groups and projects…. Then I found you and the gaas thing and I’ve been around since. I hope this goes well and I’ll be following and supporting as much as I can!
I've been trying to do the same with UA-cam videos, saving them onto a jumpdrive. You wouldn't believe how many videos I've seen from ages ago are simply gone forever in the blink of an eye.
@@arandompasserby7940 Yeap, started to notice that too, just classics that go private or deleted, it's always good to have copies of the stuff you like most on your own side of the screen....
I think The Crew is also a big shot due to how the game is and structured. It is , for all intense and purposes, the singleplayer game with online compabilities that is forced to be online-only. Something I think that should be pointed out in court and give examples like forza horizon is very similiar to this and those games have offline mode
17:28 Don't forget to set an alarm for 1-2 weeks after you contact Ubisoft so that you remember to come back and do the second step. As a US citizen who didn't buy The Crew I wish I could do more than just tell people that bought The Crew about this campaign. This is so very important.
Okay, so Ubisoft just revoked The Crew from my Ubisoft Connect (formerly UPlay) library. Can't install or launch it anymore with the message "You no longer have access to this game. Why not check the Store to pursue your adventures?". Now this sounds bad, but it's actually really great. It's like Ubisoft deliberately wants to spearhead game preservation at this point. There's no way this isn't super illegal in Australia or at least one EU-country, if not the entire EU. Keeping a dead live-service in people's game libraries was always one way to dodge legal responsibility, but Ubisoft just could not help themselves, could they? Always pushing the envelope, to the point of self-harm. Maybe they're just masochists. Maybe execs get off, by reading mean comments about their companies on the internet. The only issue, is that it may blindside this whole operation, since many people may have already contacted their consumer protection agencies and may have to do that again or update their complaint, since the siutation is now much worse (from a consumer protection/legal pov). That is now as if a Ubisoft-rep came into your room and blatantly stole your physical copy of The Crew.
Some people may think that this only affects multiplayer games, but there are MANY single player games out there that have live services, and some that even require a connection just to play. The companies have been slowly introducing this for some time (Ubisoft being the biggest offender btw), so it's about time something is done.
How quickly people have forgotten that time Microsoft tried to do this with literally every Xbox One game. The threat to even single player games with no need for internet connectivity is real. Yes, the big bad corporations really are coming for your games. They don't want you to keep playing old ones when they could sell you new ones instead.
@@SnakebitSTI People forget about the original H1Z1/Just Survive, which had a single player mode, but for some reason, they went with battle royale, and it failed kind of. And they could have just let people play the survival mode solo, it was completely possible too. Instead, they locked it out completely. Hell you can still download the game, open it, and it will just be like "NOPE YOU CAN'T PLAY IT" And don't get me started on the BS with Diablo.
I want it known that Ubisoft when they announced The Crew server shutdown, would almost immediately following said announcement block any and all new players from being able to play game at all. If you didn’t have a save already on the server with your account it would return a verification error, You could not play the game. There was still plenty of time to buy a copy, even a physical copy that had to be shipped to your house, play through the entire games content and DLC and even earn every single Trophy/Achievement for the game from the time of the shutdown announcement to its server closure. Ubisoft with alleged malice blocked anyone from playing the game in that brief period.
What Ubisoft did to The Crew. They did with malicious intent. Blocking anyone who wished to experience the game before closure from playing. That is a serious indictment of the worrying future of modern always online live service games.
Vielen Dank für dieses großartige Projekt. Ich ärgere mich auch immer, wenn ich ein Spiel gekauft habe und plötzlich ist es komplett aus dem Store verschwunden oder unspielbar weil es permanent eine Server Verbindung benötigt. CrossfireX , the Crew 1 (bald auch 2) und die Community Funktionen bei WWE2k22 (bald 23/24 usw.) wurden mir von den Entwicklern wieder gestohlen. Need for Speed 2015 ist ein grandioses Spiel aber wenn die Server offline gehen, unspielbar. Gibt tausende Spiele, die vom Entwickler wieder geklaut werden nach den erfolgreichen Jahren. Da muss sich kein Entwickler wundern über Piraterie. Man zahlt teilweise mehr als 60€ und nach 3-5 Jahren oder 5-10 Jahren gehört dir nichts mehr. Es ist eine große Frechheit
This feels a lot more achievable and real than the average "Let's take action!" type of video and the plan seems like it had a lot of effort put into it. I do hope this gets major repercussion and we can, at the very least, still own our games and this "games as service" ends.
classic wow will always be the best example of this. Community run servers are the only reason that game stayed alive. If it wasn't for them, this historical entry into the genre would have been lost forever to future generations. Community run servers were an absolutely monumental preservation project that took 10 years to get right. Blizzard somehow entirely lost the source code for the servers, and really only (supposedly I might add, don't even know if it's true) found it again because they felt financially pressured to, due to how popular community servers were getting. If it wasn't for them it almost certainly would have been lost forever. Moreover, you have the famous "you think you do but you don't" quote of blizzard employees outright refusing to provide a product that people purchased in the past. The whole thing is horrible. We need legislation yesterday that the moment a game's servers go offline, the server source code is released. Not the game source code, but just the servers. It's a victimless thing.
the sad fact is the only games that can survive in this way are /huge/ anything smaller than millions of players simply will not survive by having dedicated programmers making custom servers.
@Xiado that's, like, a different problem. We are talking about games that exist being killed, not the process by which games come into existance. I do agree, but have hope that when the current indie devs bloom we will see a new renaissance in game releases. still doesn't help the game as service system meaning all but the most massive games having almost literally no chance at survival. like fortnight /might/ be able to survive, as an example, but there are tens of thousands of games that wont. there might be a bit of argument of wether or not anyone should care, since the vast majority of them are trash, but that isn't something we need to argue about, saving /all/ games from being killed is more important than some of them being trash. save the 99.9% of garbage so that the .01% can live forever.
they supposedly lost a lot of things for D2 and said thats the reason they wont make a remake of it. (the real reason was I guess the lack of microtransactions lol). Lo and behold after enough pressure they backpadellaed and made a D2 remake
UK petition is open! I've signed and spread it around among a couple of my UK-based friend groups. More signatures means more gooderness! If you're in the UK, SIGN THIS THING!
@@ENSIBDumb Neither do I. If you're in a chat room, you should be willing to chat and listen to other perspectives. Also, using slurs should not be tolerated in any chat room with strangers.
Just signed the UK government petition, just another 3,000 signers to the UK version and the government legally has to respond. Wish I had purchased the Crew so I could make a direct complaint as well. Thank you for doing the work and leading on this.
I think this should expand to software in general. Lots of industry standard packages are constantly yanking the rug out from folks whose livelihoods rely on their tools suddenly switching from perpetual licenses to subscriptions, or killing software usability outright. That's not just entertainment, that's JOBS!
It's mentioned in the video that Ross doesn't want to go after software as well, because software companies (esp. Adobe, Microsoft etc.) are absolutely huge and _will_ fight this to the bitter end with insane amounts of lobbying and millions/billions of dollars of funding _However,_ if we can sneak in some laws/precedents using this games thing - since games are basically software - it's basically the trojan horse of winning those cases too
And now they are REVOKING KEYS of The Crew from players, like wtf? Turning off their servers is one thing but revoking the ownership of a product without refund is dowright illegal, it's actually a theft!
Fuck! I was gifted this game in 2018 and put off playing it until almost literally the last minute. Why couldn't they just make the game work offline? The multiplayer component is barely even noticeable! I'm not in contact with the friend who gifted the game, so I don't even have some kind of proof of purchase to help in the fight.
You might be able to get in contact with Steam, they should have receipts of the purchase on their end. Sorry you never got the chance to try the game out, I'm kinda bummed about it too.
You should be able to find the gift code you redeemed? And I hear you, I finally decided to buy The Crew a few months ago, and just now they've killed it. Total bs.
Excited to see where this goes. I think there’s a chance for real change. The outline for keeping games playable is well thought out. It really is the bare minimum we need to keep games preserved.
And the real disgusting thing is that there are regular people out there who actually defend all this crap even though they have nothing to gain from it.
I'm kind of kicking myself for not buying The Crew. I avoided doing so specifically because I knew it would shut down some day, but now I wish I had done so so that I could assist in this as much as possible. However I'll do whatever I can to spread this movement around!
As a US citizen without The Crew I shared the video in a small community that spans a large number of nations across the world. Ain't much but it's honest work.
I'm in the same boat, so I shared it with my friends groups. Traditionally, this means they'll actively ignore the issue now, but it's all I can do. Hopefully it'll get reposted soon by someone whose opinion they value and it'll suddenly be news to them, and they'll take action then.
as a man who controls myslf. ubisoft took away the crew. and i am not crying for help from daddy govenrment to regulate some shit. i just vote with my wallet and will never ever ever buy a single thing from ubisoft ever again! but the consumers are ok with it last time i checkkd ubisoft is till selling shit
@@jake78441 "Why keep playing [old game]?" is a question that misses the point of the conversation, because it doesn't matter which of the million reasons someone might have. They paid for something, and they should be able to keep that thing; why they want to keep it is their own business. "Because I want to" should always be a sufficient answer to this question when it comes to a product you've purchased. And that's setting aside the art question, where the things that exist in [old game] are now gone and can never be seen or experienced by later players, historians, or anyone at all. While any specific example may or may not be a tragedy for culture and humanity, there is no such discernment in the law. So the best answer here is that we shouldn't be making it impossible for someone to preserve art they view as impactful. We're seeing this same problem crop up now with streaming films and televisions, but at least those can _possibly_ be preserved in some form. Interactive media can't simply be recorded or photographed, no matter how lossy the format. You may want to watch the earlier videos Ross has done on this subject if you're still asking this question. He answers why this matters, and why just playing the newest thing isn't a solution.
No they didn't you did. At every opportunity you had a chance to push back but didn't. Gaming is in this state not just because of big bad companies, but with the help of stupid fucking gamers. You all help make your bed, and now your complaining its a mess.
It's not even just a video game issue. Car companies want to disable your seat heating remotely, train companies want to disable trains remotely, soon they'll charge you a subscription to keep you fridge running at this rate.
As a long time community organizer I have to say I am very impressed with the power mapping and strategy you've come up with for this one. One of the hardest things is figuring out what tools are unlikely to result in any kind of positive change and not wasting resources on them.
Since I'm not in the EU, don`t own the game and don`t use social media, there's not much I can do except liking and boosting with a comment. Keep up the good work Ross, greetings from Norway.
Let's remind ourselves that it's not the developers who are destroying their own games. It is the CEOs, the overpaid bankers that never made anything in their life, other than an Excel spreadsheet about how much money they will make off of someone else's work only to later a pull a checkmate move and take it all away. So it is quite ironic how dare they have power over something they themselves do not own actually, unless by "Owning" they mean "Shareholding"
I am pretty sure they have admitted that. I know the guy who made Big Brother got the idea from The Truman Show. Honestly the people are to blame. If you scream at every corporation that they are evil, all the time.. they're going to internalize that. and more government regulation is only gonna make that worse.
@@KairuHakubi"companies became evil because consumers were mean to them :(" is certainly a hot take on the anti-consumer practices, especially a nice most folks call companies evil... ...in response to companies acting evil/greedy
I hope this works, because this practice is eventually going to find its way everywhere else if it isn't stopped here. The fact that self-checkout machines ask people for a tip is a symptom of the same disease; companies keep pushing the boundaries of how they can extract money from their customers without providing service in return, and the less pushback there is, the worse it'll get. And it _will_ end in a nightmare scenario.
The problem also includes what I call "time economics". We are headed towards a world where one of the most important metrics for video games is customer engagement and retention (especially with live service and online multiplayers). It all boils down to the user having a finite amount of time for which every game is competing. So it is in any publisher's/developer's financial interest to not compete with itself, which they avoid by controlling the lifespan of a product released prior. Idk if you touch on this in the vid, but I either leave this comment now or I might do it much later on and possibly forget.
The UK Government responded: Those selling games must comply with UK consumer law. They must provide clear information and allow continued access to games if sold on the understanding that they will remain playable indefinitely. The Government recognises recent concerns raised by video games users regarding the long-term operability of purchased products. Consumers should be aware that there is no requirement in UK law compelling software companies and providers to support older versions of their operating systems, software or connected products. There may be occasions where companies make commercial decisions based on the high running costs of maintaining older servers for video games that have declining user bases. However, video games sellers must comply with existing consumer law, including the Consumer Rights Act 2015 (CRA) and the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (CPRs). The CPRs require information to consumers to be clear and correct, and prohibit commercial practices which through false information or misleading omissions cause the average consumer to make a different choice, for example, to purchase goods or services they would not otherwise have purchased. The regulations prohibit commercial practices which omit or hide information which the average consumer needs to make an informed choice, and prohibits traders from providing material information in an unclear, unintelligible, ambiguous or untimely manner. If consumers are led to believe that a game will remain playable indefinitely for certain systems, despite the end of physical support, the CPRs may require that the game remains technically feasible (for example, available offline) to play under those circumstances. The CPRs are enforced by Trading Standards and the Competition and Markets Authority. If consumers believe that there has been a breach of these regulations, they should report the matter in the first instance to the Citizens Advice consumer helpline on 0808 223 1133 (www.citizensadvice.org.uk). People living in Scotland should contact Advice Direct Scotland on 0808 164 6000 (www.consumeradvice.scot). Both helplines offer a free service advising consumers on their rights and how best to take their case forward. The helplines will refer complaints to Trading Standards services where appropriate. Consumers can also pursue private redress through the courts where a trader has provided misleading information on a product. The CRA gives consumers important rights when they make a contract with a trader for the supply of digital content. This includes requiring digital content to be of satisfactory quality, fit for a particular purpose and as described by the seller. It can be difficult and expensive for businesses to maintain dedicated support for old software, particularly if it needs to interact with modern hardware, apps and websites, but if software is being offered for sale that is not supported by the provider, then this should be made clear. If the digital content does not meet these quality rights, the consumer has the right to a repair or replacement of the digital content. If a repair or replacement is not possible, or does not fix the problem, then the consumer will be entitled to some money back or a price reduction which can be up to 100% of the cost of the digital content. These rights apply to intangible digital content like computer software or a PC game, as well as digital content in a tangible form like a physical copy of a video game. The CRA has a time limit of up to six years after a breach of contract during which a consumer can take legal action. The standards outlined above apply to digital content where there is a contractual right of the trader or a third party to modify or update the digital content. In practice, this means that a trader or third party can upgrade, fix, enhance and improve the features of digital content so long as it continues to match any description given by the trader and continues to conform with any pre-contract information including main characteristics, functionality and compatibility provided by the trader, unless varied by express agreement. Consumers should also be aware that while there is a statutory right for goods (including intangible digital content) to be of a satisfactory quality, that will only be breached if they are not of the standard which a reasonable person would consider to be satisfactory, taking into account circumstances including the price and any description given. For example, a manufacturer’s support for a mobile phone is likely to be withdrawn as they launch new models. It will remain usable but without, for example, security updates, and over time some app developers may decide to withdraw support. Department Culture, Media & Sport
I feel bitter about not being able to own physical copies of new movies and tv series I like because of streaming meaning they never get released as such. This whole issue of games basically having a use by date is yet another thing I am bitter about on principle. Will be supporting this as much as I can.
@@TheHogfatherInvades I know but its just not the same... i like a nice piece of media as a collectable. I definately want to do this anyway, just in case the shows/films i like are completely removed off service!
I own a physical copy of everything i own. On my hard drives. If i really wanted an individual copy of something, i have bluray burner in my computer tower just for that.
I'll do as much as I can. I legitimately want the Crew back, it's literally one of my favorite games despite it's flaws and now I'm just not allowed to play it.
My receipt from my Steam purchase - thankfully it's still in my library: Purchased: Nov 25, 2015 @ 11:37pm The Crew Complete Edition - $29.99 Subtotal $29.99 Discount -$30.00 ( -50%) Total $29.99
Ubisoft support: "There was an issue submitting your case" I guess I'll try again later. Also, Ubi support lists the Crew server status as "online", but when I launch the game I'm met with an error.
Had the same problem, but I managed to send it. Their servers are getting overloaded. Just keep trying until it goes through and they show your case number.
Hopefully the algorithm takes this video and blows it up! Thank you Ross for being the one who did what no one else would, stepping up with a very professional and educated approach to an issue you had virtually no usable knowledge of beforehand, but are very passionate about.
25:11 A legalese shrug is a crazy response. I never bought The Crew, but I payed for Overwatch 1 and am forced to play Overwatch 2, so I know what this feels like. I gotta jump on this ASAP.
"It's debatable if video games are art" I wouldn't consider it debatable, if we consider movies that are a mish-mash of different art forms, art.... then there's no reason for video games to not be considered art, but your point still stands regardless.
Fantastic video and movement. I'm a smaller gaming UA-camr but I'm gonna mention this anytime I bring up a "live service" game or shitty DRM. People should own their games and should always be able to access them. And game preservation (and for that matter all art preservation) is immensely important. Great job Ross, seriously. Already loved ya, now I love and respect you even more.
I think the "can be reasonably restored by a programmer" thing would've been a massive blow to any effect this could have on consoles, so not including that is a good call. But overall this is great. GDPR worked worldwide, so getting something like that for video games would be terrific.
Please everybody share this as much as you can! We need this trending on gaming so the most people can see it. This is our one good shot to fight for consumer rights. Thank you so much Ross! I will help however I can!
For some german youtubers i think might be interested: - Gronkh: one of the oldest let's play channels - Space Frogs: a news type of channel mostly about politics but sometimes games - Rezo: a streamer that once massively swayed political elections in germany - Alexander Prinz: has a couple youtube channels mostly discussing and exposing politics most notably
I came here for Freeman’s Mind. 30 minutes later and I’m coming for YOU, UBISOFT. In all seriousness, as an Aussie, I’ll be clicking refresh until the feds open up that petition.
So glad you’re doing this man. The fact this is even a thing I believe is because boomer people in government don’t even understand the issue. There is a severe lack of regulation in gaming compared to other things like casinos. It should be illegal to wipe out access to a game because it’s “online only” and not provide a way to play offline when servers inevitably close. I’ll give Gran Turismo Sport credit for this, they killed the servers but released one last patch to enable offline play. That’s all that needs to be done, and every game company should be required to do so.
In case of The Crew, a game which can be played offline but for whatever arbitrary reason is locked behind an online requirement, I would much rather be able to play it rather than get a refund.
This needs to be shared all over the gaming community. Sadly it might go under in the whole "gamergate 2" story, but still we have to try as much as we can, especially when the older games are preferred over the newer releases.
Hey commenter, scrolling through here! Don't forget to visit the website in the description, you hear me! And if you know at least one other person who could be even mildly interested in this, SHARE THE SITE WITH THEM! And when those EC initiatives are online for us to sign, SHARE IT AGAIN! We need all hands on deck for this ship if we are to sail it onto the seas of a better tomorrow!
Just a heads up, if anyone tries to push the lawsuit in Brazil, any decently built case will most likely succeed. The only drawback of doing so, besides cost (which Ubisoft could be held accountable to cover), is how long it would take.
50 second version here:
ua-cam.com/users/shortsiH7k0IZ5PYE
UPDATES:
1. UK petition is up!
petition.parliament.uk/petitions/659071/
2. Australian petition is up! (The wording accidentally ended up too broad, but we think we can still recover it):
www.aph.gov.au/e-petitions/petition/EN6080
3. All Australian owners of "The Crew": Try to send me an email or twitter message so I can contact you later. I don't need your personal info, but later we'll have a law firm you can send it to which will help on getting the ACCC's attention on game destruction.
4. I've just learned that it's safe to wait only 1 week with no response from Ubisoft about The Crew before contacting the DGCCRF instead of 2. The guides will get updated on it later.
Where is the list you compiled of games that have already been killed.
I'd like a copy if you have one.
Just seen it. Great work on that. Funny and informative.
We know this is serious, Ross willingly put himself in portrait mode.
Test
You need to contact local youtubers in all the EU and make them translate your video or collaborate with them in other ways. The language barrier is the major hurdle for the video to go viral in Europe.
No matter what they say, the majority of people in most European countries don't speak English. I also advise to use T-1K T-0K, it's very popular in the EU and it's not weirdly p0Iit1cal like the American one.
This is the actual "gamers rise up!" moment but not in a meme way. We must rise up
Pops his head out of his retro gaming bubble. Hey you kids keep the noise down!!
Rise the fuck up!
as silly as the meme is, gamers are largely working class. This issue of corporations trying to control ownership of commodities as far as they can go is a part of the larger problem of the profit motive's immense influence on decisions. Decisions like to not preserve games. In a way, it is ironic because always having access to older titles on every platform would mean higher profits for them. Our economic system is one of rationality and irrationality.
Not even just gamers. I imagine whatever the outcome of this lawsuit will at least set some precedent towards all digital media, Movies, Music, and TV shows. The problem is definitely most egregious with games but this is a problem in all mediums.
I mean a few months back Warner Bros just decided that anyone who bought movies and tv content on the Sony store no longer can access it.
@@Ehh..... keep dreaming.
Overwatch 1 was artificially terminated in a transparent ploy to help Overwatch 2. But nothing like showing you can't be trusted when you destroy the immediate prior game your team released. This is a rare example of planned obsolescence, they literally stop the old product working in hopes you'll get the new one.
they did the same thing with original warcraft 3, in order to help sales of reforged, literally a downgrade.
'Help' Overwatch 2? OW2 is OW1. It's the same content, they just stuck a 2 on the end of it so they could sell it a second time. It was a balance patch they released pre-orders for. They didn't even honor the pre-orders, by the way, they sold a special edition for the PvE aspect, and then when they scrapped the dedicated PvE mode, they took the opportunity to sell the scraps of that mode for another $15.
And now they recently changed their EULA saying you don't own any of their games, they're at the front of this practice, Ubisoft and EA following behind.
@@KarazolaX Not really, they fundamentally changed the game and how it works into an arguably worse product with no way of reverting back to the original model for the sake of profits. Overwatch 1 was taken out back, shot in the head and replaced with a Free to Play Battle Pass shooter riddled with microtransactions.
@@KarazolaXmore like OW 0.5. They took 1 and just made it stutter more and basically made a storefront for shitty skins. They even wiped all ranked data from ow1 so you really dont have any history left besides some bs qp stats.
UPDATE! 15th april 2024: I've discovered that Ubisoft have removed the game from the store, my library, and even in my playtime statistics! So I can't even see I've ever played the game!!!
If you had it on steam, you can still see it:
1. click on your username in the top-right corner of steam, account details.
2. click on "View purchase history", first option to the right of your "Wallet Balance"
3. Scroll down until you find the purchase for "The Crew", click on it.
4. Click on "I would like to view or print the receipt for this purchase".
You should be good to go.
Remember how large corporations also said it was somehow "impossible" for their business to be setup to work from home?
Enter Year 2020, took less than 24 hours.
That still holds true. People making games have a average or even a less performing computers to make games than they have in studios. I mean, I ain't defending AAA games but Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War suffered from this issue. Otherwise, obviously with more time, you get same results. But that's the thing, "time".
@@CoolManCoolMan123 In regards to the game industry, you're absolutely right. It isn't possible everywhere, and for game development, WFH could a mess for several technical reasons. I was alluding more to the idea that all companies will lie to you if it suits their agenda. It's another instance where they said "impossible" when it really wasn't, it's just a convenient lie for them.
Ironically though, Cold War was one of my favorite entries in the series for multiplayer, against all odds and expectations from me! I know a lot of people disliked it, but the mechanics and gunplay felt like 2nd nature to me in that game, it was a CoD where I was consistently top of the board in almost every single round, and it hasn't been that way since lol. Though I'm a huge fan of DMZ from MW2, so sad they quit development on that.
@@onwardparasites2644 don't be offended but you seem like the oddest person who like BOCW. I mean, you top BOCW consistently while liking DMZ(which wasn't well received by Treyarch community)
@@CoolManCoolMan123 No offense taken! My CoD preferences are pretty odd, I'd be the first to admit that lol.
The Raven Software one's I avoid like the plague (except for MW3, and there is definitely regret there), Treyarch releases are OK but usually a bit gimmicky for my tastes, Cold War was the exception, but I loved BO1 back when. Zombies I could personally either take or leave, I don't dislike the mode, but I find myself getting bored after 20 rounds and intentionally downing myself.
DMZ felt like a completely different game than anything CoD has put out before, so it's a bit hard for me to make comparisons to other games in the franchise. I won't claim to have mad skills in DMZ, but I do enjoy the mode A LOT and can hold my own as a solo player.
I think the best part about DMZ was how dynamic it was, every time you infilled it was different, maybe a player team will push you immediately, and you're stuck in a 30 minute rotation sniper fight, or maybe you'll hop on comms and do a truce with another team, it was very exciting. It's super heavy on PVP now that it's no longer being developed. And as far as I am aware, there isn't any other game out there like it aside from Escape from Tarkov, which is more much "hardcore". I like hardcore tactical games, but I enjoyed that DMZ was more casual. I'd love to see another game utilize the core gameplay style as DMZ had.
With talking this much about DMZ, it's also worth noting that I'm definitely not a warzone fan, nothing against it, just not my thing, don't have as much fun with it as others seem to.
MW 2019 was also top tier rated for me, and that's also another unpopular opinion it seems. Map design in MP was soooo good!
I'm surprised at Ross' strength of character. He doesn't work in the games industry, has no legal background and definitely didn't want to be the guy leading this whole movement, but here he is. He rose up to the task when no one else would, and he might actually make a difference. He's going through the hero's journey.
Classic rebel hero archetype.
He's making history.
The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world...
@@oergpoerg4658 Let's just make sure Ross actually gets his helmet along with his HEV suit. I know Gordon wasn't happy about that shit.
Follow Freeman!
Ross Scott 2015: I *HAVE* to *MAKE* the *MOVIE*
Ross Scott 2024: I *HAVE* to *SAVE* the *GAMES*
On top of everything else, Ubisoft has dealt a real blow to the production of THE MOVIE.
@@himalayantongue my god, you're right
Preventing old art from burning comes before painting new, I suppose
I'd be ECSTATIC to have even a tenth of this man's drive.
The movie will still happen. Just this is where the focus needs to be currently.
As an LBP fan who recently got hit the horrible news that Sony officially shut down LBP as a whole, rendering millions of user generated levels, games, and even movies lost forever. I’m definitely all for this movement.
A potential legal avenue to follow in US courts:
Attack the legality of EULAs as a whole.
In the 90's, phone companies stuck arbitration agreements inside the sealed boxes of new cellphones. Anyone who tried to sue the company was being told they agreed to arbitration when they bought the phone.
The courts, however, ruled that because there was no way for the customer to see the agreement before they bought the phone, the agreement wasn't legally binding. So we have an established legal precedent to work from.
Likewise, it's not really possible to view the EULA before you buy a videogame... So how can an agreement you are forced to agree to in order to play a game you've already bought and paid for be legally enforceable? You've literally already bought the game the first time you have a chance to see the EULA.
They literally force you to sign the EULA under duress ("you can't use this item you paid for already without agreeing to this"), which on it's face makes it not legally enforceable.
Would likely need to be handled as a class action lawsuit. Also likely only valid for people who bought physical copies of a game.
This video by Steve Lehto talks about it some: ua-cam.com/video/RR9g1KsDtD0/v-deo.html
Probably depends on distribution channel. Steam shows EULA before buying for example
@@mechm1nd Which is why I said it would probably only apply to people who bought physical copies of the games, because they don't get any digital EULAs until after the purchase.
The case of ProCD vs Zeidenberg says that EULAs are enforceable even if you can't read them until after you make the purchase, as long as you have the opportunity to read them afterwards, and reject them by returning the product. But most stores don't accept returns in real life once you open the product. So that might not apply. But the lawyer that Ross talked to said "This cannot be fixed by a lawsuit. It has to be an act of Congress." So the best route to fixing this in the U.S. is probably tracking down your Congressperson and getting right in their face physically where they can't ignore you.
@@Sewblon ProCD vs Zeidenberg doesn't apply, because the inherent facts of the case are different.
------
The CD-ROM package purchased by Zeidenberg included an external notice (within the shrink wrap that covered the box) that a license was enclosed within the package.
---
The Seventh Circuit overturned the lower court decision and ruled that a shrinkwrap license is in fact an enforceable contract. The circuit court held that while the message on the outside of the CD-ROM package was merely a notification of the full contract to be found inside, this did not force a purchase as Zeidenberg claimed.
------
The key here is there was notification on the outside of the package that a EULA was enclosed.
I just checked a whole slew of my games (granted, my newest system is PS3), and as far as I can tell, none of them have a notice about an enclosed EULA.
Also, and this is vitally important, that ruling only applies to the 7th Circuit Courts. It is NOT legal precedent in any other Circuit.
Also, it wasn't seen by the Supreme Court, so a case with the exact same facts could still be filed in the 7th Circuit if the plan is to go all the way to SCOTUS from the start.
And one last key fact, that case only applies if you can return the product opened for a full refund. Most game stores will not accept returns of new game purchases once they're opened, which is another thing that makes ProCD vs Zeidenberg not apply.
i would absolutely love a EULA-limiting case to be brought and won. they have a reasonable purpose hypothetically, but should absolutely be very limited in what they can disclaim away and/or do.
Ross, you should consider reaching out to the Video Game History Foundation, whose entire mission is related to recognizing games as art that needs to be preserved. They might be able to signal boost this project or provide other resources to help!
I plan to, I just saw most publicity as not that helpful until I had a place to direct people to. Even now, it might make more sense to get them once the damn petitions have opened.
@@Accursed_Farms Gotcha. Aside from publicity they might be able to help you organize various details so I think the sooner the better. You can always coordinate on any publicity pushes. Good luck with the campaign!
@@Accursed_Farms When the petitions open, you might want to try and contact Louis Rossmann (@rossmanngroup) to help bring more people in. He does not talk about computer games, but he fights for right to repair hardware and may just help spread the word.
Then there is Linus Tech Tips with a large audience of gamers, but they are probably hard to reach (and I'd be surprised if You haven't considered this approach yet).
I think getting them on board before the petitions go live works best. That way they can be prepared for when they do go live
Ross, I wonder if you could reach out to Louis Rossman about this? He's been tackling consumer rights for a while now, from laptop repair to being allowed to repair your own john deere tractor. I don't think he's much of a gamer, but he'd definitely understand the challenges and reasons this needs to get some wind in its sails.
YEAH I have been spamming the same thing to both of them, so they both would connect to each other. Especially since Louis has testified against Apple and is a more experienced and has a lot more resources / fan-base that also supports consumer rights. I hope he sees this.
He might be a bit of a gamer, given that he deals with PCs.
This matches pretty well with what Louis has been covering recently and through him we might be able to reach a lot of like-minded non-gamers so getting him to make a video about this is absolutely worth it. Louis himself used to play LoL IIRC so it shouldn't take much explaining for him to understand the situation.
In one of his video chat streams Ross said he could talk to him but only after he gets some more "concrete" stuff, saying that he didn't want to waste Louis's time with hypotheticals
@@awsomebot1 If I remember correctly, Ross said in his "Early plans for stopping companies from destroying games" video that the EULA in US is interpreted/written differently than in EU, which makes companies in the US basically untouchable.
There is an article on Kotaku that mentions stopkillinggames, so this is a start already.
And now that Ubisoft is sneakily removing people's keys from their accounts too, something tells me this campaign has reached their attention.
Then they have a ton of work to do
10+ years of killed games to sneakily removing people's games
Even a broken clock like kotaku is right twice a day
Kotaku is just a fence sitter, they even hate their own customers...
@@NetBattler Be that as it may, they have mainstream attention. And that's what this cause needs.
@@zanon__ mainstream attention? Bro the website literally doesn't get that much attention like it used to be.
I've filed a complaint to Ubisoft, Signal Conso, the German Verbraucherzentrale, I have tweeted about it, told all of my friends about it, and will be vocal about it to anyone I meet in the next coming weeks. I'm doing all I can, best of luck to all of us.
Keep up the hustle. When the time comes for the European Citizens' Initiative make sure to talk about it even with your non-gamer family members, friends and collogues unless they happen to hate video games for some reason.
o7
"While it's debatable that video games are art, they undeniably contain art."
Ross, you just slaughtered an entire swathe of internet armchair critics with that one phrase. Utter defeat.
I hope this comes together. It could be the confluence of several events, just like the GME stock thing was. All of the dominos lining up at just the right time.
Can several arts put together be art? Isn't it what games are?
I'd go out on a limb and say Videogames are a form of artistic representation.
I would like one art, please. Yes, with fries.
Best of luck. And yup. Video games may be more ripe for capitalistic exploitation to the consumer compared to film, but they can both be as cynically produced. And likewise, both can be fueled by talent, blood sweat and tears. Hell, games--being an interactive medium--can in some way be considered to have potential for MORE artistic expression than movies.
Crappy celebrity magazines and Lord of the Rings are both printed on paper. It's just about what you do with it.
If videogames aren't art, the distinction between art and non-art is completely arbitrary.
[UPDATE - UK PETITION] Unable to sign due to 20 people already signing. From the webpage:
We’re checking this petition
20 people have already supported this petition. No more people can sign this petition until it has been approved.
We need to check it meets the petition standards before we publish it.
Please try again in a few days.
You are being a hero man! Keep on keeping on!
Sounds stereotypically British lol
KEEP US UPDATED!
Ubisoft support basically told me "thanks for playing The Crew 1, now go buy The Crew Motorfest and/or The Crew 2"......
So I reported them to Signal Conso (The French consumer agency).
Jens Stoltenberg, Norway’s prime minister for 12 years and current secretary general of NATO, has stated in several interviews that he enjoys playing strategy games like Age of Empires and Medieval Total War. He even decided to use the nickname that the KGB supposedly gave him as his username ingame, “Steklov”.
This NEEDS to take off before streaming-only games begin to take hold.
Problem is, even if this campaign is successful streaming only games wouldn't end up in much worse position as they are likely to be sold as a subscription anyway
you could just not buy the game...
@@shioq.can you just not breathe? eat food?
yeah. i thought so
@@shioq. how would that help me play it?
@@shioq.Yeah man just stop gaming. Great solution! 👍🏻
I'm actually a bit confident in Brazil's odds here. The only group allowed to screw the people over is the government, and our "fuck around" to "find out" turnaround rates are pretty high; as the saying goes: "Brazil is not for amateurs". Two examples I can give off the top of my head:
Back when the PlayStation 5 released and Sony offered the PS Plus Collection for PS5 owners, people started account sharing to get the Collection for free on their PS4s without buying a PS5, which violated Sony's terms. PS5s were blocked; an affected consumer sued Sony for it. The judge ruled that the company didn't provide clear information on what the punishment would be and abused the innate power imbalance in the relationship between the provider and the consumer. And even if Sony informed the customer of the risks involved, blocking the whole console violates our Consumer Defense Code (damaging the customer's belongings irreversibly is a big no-no, as discussed in the video) and would be null anyways. The customer won the lawsuit.
Not gaming-related, but tech-related and surprisingly recurring: Apple removing chargers and headphones from the IPhone box. This is a clear case of what we call a "married sale"*: you have to buy a second product to make the first one function; very illegal according to the Consumer Defense Code. Customers sued and won in 2021 and 2024 and the government sued in 2023 planning to hit them with a R$ 100 million fine, but legal precedence stopped that. As long as they keep selling phones with no charger, I don't see why customers couldn't just keep suing, as legal costs are paid by the loser here.
Note that the same isn't happening with Samsung because they give chargers for free if you ask for one, though this only happened after they were also sued.
* Just to preempt questions on this, since, in my experience, foreigners do not tend to grasp "married sales" immediately: Apple _can_ sell chargers without the phone, but not the other way around. It would be a married sale if they sold you just the brick and you had to buy the cable separately. You also _can_ sell a console without a packed game; as long as you can turn on the console and interact with the OS out-of-the-box, it's fair (whether you can see it or not doesn't matter here; companies don't have to sell consoles with a packed-in TV).
The law also forbids cinemas that sell food from denying customers that bring in their own food, as they're forcing people to buy the establishment's food if they want to eat during the movie, which counts as a married sale, I guess.
Boosting so Ross can see this~!
Would the PSP count as a married sale if charger came separate considering charging it is "using the product wrong" according to its warranty?
Good, fuck sony. I have a number of purchases of micro transactions from them that are gone to the wind. Same thing with Microsoft and Google- I bought into multiple services and lo and behold those companies shut those services down and there hasn't been a thing I can do about it.
@@Manavine I'm not familiar with the PSP's warranty, but selling one without a charger would be a married sale regardless of what the warranty says; if there's no charger in the box, you can't use the device.
Another thing that can be done here is also proposing a popular initiative law through the legislative assembly site.
Though it does ask for either large scale popular support or be sponsored by a recognized civil society entity, though the latter could fast track it directly to a comission that could start the internal process of the law. So our odds are positive, we just need to do a bit of legwork, though maybe broadening it to software in general might actually increase the chances of getting it through, since it would be easier to gather attention and support as a general measure against consumer abuse among or politicians and also the public than just something for gamers.
I have been using this (possibly bad) analogy for a while now "imagine one day the manufacture of your fridge stops production and replacing of any parts, THEN they walk into your house and take your perfectly working fridge from your house and tell you 'oh the food is ours too' and leave" THAT'S what game companies keep doing. Sell a product then if you pay extra for whats in the product they just scoop up the money and leave.
Is the food like your saves?
@@Nomis90000DLC, etc
Bruv describing how the government works
@@BicBoi1984 you are correct, the issue is not that im describing what the government does. its that the government DOES IT to begin with.
I would say that an improvement to this analogy would be that the producer of the fridge comes into your home and locks the fridge beyond your ability to ever open it again.
I mean, you technically still own the game, you just can't access it anymore.
The UK petition is open and up to 6100 signatures already! IM DOING MY PART!
I've signed it for myself as well. 9,112 signatures at the time of writing.
And for any on-lookers; "At 10,000 signatures, government will respond to this petition", so the first of two thresholds is just about within reach, with the second being "At 100,000 signatures, this petition will be considered for debate in Parliament". And, with the petition's deadline set to 16th October 2024, there's still almost exactly half a year to attain this number of signatures, if not more and, if nothing else, cause a little fuss about this particular issue within the region.
It's at 11000 now! Too bad I'm in the US or id sign!
16k now. let's keep pushing
16k!
17k now
For anyone with an interest in games, this is our moment to do something that might nudge reality back towards any kind of rationality.
Won't do anything, and this is not me being pessimistic. Just a realist, gamers are stupid fucks who had chance after chance after chance to actually do something, yet set on there hands only to bitch and complain.
I'm on board - let's get our consumer protections back!
I agree.
YES I AFTREFEACAS AEG*SD AWD !"£ f
Real
Yeah, but like... do you know what would be 1000% more effective? Stop buying games from psychopaths. I literally haven't purchased a non-fromsoft AAA game in over 10 years. If everyone was as smart as me, this wouldn't be a problem, micro transactions wouldn't even be a problem.
@@realityvanguard2052 "if everyone was as smart as me", jeez that is something. i'm sorry but gaming is entertainment and a lot of people don't care where it comes from or how it's sabotaged, which is why people like ross have to kick up a stink to try and fix this mess
i hate mtx and all that too but that's a different can of worms that preys on every human bias in the book.
if you want people to stop doing that then tell them, not us. we want this to change and it cant happen if we just ignore the problem
What outrages me the most : when owners of an IP/license suddenly have a game disappear from stores, because the license had a time limit (!). It is extremely brutal for the people who made the game, violent in terms of having that creation/art removed from access, and of course just uncool all around.
Games being taken down because a music license expired is also brutal
music license or even the whole IP. License that shit in perpetuity. Be it Alpha Protocol or Transformers Devastation, indefinite earnings potential is always superior to making it only available to pirates
@@ChibiKami Unfortunately a lot of companies only care about short term profits. Thankfully gog was able to bring Aloha Protocol back at least.
Ubi is in the process of revoking licenses from the users that had The Crew assigned to their Ubisoft Connect account. I have nothing on my product's page, other than a brazen message that says: "You no longer have access to this game. Why not check the Store to pursue your adventure?" -- or in other words "We stole your fucking game. Why won't you purchase another one, so we can do that again, loser?"
Yep done with ubisoft.....
Stopped buying their games, no money for them. Vote with your wallet !! Could careless anymore if they go bankrupt.
I dont want them to go bankrupt i just want my childhood game back, TC1. i just found out today TC1 shut down and i boight a whole new xbox plug for it after like a year of not using my Xbox just to play YC1 tp find out they killed it. 8 years.. down the drain.@@sola4393
It started with Driver: San Francisco... Nobody blinked
thats rich , robber barons all of the dam fat corps and their slug overlords
at least it makes it simple to spread the loathing for ubi and its ilk , dont even need to give examples about how the products are borderline blackmail chopped up into 'dlc' etc to associates speaking of buying something from either its enough to just show how their sole reason to chain everything to an 'account' is so they can steal products you bought ala 'protection racket' style and force you to 'buy' it agen
Fuck yeah, Ross Scott doing something that should have been done away a long time ago.
Yeah, but like... do you know what would be 100% more effective? Stop buying games from psychopaths. I literally haven't purchased a non-fromsoft AAA game in over 10 years. If everyone was as smart as me, this wouldn't be a problem, micro transactions wouldn't even be a problem.
@@realityvanguard2052 Yeah, last proper AAA game I got was Skyrim, but for some reason the sentiment doesn't seem to track with others.
I think they're a bot. I just saw that same comment; word for word. @@drearmouse9510
@@drearmouse9510 Because not everyone cares as much about games as we do. Like, legitimately. Most people just want to have fun for a few hours, they don't think about it as art. That's nothing to do with intelligence, they just don't care that much.
I have many things in life where I care less than others. It's a normal thing. Just means you cannot expect them to stop acting like that.
@@michimatsch5862 Oh, I didnt correlate intelligence to it, that's the other dude. I just cant stand AAA games lacking so much substance despite their budget. But yeah, its understandable how little some care, just reallly sucks. Dx
(Thankfully roms exist though for the time being. Preservationists rly are the unsung heroes of gaming)
lol, just checked out the UK petition and "Because 20 people have signed this, please wait several days while we check that it's legit." What a way to kill momentum.
And _this_ is part of why I'm an anarchist.
wtf
@@LexYeenI mean…it’s a valid ideology but weird flex.
@@LexYeen Sure, great idea. The corporations agree with you. Remove all centralized regulation and just let the rich enslave the poor without consequence.
@@delphicdescanttell me you don't know anything about anarchism but capitalist propaganda without saying you don't know anything about anarchism but capitalist propaganda.
I like how France seems to be completely on fire in the background
to be fair with our current gouv it kinda that, senator and deputy voted themself a rise of 300-500 € ( on they salary of 5000 plus bonus of the job), and some week ago the president and /or it minister wanted to cut down the duration of aide for unemployed people ( those who HAD a work, and lose it, by beeing fired, or the company went under).) but i m not the most partial on that, the president sound more and more like Marechal petain from WW2, want french to make more babies ( when we are the third country in EU in birthrate), saying it is a infertility problem ... when in fact it is mostly because working full time doesnt pay enought...) sorry for the biiiig side tracking there
I mean when it's not on fire?
Are you English?
Classic Frenchie L.
Its France... Their riots can be seen from space.
I'm a Brit and I signed the petition but the petition only has 179 signatures, cmon UK step it up!
10K now, but we still need to aim for the 100K, go go go!
It sucks that I'm from the US, but if I lived in the UK I'd definitely sign it no doubt.
I own The Crew as a physical disk for PS4, and also got it free with gold on Xbox.
You can't even find the game listed on the Xbox store, all it pulls up are the sequels, UNLESS you check for the store page from the game's management thing.
I admit this is the first i'd heard that The Crew was basically taken down and whatnot.
I'll happily be joining in on this.
Of course it isn't listed, what would be the point as the game doesn't work anymore. Were you under assumption you can play any ofyour copies?
WOO! 🎉
Congrats, you just found out what "unlisted" means.
There are plenty of games like that in my Steam library for example: Alpha Protocol & The OG GTA trilogy (not the garbage "Remasters").
Although I can still play those because they are still in my library and don't rely on servers.
@@EXiLExJD Believe me, I know what unlisted means.
Spec Ops: The Line is a game I happen to thankfully own on both console and PC.
You can no longer purchase this game for some reason, most likely music licensing.
Marvel's Ultimate Alliance 1 and 2 were at one point ported to modern consoles. And were eventually made unable to be bought. Most likely due to the cost of the marvel licensing.
Thankfully, I own those two.
Thank you for waiting until April 2nd to post this.
He made a point about this on the last video chat. Said something along the lines of "I don't want people to think this is an April Fools joke, especially since I'm the kind of guy who would do that".
Part of the reason this is so important is because it reaches into ALL software and hardware. These companies believe that whoever holds the Internet server, controls anything linked to it.
Microsoft straight up assassinated my Windows 7 cpu despite my stern resistance to convert over to Windows 10. Because I forgot to unplug my Ethernet cable one night after turning the machine off, thru reached in and lobotomized it during the night. All those software programs I paid good money for and still used, unusable. They didn’t force my cpu to Windows 10, but they definitely tampered with my machine to become useless.
If we place this law into practice, we can protect our digital investments, regardless to shifting versions.
I'm guessing this is same for apple who purposely slow down their older iPhones and force people to get a new one. They did gave a reason that they are doing this to prolong the battery health, but this lacks explanations. Also this doesn't even seems like a proper reason. The user should be the one to balance the performance and efficiency on their devices.
In Canada, the platform (Ultraviolet) that all digital movies (regardless of the company) was on shutdown one day. Just "SORRY YOUR MOVIES ARE BYE BYE".
Then they wonder why pirating is rampant in Canada? &%&^ you too, movie companies. That's why. I'll never pay again for a movie for as long as I live.
@@calmkittyhonestly, I’m inclined to believe apple on that one. Changed my battery in my 2016 iphone se last year and it literally sped back up to how it was when it was new again. Couldn’t believe it. Why it took apple so long to just admit that was the issue though, I have no idea
The hell is a "Windows 7 CPU"? CPUs aren't bound to any OS, you can install Linux or any Windows version under 11 onto most, if not all contemporary PCs.
@@calmkitty its not a proper reason because there is at least a couple things you can do to prolong battery life that don't involve ramping down performance. apple can implement slower charging during the night so that your phone will be fully charged in the morning but the phone wont be overloaded with power. heck, my nothing phone 1(supposedly) does that so I know its possible. heck, if that was the case they could of just had a option to ramp down performance during certain tasks or gave you the option to do that yourself.
So Ubisoft have up and revoked everyone's license. This just kicked into high gear and very public visibility.
Actually this should be enough for lawsuits in the EU or Australia. Petitions will not do the trick in my opinion.
Just submitted a 4300 character report with 5 attachments to that french fraud control thingy. Figured since it's fraud control I'd just casually sneak in the fact that Ubisoft is willingly creating an easily abusable environment where someone could sell a preowned physical copy of the game and the first time the buyer will find out something is sketchy is after installing the game, contacting support (because the error code upon launch doesn't say the servers are no longer operational) and being told by Ubisoft support that the crew no longer works.
Also told my parents that something they paid for with their hard earned money now no longer exists and they're now against Ubisoft as well. As soon as the Australian petition comes up you already have 3 sugnatures ready😂
You make a good point about talking about this with your family members. When these government petitions go live we need to talk with non-gamers as well since unless someone is extremely pro big business the argument that a company shouldn't be able to stop a product that you bought from working is likely to get a lot of traction.
Ah, their strategy becomes clearer. Prevent secondhand copies being sold, and physical copies of games existing, and then they don't have to deal with the reports of the games not working, with the physical evidence they manufactured it. A fridge or washing machine is supposed to last ten years. Why not computers or computer games? Plus they can erase any evidence of the game existing by shutting down their website, servers, and forums like Bungie and 343 Industries did with everything prior to MCC.
I literally bought The Crew from a used game store a few weeks ago and now it's completely useless 🤷🏻♂️ this should not be allowed and I do hope some legislation is created to prevent this from happening.
Good lad
I think about games kids are playing nowadays too. When I was a kid I played games like Unreal Tournament all the time. It is part of my childhood, and I can go back and play it whenever I want even to this day. But imagine being a kid now growing up playing games like Overwatch or Fortnite. When you grow up, there is absolutely no guarantee those games will even still be playable, let alone exist. You can never go back to play it ever again. I can't imagine growing up like that, but kids now *are* growing up used to this just being their reality. They're getting used to games just being snatched from them and moving on to the next. I was just thinking about how, when I have kids, I want to be able to show them all of the cool games I used to play when I was their age just like my father did for me. And while I can do that for some, there are definitely games I can't.
this is a big point - corporations are destroying the future childhood memories of an entire generation and locking them away so they can never be experienced again.
i was lucky to grow up on a diet of my parents' old retrogames, but most modern kids are stuck in a world of ephemeral, time-limited experiences. many often don't initially realise that those experiences will one day be taken away from them forever.
a lot of people get jaded when their most loved games start to get shut down, and i've seen quite a few people entirely fall out of the videogame market as a result of that disillusionment and loss of trust. a generationally-shrinking market for aaa titles is not something publishers (who have "line-go-up-eternally" financial imperatives) should want to risk.
just another reason that preservation is healthy for the videogame industry's self-interest, not solely for artistic reasons.
Ross described this aspect as "(slowly) boiling a frog", and it's a very apt comparison. The "as-a-service" paradigm is an ongoing process of getting people used to the idea of not owning their software; when they will realize what they lost, it will be too late for them to act.
@@ratcarpet "line go up eternally"
You mean DEI. All companies want Line to Go Up. Historically, Line Went Up by pleasing your customers. But that's capitalism. And some very powerful people HATE capitalism.
@@KopperNeoman absolute cartoon brain.
This is a big reason why this matters. Games are part of our culture and the transfer of culture from one generation to the next is key to how we came to be who we are. We may dislike Fortnite but for zoomers it is a key part of their culture which they might not be able to share with future generations due to Epic shutting it down eventually.
It's not just gamers who are known for having low time preference. Why do you think a lot of government services have you wait. They know what they're doing when they ask you to wait two weeks, or even when they ask you to deal with ubicrap first. They know most people won't have the willpower to go through the hurdles nor the time preference to stick to the plan in order to reap a reward.
set a (calendar) alarm two weeks from when you do it, set any reminder you can
Brazilian law student here, so you have more options,:
Law of popular initiative - the requirement are harsh, like, you would need to elaborate a project of law and would need over a milion signatures in at least 5 states and a few more odd requirements to have the house vote on the project;
There is representative who could sponsor the law. Im not his constituinte. he is now sponsoring a bill to recognize e-sports and those who work in the field as the same as regular sports and has gamers as part of his public, but he is pro corporations in most cases, the name is kim kataguiri representative for the state of são paulo;
On the courts a class action can be sponsored by the public attonery, wich means free, but you would be at his discreation;
At last is possible to flood the the specials judges (for simple and small cases) wiht cases wihtout the need for lawers or legal fees, but to generate a strong jurisprudencie would be needed to get the attention of higher courts, wich mean appeals and costs (and lawyers). With a great number of cases its possible for the supreme court to open a general question and create a obligatory jurisprudence.
It would be case of civil and consumers law and Brazil draws heavy inspiration from france and europe
We're not stuck with you Ross, you're stuck with us.
Let's do this
Nah, Ubisoft and the games industry as a whole is stuck with _all_ of us!
I feel like Ross is taking particular umbrage with Ubisoft's CEO and his cry of "Gamers need to get used to not owning their games."
This whole movement started as a stand against EA and them shutting down game servers, and very swiftly pivoted to specifically countering the insanity that is the CEO of Ubisoft.
Seriously, how has that man not been ousted yet? You'd think investors, even if they agree with his stances, would see the damage he's doing to the public perception of the brand, and start pulling out, stating they aren't coming back until he is removed from his position.
ubisoft has been in a years-long drawnout fight between its board and various stakeholders, and already fought off a couple of hostile takeover attempts. his time as ceo is limited and not solely because he's been increasingly bad at the job
@@ratcarpet The "stakeholders" would be the reason why Ubi are being so slimy. Shareholders care about money like capitalists should. Stakeholders are more fash, as a certain old German son-of-a-Nazi named Klaus described.
Them losing money is worth it to them if you can't own stuff.
@@ratcarpet "Stakeholder capitalism" is just fascism under a prettier name to sell it to the self-proclaimed anti-fascists who serve as its enforcement arm, after all.
Tbh, I'm already pretty used to not owning Ubisoft's games.
@@TarkasBaneYeah its not hard to boycott a company when they don't personally make anything you want/need to play.
Not only are they destroying art when they stop supporting their games, they're also destroying history.
Wait until you discover the Kmher Rouge and what the Equity in Diversity Inclusion Equity means.
I must thank Tactical Bacon Productions for sending me here. Having a game be self-sustaining after being live-service is super easy and cheap. This has been a long time coming.
For the people saying that physical copies are the solution, nope, physical copies nowadays are often a lie:
- The box only has a digital code to download the game.
- There's a disc, but it only has a few files, the actual game must be downloaded and the disc is only a key.
- Sometimes, only parts of the game are available on disc, you can play without internet, but not the full game.
- You can play the game without internet with just a disc, but not the good version of the game, because at launch, the game is full of problems and you need to download a patch later or there's a patch since the launch day.
- Sometimes, the patch is so big that you are almost downloading the whole game.
- You still need to connect to the internet to buy and download DLC.
- To play online, you need to download the most recent version.
- Many games are online-only, require a constant connection to the internet, even on single-player, and to make things worse, the servers often close, making your physical copy a paperweight.
That's what happened to The Crew, even those who had a physical copy lost the game they bought.
if it's any of those then it's not a true physical copy
First off, physical copies, die eventually. So even IF they had no drm whatsoever, they wouldn't be a sollution unless companies kept manufacturing them forever, along with hardware capable of PLAYING said copies.
When DRM, especially online DRM gets involved then? the idea of physical media as a genuine means of preservation becomes laughable. Freaking SOFTWARE PIRACY and TORRENT WEBSITES have done more to preserve video games than actual physical copies.
And don't even get me started on day 01 patches, or games that are unplayable because they're designed around constant internet connections, like MMORPGs, a physical copy will do nothing for those games without a private server, which IS STILL CONSIDERED PIRACY EITHER WAY!
@@YayaFeiLong True physical copies still aren't enough, they die, and the hardware they were designed to be played on dies as well over time. Not to mention certain games, despite having physical copies, still require constant internet connection to be playable. (games like World of Warcraft, or Elder Scrolls Online, sure these games probably aren't in danger of being shut down right NOW, but what about the distant future? what if these games fall in popularity, or the comapnies go bankrupt?)
The only way to trully preserve games, is by giving players a drm-free online archive where players are able to at the very least buy the games and legally own and donwload their digital copies, and are allowed to do whatever they want with it, including hosting private servers. Yes, it might sound outlandish, but outside that, our only other option is STRAIGHT UP PIRACY!
It's called "older consoles". You must live under a rock.
@@Anonymous-wb3nz Physical media is not the perfect solution for older consoles before the Xbox 360 either.
- Phsyical media rots over time, even if never used.
- The actual consoles also rot over time, eventually they can't be fixed anymore.
- In recent years, retro gaming became very expensive, older cartridges and discs skyrocketed in price due to collectors.
- Arcades, which only a few people can have at home and many games were never ported into home versions.
What pisses me off is how many excuses for always-online are made not by the companies, but by the PLAYERS. The sheer amount of people who think Helldivers 2 being always-online is okay when Helldivers 1 is pretty much the same and had an offline mode "because it's an online-focused game" is astounding.
PS: I wanna reiterate that just saying "leaving games in a functional state" isn't going to be good enough legally. That can easily just mean taking you to the main menu, and leaving you there. The functional state has to be defined as something concrete or they can circumvent that law pretty easily.
"The functional state has to be defined as something concrete or they can circumvent that law pretty easily."
Ross does mention in the video that he simplified down the psuedo-laws they (he and the volunteers) came up with, so it's very likely there's a pretty solid definition of 'functional' in there
Helldivers 2 is part of the reason I'm joining this campaign. It's a very good game, but I see the writing on the wall, and even if we can't save The Crew or other games, I want to at least try and save it.
Yea so many bootlickers, they're not even getting paid for that
You think the developers of Helldivers 2 are engaged in a dastardly conspiracy to defraud you?
Jesus christ the entire point of helldivers 2 is you're taking part in the war. Your battles influence the game. That's the entire point of the game, there is literally no way to make this offline. You people always choose the worst examples.
I got onto this train when, in 2013, a server based sci-fi mmo went under, good ol Starquest Online. (Name coopted since by Web 3.0 junk)
The community then failed to save it, bid for it, even maintain most of the non-coded, off game info, the people who managed the servers (nexeon) just deleted it, the game dev company went under and uncontactable. All the works and data and community went poof beyond the saved scraps.
This opened my eyes to how transient data and info and access can be. I went on an info saving spree since. Internet archive and abandonia and other such groups and projects….
Then I found you and the gaas thing and I’ve been around since. I hope this goes well and I’ll be following and supporting as much as I can!
I've been trying to do the same with UA-cam videos, saving them onto a jumpdrive. You wouldn't believe how many videos I've seen from ages ago are simply gone forever in the blink of an eye.
@@arandompasserby7940 Yeap, started to notice that too, just classics that go private or deleted, it's always good to have copies of the stuff you like most on your own side of the screen....
IT'S WORKING! I am seeing people link to these videos now... people are talking about this. Ross Scott- you are a gaming hero.
I think The Crew is also a big shot due to how the game is and structured. It is , for all intense and purposes, the singleplayer game with online compabilities that is forced to be online-only. Something I think that should be pointed out in court and give examples like forza horizon is very similiar to this and those games have offline mode
You did not just write "for all intense and purposes" unironically... right? I suppose its a bit better than "for all intensive purposes" but still.
17:28 Don't forget to set an alarm for 1-2 weeks after you contact Ubisoft so that you remember to come back and do the second step.
As a US citizen who didn't buy The Crew I wish I could do more than just tell people that bought The Crew about this campaign. This is so very important.
even if you got it free you can still do the first part from the website
I didn't get The Crew for free though. I checked and I don't have it anywhere.@@raymaster
Okay, so Ubisoft just revoked The Crew from my Ubisoft Connect (formerly UPlay) library. Can't install or launch it anymore with the message "You no longer have access to this game. Why not check the Store to pursue your adventures?".
Now this sounds bad, but it's actually really great. It's like Ubisoft deliberately wants to spearhead game preservation at this point. There's no way this isn't super illegal in Australia or at least one EU-country, if not the entire EU. Keeping a dead live-service in people's game libraries was always one way to dodge legal responsibility, but Ubisoft just could not help themselves, could they? Always pushing the envelope, to the point of self-harm. Maybe they're just masochists. Maybe execs get off, by reading mean comments about their companies on the internet.
The only issue, is that it may blindside this whole operation, since many people may have already contacted their consumer protection agencies and may have to do that again or update their complaint, since the siutation is now much worse (from a consumer protection/legal pov). That is now as if a Ubisoft-rep came into your room and blatantly stole your physical copy of The Crew.
Can confirm, the game has been removed from my Ubisoft connect account entirely!
Oh now that could be very important... Because that also feels very 'Destroying the evidence'.
Some people may think that this only affects multiplayer games, but there are MANY single player games out there that have live services, and some that even require a connection just to play. The companies have been slowly introducing this for some time (Ubisoft being the biggest offender btw), so it's about time something is done.
How quickly people have forgotten that time Microsoft tried to do this with literally every Xbox One game. The threat to even single player games with no need for internet connectivity is real.
Yes, the big bad corporations really are coming for your games. They don't want you to keep playing old ones when they could sell you new ones instead.
@@SnakebitSTI People forget about the original H1Z1/Just Survive, which had a single player mode, but for some reason, they went with battle royale, and it failed kind of.
And they could have just let people play the survival mode solo, it was completely possible too. Instead, they locked it out completely. Hell you can still download the game, open it, and it will just be like "NOPE YOU CAN'T PLAY IT"
And don't get me started on the BS with Diablo.
I want it known that Ubisoft when they announced The Crew server shutdown, would almost immediately following said announcement block any and all new players from being able to play game at all. If you didn’t have a save already on the server with your account it would return a verification error, You could not play the game. There was still plenty of time to buy a copy, even a physical copy that had to be shipped to your house, play through the entire games content and DLC and even earn every single Trophy/Achievement for the game from the time of the shutdown announcement to its server closure. Ubisoft with alleged malice blocked anyone from playing the game in that brief period.
What Ubisoft did to The Crew. They did with malicious intent. Blocking anyone who wished to experience the game before closure from playing. That is a serious indictment of the worrying future of modern always online live service games.
If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t theft.
Based.
I hate "small hats". They want to have their cake, and scr3w it too.
Okay but games-as-a-service are designed to be unpirateable so...
Nintendo will have to send In a swat team for my modded Wii.
@@awsomebot1 You can always emulate (even servers).
Vielen Dank für dieses großartige Projekt. Ich ärgere mich auch immer, wenn ich ein Spiel gekauft habe und plötzlich ist es komplett aus dem Store verschwunden oder unspielbar weil es permanent eine Server Verbindung benötigt. CrossfireX , the Crew 1 (bald auch 2) und die Community Funktionen bei WWE2k22 (bald 23/24 usw.) wurden mir von den Entwicklern wieder gestohlen. Need for Speed 2015 ist ein grandioses Spiel aber wenn die Server offline gehen, unspielbar. Gibt tausende Spiele, die vom Entwickler wieder geklaut werden nach den erfolgreichen Jahren. Da muss sich kein Entwickler wundern über Piraterie. Man zahlt teilweise mehr als 60€ und nach 3-5 Jahren oder 5-10 Jahren gehört dir nichts mehr. Es ist eine große Frechheit
The thing we as consumers want in this issue is really simple; we just want to keep the products we paid for.
This feels a lot more achievable and real than the average "Let's take action!" type of video and the plan seems like it had a lot of effort put into it. I do hope this gets major repercussion and we can, at the very least, still own our games and this "games as service" ends.
We'll either get a yes or a firm no. Either way something will happen if enough people step up.
classic wow will always be the best example of this. Community run servers are the only reason that game stayed alive. If it wasn't for them, this historical entry into the genre would have been lost forever to future generations. Community run servers were an absolutely monumental preservation project that took 10 years to get right. Blizzard somehow entirely lost the source code for the servers, and really only (supposedly I might add, don't even know if it's true) found it again because they felt financially pressured to, due to how popular community servers were getting. If it wasn't for them it almost certainly would have been lost forever. Moreover, you have the famous "you think you do but you don't" quote of blizzard employees outright refusing to provide a product that people purchased in the past. The whole thing is horrible. We need legislation yesterday that the moment a game's servers go offline, the server source code is released. Not the game source code, but just the servers. It's a victimless thing.
same deal with Oldschool runescape. They didnt have a backup, until they did when private servers got as big as they did in 2012ish
the sad fact is the only games that can survive in this way are /huge/ anything smaller than millions of players simply will not survive by having dedicated programmers making custom servers.
@Xiado that's, like, a different problem. We are talking about games that exist being killed, not the process by which games come into existance. I do agree, but have hope that when the current indie devs bloom we will see a new renaissance in game releases.
still doesn't help the game as service system meaning all but the most massive games having almost literally no chance at survival. like fortnight /might/ be able to survive, as an example, but there are tens of thousands of games that wont. there might be a bit of argument of wether or not anyone should care, since the vast majority of them are trash, but that isn't something we need to argue about, saving /all/ games from being killed is more important than some of them being trash. save the 99.9% of garbage so that the .01% can live forever.
they supposedly lost a lot of things for D2 and said thats the reason they wont make a remake of it. (the real reason was I guess the lack of microtransactions lol). Lo and behold after enough pressure they backpadellaed and made a D2 remake
@Xiado He be right though, money is a huge factor in any sort of preservation outside the big titles.
UK petition is open! I've signed and spread it around among a couple of my UK-based friend groups.
More signatures means more gooderness! If you're in the UK, SIGN THIS THING!
Way ahead of you LETS GET THIS DONE
I shared this video in several discord servers and have already been called a slur.
TF is the matter with those people?
They like the taste of corpo boot that much?
Bootlickers.
Sorry dude, that sucks and you didn't deserve that. Some discord users are just toxic.
@@MarrrrtinI appreciate you saying so. I don't get that mentality.
@@ENSIBDumb Neither do I. If you're in a chat room, you should be willing to chat and listen to other perspectives. Also, using slurs should not be tolerated in any chat room with strangers.
Just signed the UK government petition, just another 3,000 signers to the UK version and the government legally has to respond. Wish I had purchased the Crew so I could make a direct complaint as well.
Thank you for doing the work and leading on this.
I think this should expand to software in general. Lots of industry standard packages are constantly yanking the rug out from folks whose livelihoods rely on their tools suddenly switching from perpetual licenses to subscriptions, or killing software usability outright. That's not just entertainment, that's JOBS!
If you are running your company without support, good luck to you.
*cough*Microsoft*cough*
If this succeeds it may get the ball rolling.
Not yet, but yes, we do need it. Get the smaller ball rolling first...
It's mentioned in the video that Ross doesn't want to go after software as well, because software companies (esp. Adobe, Microsoft etc.) are absolutely huge and _will_ fight this to the bitter end with insane amounts of lobbying and millions/billions of dollars of funding
_However,_ if we can sneak in some laws/precedents using this games thing - since games are basically software - it's basically the trojan horse of winning those cases too
For Australia, we must contact Juicemedia to do a videogamecompany advertisement.
you can't say it, you need to be the one who takes action.
"Honest Video Game Company Ad"
Do it Dutchie, do it!
Not a good time, the guy who runs it, his mom just passed away.
.... RIP
People are already working hard to shut down discussion of this on Hacker News. Don't give up!
Link?
huh?
give us details ffs
Lmfao hacker news
Source: Trust me bro(?)
And now they are REVOKING KEYS of The Crew from players, like wtf? Turning off their servers is one thing but revoking the ownership of a product without refund is dowright illegal, it's actually a theft!
Fuck! I was gifted this game in 2018 and put off playing it until almost literally the last minute. Why couldn't they just make the game work offline? The multiplayer component is barely even noticeable! I'm not in contact with the friend who gifted the game, so I don't even have some kind of proof of purchase to help in the fight.
You might be able to get in contact with Steam, they should have receipts of the purchase on their end. Sorry you never got the chance to try the game out, I'm kinda bummed about it too.
You should be able to find the gift code you redeemed?
And I hear you, I finally decided to buy The Crew a few months ago, and just now they've killed it. Total bs.
All code activations are tracked and dated in your Steam transaction history.
@@themousemage they sold it to you knowing it's being killed off?
@@AdamDimitrijevic I checked the receipt. Bought it March 8th, 2023. So possibly.
The fact people defend these practices still boggles my mind. Never knew how good I had it 2 generations ago.
Yea. People hate it when you go against the things they enjoy
The UK petition is finally open! Go sign guys
rarely i see call to action.. cannot refuse the opportunity to do something objectively good.. thank you Ross for stepping up
Excited to see where this goes. I think there’s a chance for real change. The outline for keeping games playable is well thought out. It really is the bare minimum we need to keep games preserved.
There is a serious chance that this winds up being only the first wave of many required to make real progress. It's a marathon not a sprint.
Super important that this takes off, both for game preservation and the preservation of art and consumer rights in general.
And the real disgusting thing is that there are regular people out there who actually defend all this crap even though they have nothing to gain from it.
I'm kind of kicking myself for not buying The Crew. I avoided doing so specifically because I knew it would shut down some day, but now I wish I had done so so that I could assist in this as much as possible. However I'll do whatever I can to spread this movement around!
You can absolutely still get a copy if you wanted to
@@venerablepoof Online keys? I don't even want to think that Ubisoft is selling it on their official online platform.
@@venerablepoof How? It's gone from Steam + the Ubisoft store.
@@MarcoPisanu I'm guessing they are talking about key resellers.
I got it for free and Ubisoft deleted it from my Uplay account
People, SHARE THIS EVERYWHERE. This is hugely important for the future of the video games industry.
Reacting to your message to get the algorithm to notice this video
Its true, spread the word
As a US citizen without The Crew I shared the video in a small community that spans a large number of nations across the world.
Ain't much but it's honest work.
I'm in the same boat, so I shared it with my friends groups. Traditionally, this means they'll actively ignore the issue now, but it's all I can do. Hopefully it'll get reposted soon by someone whose opinion they value and it'll suddenly be news to them, and they'll take action then.
as a man who controls myslf. ubisoft took away the crew. and i am not crying for help from daddy govenrment to regulate some shit. i just vote with my wallet and will never ever ever buy a single thing from ubisoft ever again! but the consumers are ok with it last time i checkkd ubisoft is till selling shit
Likewise. I've an article going up on my site tonight. Sharing the video and link to Ross' site are all we can do, but we can still do it.
Just move onto the newer crew games why keep playing the first one...
@@jake78441 "Why keep playing [old game]?" is a question that misses the point of the conversation, because it doesn't matter which of the million reasons someone might have. They paid for something, and they should be able to keep that thing; why they want to keep it is their own business. "Because I want to" should always be a sufficient answer to this question when it comes to a product you've purchased.
And that's setting aside the art question, where the things that exist in [old game] are now gone and can never be seen or experienced by later players, historians, or anyone at all. While any specific example may or may not be a tragedy for culture and humanity, there is no such discernment in the law. So the best answer here is that we shouldn't be making it impossible for someone to preserve art they view as impactful. We're seeing this same problem crop up now with streaming films and televisions, but at least those can _possibly_ be preserved in some form. Interactive media can't simply be recorded or photographed, no matter how lossy the format.
You may want to watch the earlier videos Ross has done on this subject if you're still asking this question. He answers why this matters, and why just playing the newest thing isn't a solution.
The bastards killed it, let's give 'em hell!
It's time to chew bubblegum and kick rear, and we're all outta rear
Come on you gamers, you wanna read books forever?
@@KingLich451 Only in games
@Xiado just say that you are directing actionable threats at XYZ.
No they didn't you did. At every opportunity you had a chance to push back but didn't. Gaming is in this state not just because of big bad companies, but with the help of stupid fucking gamers. You all help make your bed, and now your complaining its a mess.
It's not even just a video game issue. Car companies want to disable your seat heating remotely, train companies want to disable trains remotely, soon they'll charge you a subscription to keep you fridge running at this rate.
As a long time community organizer I have to say I am very impressed with the power mapping and strategy you've come up with for this one. One of the hardest things is figuring out what tools are unlikely to result in any kind of positive change and not wasting resources on them.
Yeah I literally wasted a month going down the wrong roads, I'm not thrilled about that, but better that than sending everyone to the wrong places.
Since I'm not in the EU, don`t own the game and don`t use social media, there's not much I can do except liking and boosting with a comment. Keep up the good work Ross, greetings from Norway.
There is more than 100k Poles in Norway .... just speaking about this at work during lunch and around with your friends can spread the message. ;)
Let's remind ourselves that it's not the developers who are destroying their own games. It is the CEOs, the overpaid bankers that never made anything in their life, other than an Excel spreadsheet about how much money they will make off of someone else's work only to later a pull a checkmate move and take it all away. So it is quite ironic how dare they have power over something they themselves do not own actually, unless by "Owning" they mean "Shareholding"
Its like the people who run these companies read all that dystopic cyberpunk fiction in the 80s, and used it as a guidebook.
I am pretty sure they have admitted that. I know the guy who made Big Brother got the idea from The Truman Show.
Honestly the people are to blame. If you scream at every corporation that they are evil, all the time.. they're going to internalize that. and more government regulation is only gonna make that worse.
@@KairuHakubi"companies became evil because consumers were mean to them :(" is certainly a hot take on the anti-consumer practices, especially a nice most folks call companies evil...
...in response to companies acting evil/greedy
@@Qobp Uh huh. I bet your teachers would love to hear you say that.
That fiction was based on things that were already happening. The 80s were the era of neo-liberalism (Reagan/Thatcher) after all.
@@cookieface80 this might be one of the most ridiculous statements i've heard in a long time, and it being 2024 that is saying something.
I hope this works, because this practice is eventually going to find its way everywhere else if it isn't stopped here. The fact that self-checkout machines ask people for a tip is a symptom of the same disease; companies keep pushing the boundaries of how they can extract money from their customers without providing service in return, and the less pushback there is, the worse it'll get.
And it _will_ end in a nightmare scenario.
The problem also includes what I call "time economics". We are headed towards a world where one of the most important metrics for video games is customer engagement and retention (especially with live service and online multiplayers). It all boils down to the user having a finite amount of time for which every game is competing. So it is in any publisher's/developer's financial interest to not compete with itself, which they avoid by controlling the lifespan of a product released prior.
Idk if you touch on this in the vid, but I either leave this comment now or I might do it much later on and possibly forget.
The UK Government responded:
Those selling games must comply with UK consumer law. They must provide clear information and allow continued access to games if sold on the understanding that they will remain playable indefinitely.
The Government recognises recent concerns raised by video games users regarding the long-term operability of purchased products.
Consumers should be aware that there is no requirement in UK law compelling software companies and providers to support older versions of their operating systems, software or connected products. There may be occasions where companies make commercial decisions based on the high running costs of maintaining older servers for video games that have declining user bases. However, video games sellers must comply with existing consumer law, including the Consumer Rights Act 2015 (CRA) and the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (CPRs).
The CPRs require information to consumers to be clear and correct, and prohibit commercial practices which through false information or misleading omissions cause the average consumer to make a different choice, for example, to purchase goods or services they would not otherwise have purchased. The regulations prohibit commercial practices which omit or hide information which the average consumer needs to make an informed choice, and prohibits traders from providing material information in an unclear, unintelligible, ambiguous or untimely manner. If consumers are led to believe that a game will remain playable indefinitely for certain systems, despite the end of physical support, the CPRs may require that the game remains technically feasible (for example, available offline) to play under those circumstances.
The CPRs are enforced by Trading Standards and the Competition and Markets Authority. If consumers believe that there has been a breach of these regulations, they should report the matter in the first instance to the Citizens Advice consumer helpline on 0808 223 1133 (www.citizensadvice.org.uk). People living in Scotland should contact Advice Direct Scotland on 0808 164 6000 (www.consumeradvice.scot). Both helplines offer a free service advising consumers on their rights and how best to take their case forward. The helplines will refer complaints to Trading Standards services where appropriate. Consumers can also pursue private redress through the courts where a trader has provided misleading information on a product.
The CRA gives consumers important rights when they make a contract with a trader for the supply of digital content. This includes requiring digital content to be of satisfactory quality, fit for a particular purpose and as described by the seller. It can be difficult and expensive for businesses to maintain dedicated support for old software, particularly if it needs to interact with modern hardware, apps and websites, but if software is being offered for sale that is not supported by the provider, then this should be made clear.
If the digital content does not meet these quality rights, the consumer has the right to a repair or replacement of the digital content. If a repair or replacement is not possible, or does not fix the problem, then the consumer will be entitled to some money back or a price reduction which can be up to 100% of the cost of the digital content. These rights apply to intangible digital content like computer software or a PC game, as well as digital content in a tangible form like a physical copy of a video game. The CRA has a time limit of up to six years after a breach of contract during which a consumer can take legal action.
The standards outlined above apply to digital content where there is a contractual right of the trader or a third party to modify or update the digital content. In practice, this means that a trader or third party can upgrade, fix, enhance and improve the features of digital content so long as it continues to match any description given by the trader and continues to conform with any pre-contract information including main characteristics, functionality and compatibility provided by the trader, unless varied by express agreement.
Consumers should also be aware that while there is a statutory right for goods (including intangible digital content) to be of a satisfactory quality, that will only be breached if they are not of the standard which a reasonable person would consider to be satisfactory, taking into account circumstances including the price and any description given. For example, a manufacturer’s support for a mobile phone is likely to be withdrawn as they launch new models. It will remain usable but without, for example, security updates, and over time some app developers may decide to withdraw support.
Department Culture, Media & Sport
I feel bitter about not being able to own physical copies of new movies and tv series I like because of streaming meaning they never get released as such.
This whole issue of games basically having a use by date is yet another thing I am bitter about on principle.
Will be supporting this as much as I can.
You could try recording and burning movies onto your own CDs and see how you feel
@@TheHogfatherInvades I know but its just not the same... i like a nice piece of media as a collectable. I definately want to do this anyway, just in case the shows/films i like are completely removed off service!
I own a physical copy of everything i own. On my hard drives.
If i really wanted an individual copy of something, i have bluray burner in my computer tower just for that.
I'll do as much as I can. I legitimately want the Crew back, it's literally one of my favorite games despite it's flaws and now I'm just not allowed to play it.
As an American, I never thought I'd say this, but:
I'm counting on the French to save us.
just like in the revolution
They gave you guys that nice statue, for your efforts with the getting democracy started and stuff...
- George Washington, 1778
The USA is a corporate cesspool that really needs saving, for the sake of the world
French have got user protection and worker rights to a better degree than the US, and they are far from perfect.
My receipt from my Steam purchase - thankfully it's still in my library:
Purchased: Nov 25, 2015 @ 11:37pm
The Crew Complete Edition - $29.99
Subtotal $29.99
Discount -$30.00 ( -50%)
Total $29.99
Ubisoft support: "There was an issue submitting your case"
I guess I'll try again later. Also, Ubi support lists the Crew server status as "online", but when I launch the game I'm met with an error.
I'm having the same issue, strange...
Had the same problem, but I managed to send it. Their servers are getting overloaded. Just keep trying until it goes through and they show your case number.
Hopefully the algorithm takes this video and blows it up! Thank you Ross for being the one who did what no one else would, stepping up with a very professional and educated approach to an issue you had virtually no usable knowledge of beforehand, but are very passionate about.
25:11
A legalese shrug is a crazy response.
I never bought The Crew, but I payed for Overwatch 1 and am forced to play Overwatch 2, so I know what this feels like. I gotta jump on this ASAP.
"It's debatable if video games are art"
I wouldn't consider it debatable, if we consider movies that are a mish-mash of different art forms, art.... then there's no reason for video games to not be considered art, but your point still stands regardless.
Fantastic video and movement. I'm a smaller gaming UA-camr but I'm gonna mention this anytime I bring up a "live service" game or shitty DRM. People should own their games and should always be able to access them. And game preservation (and for that matter all art preservation) is immensely important. Great job Ross, seriously. Already loved ya, now I love and respect you even more.
I think the "can be reasonably restored by a programmer" thing would've been a massive blow to any effect this could have on consoles, so not including that is a good call. But overall this is great. GDPR worked worldwide, so getting something like that for video games would be terrific.
Please everybody share this as much as you can! We need this trending on gaming so the most people can see it. This is our one good shot to fight for consumer rights. Thank you so much Ross! I will help however I can!
For some german youtubers i think might be interested:
- Gronkh: one of the oldest let's play channels
- Space Frogs: a news type of channel mostly about politics but sometimes games
- Rezo: a streamer that once massively swayed political elections in germany
- Alexander Prinz: has a couple youtube channels mostly discussing and exposing politics most notably
How did rezo swayed election?
@@АндрейНеугодников-м6е he made a video exposing politicians and encouraging young people to go vote
I came here for Freeman’s Mind. 30 minutes later and I’m coming for YOU, UBISOFT.
In all seriousness, as an Aussie, I’ll be clicking refresh until the feds open up that petition.
Do we get pitchforks?
@@SF-ty4oj no, they’re French. We get guillotines.
Plastic toy ones, but guillotines nonetheless.
@@the_washington_monument_am9714the plastic ones are a reminder that the real ones are remarkably cheap and relatively easy to build.
@@LexYeen the real knowledge is in the replies. Fine, I'll start shipping the bits to my EU buddies 😅🗡😅
"I've got decades of resentment built up", lol, that sells it, I'm listening.
I'm 100% supporting this. We need to make a stand and protect media and art from greed driven destruction!
So glad you’re doing this man. The fact this is even a thing I believe is because boomer people in government don’t even understand the issue.
There is a severe lack of regulation in gaming compared to other things like casinos. It should be illegal to wipe out access to a game because it’s “online only” and not provide a way to play offline when servers inevitably close.
I’ll give Gran Turismo Sport credit for this, they killed the servers but released one last patch to enable offline play. That’s all that needs to be done, and every game company should be required to do so.
In case of The Crew, a game which can be played offline but for whatever arbitrary reason is locked behind an online requirement, I would much rather be able to play it rather than get a refund.
This needs to be shared all over the gaming community. Sadly it might go under in the whole "gamergate 2" story, but still we have to try as much as we can, especially when the older games are preferred over the newer releases.
Hey commenter, scrolling through here! Don't forget to visit the website in the description, you hear me! And if you know at least one other person who could be even mildly interested in this, SHARE THE SITE WITH THEM! And when those EC initiatives are online for us to sign, SHARE IT AGAIN! We need all hands on deck for this ship if we are to sail it onto the seas of a better tomorrow!
I'm just waiting for the relevant petition to open, as soon as it does, I'm on it.
Just a heads up, if anyone tries to push the lawsuit in Brazil, any decently built case will most likely succeed. The only drawback of doing so, besides cost (which Ubisoft could be held accountable to cover), is how long it would take.
Boosting so Ross can see this~!