The Crew, the game that started the massive pro-consumer Stop Killing Games campaign, is soon to become playable again thanks to the effort of modders and community contributors. Ubisoft's racing MMO was taken offline last year and, being online-only, rendered unplayable, sparking sharp discussions about consumer rights in gaming.
The Crew Unlimited, aka TCU, is a group of community contributors and modders who have been painstakingly trying to revive Ubisoft's racing MMO. Justifying their love for the game by claiming there's nothing quite like it out there, TCU has been actively participating in bringing back this 2014 title to life following Ubisoft's abrupt kill-switch. Now, The Crew is “mere weeks away” from coming back, according to its About page, and it won't be as an offline experience either.
Instead, TCU promises both offline and online functionality, as the group has written a server emulator for the game, allowing players to host online instances locally on their own machines. “Your local server, your local savegames, your game. No one will ever be able to take this away from you now,” the group claims.
While this is amazing news for fans in just about every way, one looming danger stands: Ubisoft itself. Particularly, its legal department. What we've seen publishers in video games do, especially huge ones, is taking a jab at any kind of community-run server or environment, either via formal lawsuits, or cease-and-desist letters. Whether Ubisoft is willing to tank its reputation even more is uncertain, though it wouldn't be the first time a major AAA corporate publisher did something like that.
Either way, TCU's programming for the server emulator is sure to help out other communities set up their own private online hosting for whatever kill-switched game, helping preserve the products they own beyond planned obsolescence.
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