Ivory Tower

After shutting down The Crew's servers at the end of March, Ubisoft has reportedly started removing the open-world racer from owners' libraries and revoking their user license.

The UK government has responded to a petition asking for "government intervention" to force the industry to keep video games "in a reasonably working state when support ends", rather than allowing them to become unplayable such as when online servers are shut down. The petition was prompted by the closure in March of ten-year-old Ubisoft racing game The Crew.

2014’s The Crew was the first project for developer Ivory Tower, which was founded in Lyon, France, in 2007 and later acquired by Ubisoft in late 2015. While it may have been the debut game for the studio, a number of Ivory Tower’s staff formerly hailed from Lyon’s Eden Games (including Ivory Tower’s three founders) and had previous experience on the first three instalments of the V-Rally series, the PlayStation version of Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed, and the trendsetting Test Drive Unlimited. As such, there was a good deal of optimism around The Crew.

The Crew, Ubisoft's 2014 racing game, closed its doors on March 31st. After that date, launching the game took you to a splash screen and then presented an error message when trying to advance, because the servers are no longer offline.

Ubisoft racing game The Crew shut down on March 31st, rendering the game unplayable for everyone who bought it since its release ten years ago.

On March 31st, Ubisoft's open world racing game The Crew will be turned off for good. As of right now, no one can buy the ten-year-old racer, but come the end of the month, even those that did buy it will no longer be able to play it.

Ubisoft's Hawaii-based, open-world racing game The Crew Motorfest will arrive on Steam next month.

As I settled back into the day-to-day work routine at IGN to start 2024, it randomly occurred to me that Halo 2 will turn 20 years old later this year – specifically, on November 9. That got me reminiscing about one of my favorite games ever – and probably my single favorite multiplayer game ever – a little bit early, so I thought I’d put those thoughts to virtual paper and share them with you because, quite frankly, there’s never a bad time to talk about the glory days of Halo 2 multiplayer.

Yesterday, Ubisoft announced it'd be removing The Crew — the original game in the series — from sale. Indeed, it's now not available on PS Store or any other digital platform. Furthermore, online servers for the open world racer will be switched off come 31st March, 2024.

Ubisoft has delisted open world racing game The Crew, with servers shutting down next year.

Over nine years since it launched for PS4, PC, Xbox 360 and Xbox One, Ivory Tower’s The Crew is being delisted. It’s no longer available to purchase on Steam and the PlayStation Store (though some regions and the Xbox Store still have it). This move affects the base game, its various editions and DLC.

 Lost Ark’s December update is so big that the team willrelease it in two parts. On December 13th, we’ll get “Voldis Wonderland” with the new continent of Voldis. On December 20th, the Endgame Update is finally arriving, with new challenges and the introduction of Elixirs.

French publishing giant Ubisoft has reported a 14 per cent increase in revenue for the six months ending September 30th.

Racing games aren’t usually the first thing people imagine when they hear “open world,” but you’d be surprised. Whether it’s trawling the city for a fun diversion or zooming across the open road looking for interesting tracks and challenges, here are some of the best open-world racing games!

Ivory Tower’s The Crew Motorfest launched amid several big releases this month, from Starfield to Mortal Kombat 1. Nevertheless, it’s seen some success, with Ubisoft claiming it had the best first week for the series in total unit sell-through. Overall consumer spending and adoption rate of the Season Pass also set new records.

Ubisoft's premier racing franchise, The Crew, generally gets a bad rap. Developer Ivory Tower had very strong ambitions right from the starting grid, providing drivers with an open world approximating the entire United States of America. It's a great idea; roam the entire country from coast to coast with your pals, taking on challenges and building a varied collection of vehicles. The Crew 2 doubled down, even providing new ways to get around with boats and planes. For us, however, the execution was never really good enough, with a vapid open world and lacklustre driving. The Crew Motorfest is a different story.

Not many things are better the smaller they get. Mortgages? Certainly. Golf scores? Sure. Kidney stones? Okay, yes. But video games? That’s more of a grey area. For The Crew Motorfest, developer Ivory Tower has chosen to give its chunky interpretation of the entire continental USA the chop in favour of something far more concise: a scaled-down riff of the single island of O’ahu, Hawaii. The result is better in some ways and worse in others, but overall it’s actually an experience that sometimes feels like it’s trying harder to emulate Forza Horizon than its own predecessors. I can’t say I blame them considering how much I loved Horizon 5, and they’ve done a good enough job at it that I’ve had many great moments in Motorfest over the past several days. It has the best handling in the series so far, and it does boast some incredibly strong lighting. However, while Motorfest is a mostly earnest romp for car lovers in a vibrant, tropical paradise, it definitely loses some momentum due to its confusingly dead world and slightly uneven campaign, and its omnipresent, baked-in microtransactions are a constant bugbear.