Just a thought, pointing out that there are no "rights" at stake here. If people get burned by paying for a service and don't read the fine print, it's on them. Better to educate themselves and not buy in the first place, than to complain about an agreement they willingly entered into where the terms were spelled out clearly from the start.

I think you are correct about this. I believe people should be allowed to sell their services however they wish so long as no one is obligated to buy from them.


Possibly because I have created things before. Perhaps if you thought about this in terms of things you have sold before it will make more sense to you. If you choose to rent out your car but only on the condition that you (or the renter) can stop the rental at some point in the future should a court say no you can't do that?

It's really not so different.

There are many works of culture that I don't own, but I'd like it to be protected and not erased from existence nevertheless. Including ones I have no personal interest in. I had no idea the concept would be so hard to grasp, especially for someone so wise and mature.

Well, uh...putting the culture of The Crew aside for a moment. What you would like really doesn't matter when it concerns things you did not create and do not own.

The artistic/cultural merit of the game in question is indeed irrelevant, because it's the principle of the the thing that is in question. But I see the very concept really is beyond your understanding. Pity.

EDIT because spelling is hard. Right, Rincewind?

I have to agree with the above when I reread the agreement EverNightX posted:
"1. GRANT OF LICENSE.
1.1 UBISOFT (or its licensors) grants You a non-exclusive, non-
transferable, non-sublicensed, non-commercial and personal license to
install and/or use the Product (in whole or in part) and any Product (the
“License”), for such time until either You or UBISOFT terminates this EULA."

This type of licence which allows the licensor to cancel it without reason is a good example of a licence agreement that should be demonised. We should never, ever want to spend money on anything sold under such terms so far as singleplayer games are concerned.

I dont hate it, I think it is pointless and usless, and will just end up with people spending time and energy on something that will have no effect whatsoever. To me it is a big meh, and I will put my efforts elsewhere

Yeah this video should have been linked in OP. Everything he says is completely reasonable, and it answers the Crew question much better. You have some reasons listed, but THE reason is that Ubi is in France and France has favorable laws.

I wish him luck but I am not seeing this particular case working too well because at face value the game is just old. It also probably has no one playing it since he even admits it is mid. Ubisoft will just come back and say "why should we spend money doing this, of course we're not going to." and then the debate will turn to if it has substantial single player elements and online is just acting solely as DRM. People are saying it's the case here but IDK, racing is kind of inherently competitive. Something like Diablo 3 or the new Hitmans both of which are blatantly single player are certainly better examples of always online being ridiculous but neither of those are shutting down right now.

Then again, victory in this case is probably just getting this on the radar at all by governments.

While I agree it might be weird to argue that online games shouldn't exist or should run forever, I think the Crew is a weird case because it was not signposted as an "online-only" game as far as I can tell, and a consumer could, reasonably I think, expect it to run offline.

The Crew has been marked online only for years on PCGW for reasons of DRM (as a separate issue to the servers closing):-

Warning : This game requires a constant internet connection for all game modes.

Plenty of Steam reviews from 2014-2015 comment on its online dependencies:-

"When the Crew Servers are down, you cant even Launch the Game." - 2014 Steam review.

"Also savegame is 100% server sided, If it corrupts (which it does sometimes), then only way to fix this, is to contact ubisoft support and it takes them 1-3 months to reply to tickets." - Nov 2015 Steam review.

I honestly don't know how many red flags people need before figuring out that "DRM" in Ubisoft games means Disposable Rented Media...

It's just a signature for your country's petition at the very minimum with high degree of effect, it shouldn't take much work to do. If there wasn't so much apathy and cynicism in this world, maybe the common man would have nice things.

And if there are no video game developers and publishers lobbying against gov'ts right now, such consumer-friendly changes would be easy to pass through. It's not as if politicians are debating the hot button issues every day. There are plenty of bills on small nonpartisanship issues that get past through.

Let's hope more case like this will happen in the future so peoples open their eyes with DRM and start thinking GOG or any other DRM free store are the best place to buy their games

Correction - "It's just a signature for your country's petition at the very minimum with absolutely no degree of effect [...]"

That petition will have no effect.

It's bad because the administrators of this campaign are not calling for the abolition of DRM.

They could be.

They should be.

But they aren't.

Why aren't they? There's actually no possible "good" excuse for them not to do so.