As outlined in You Don’t Own Your Video Games! and Ubisoft EULA Tells Gamers To Destroy Copies Of Games, a campaign to prevent games from disappearing was started by Ross Scott, aka Accursed Farms, spurred on by Ubisoft’s decision to shut down the servers for The Crew video game. As of 20 July 2025, over 1.4 million people signed the EU petition, which will now be verified before being taken to the next stage. A similar petition in the UK has passed the 100,000 signature threshold and closed at 189,000 signatures.
Is It Right To Pull The Plug On Software?
Video games are software. So is Windows and all the programs we install. It’s one thing for software to stop working if your subscription lapses, but quite another for the plug to be pulled and it ceases to function at all at the whim of the developer. Naturally, most of us prefer to pay a one-off, lifetime fee for software, which in fact is precisely what we do when we ‘buy’ a video game. I still play games that were released over 20 years ago, albeit none of them require an online connection. The Crew, for example, sold over 2 million copies and had an enormous player base. Just imagine the rewards that Ubisoft would reap if it re-released the game without requiring an Internet connection. Goodwill and dollars in the bank, that’s what. What more could a corporation want?
I can also still play games that were delisted by Microsoft – Forza Horizon 3 & 4, for example, and many others, but I’m left with the impression that Ubisoft is simply digging its heels in, refusing to bow to pressure from the customer base that pays for its very existence.
Please comment below if you feel strongly about this matter.
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This is what happened when these gaming developers went from selling hard copies of games to only selling downloads, when they did that they grabbed the consumer by the ca hones and took control of how and when you gamed, they also took control of the life of these games , being able to pull the plug on any game at any time for whatever reason they deemed, leaving the consumer and their pricey purchase of these games just hung out in the wind.
In essence, by selling downloads only then terminating the game and game play itself is sort of theft, if you think about it.
I miss the old days of gaming, but not really as I still have all of my old gaming systems all the way back to the NES and I am still able to play each and every one of those games ….
Games that I OWN and I don’t have to purchase anything extra in order to have the gaming experience.
Good for you, Ed!