Ubisoft has suddenly delisted its 2014 online open-world racing game, The Crew, from digital storefronts. Players will no longer be able to purchase the game digitally on any online store as of today, though it may still be playable with a physical copy. However, the game will no longer be in any playable state from April 2024.
As spotted by ResetEra, The Crew was quietly pulled from Steam yesterday with a message telling players, “All editions and additional content for The Crew are no longer available for purchase.” The note adds that all content will remain playable until 31 March 2024. Thereafter, the servers will be shut down for good which means the game will not be accessible anymore, even if you own a physical copy of The Crew.
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Further digging reveals that The Crew was also pulled from both the Xbox Store and PlayStation Store. Searching it up now will yield no results as it will simply redirect players to The Crew 2 or the recently released The Crew Motorfest instead. The game originally launched in 2014 and was developed by Ubisoft Ivory Tower. It underwent numerous updates with more content added over the years, amassing over 40 million players, according to the publisher.
When The Crew 2 launched in 2018, development more or less slowed down on the first game so its closure was inevitable, especially with Ubisoft moving onto the third entry (which also raises the possibility of the second game suffering the same fate at some point in the future).
Last month, Ubisoft also revealed that Far Cry 6, which launched in 2021, will no longer receive any updates. This is possibly to focus its efforts on Far Cry 7, rumoured to currently be in development alongside a standalone Far Cry multiplayer title.
Sadly, The Crew will no longer exist as of April 2024, raising more questions about video game preservation and the potential dangers of developing games that heavily rely on servers to keep it alive.
Source: ResetEra
