The Crew Motorfest arrives on Steam in April, weeks after The Crew 1 turns off

The games industry continues to hit us with depressing lessons of how fickle digital ownership can be, with everything from DRM to servers being taken down and more serving as constant threats to your ownership of games you’ve purchased with your hard-earned money. Another game is now seemingly hammering that point home.

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.

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.

Ubisoft’s online-only racing game The Crew stopped being operable on April 1. Some users are reporting, however, that things have gone a bit further. They say that the company actually reached into Ubisoft Connect accounts and revoked the license to access the game, according to reports by Game Rant and others.

Ubisoft's next open-world adventure, Star Wars Outlaws, breaks at least one of the company's time-honored traditions: climbing towers to progress the map.

Some Ubisoft Connect users are reporting that The Crew has essentially been removed from their accounts and is no longer accessible. One noteworthy element of The Crew was that it was only playable online, which meant it was inaccessible without an internet connection.

Ubisoft's upcoming game is making a major change to one of the publisher's most established tropes and players couldn't be relieved. Ever since the release of back in 2007, the concept of climbing towers and scanning the environment to reveal more areas has been a cliche in many open-world games to such an extent that it's become somewhat of a meme amongst players. Fortunately, the highly-anticipated game set in a galaxy far, far away is taking a different route and ditching the idea completely.

Last year, it was announced that the open world racing title The Crew would be delisted from storefronts and have its servers shut down in 2024, as developer Ubisoft claimed it was necessary to do so due to "server infrastructure and licensing constraints." With The Crew being an online-only title, it meant that the game was made completely unplayable when the servers were eventually shut down on March 31.

Continuing our ongoing coverage of Yellow Brick Games’ debut action game, Eternal Strands, we sat down with some of the indie studios’ leadership team to discuss the origins of their scrappy studio, and learn more about the indie world they’re using their AAA backgrounds to create. First, we chatted with CEO Thomas Giroux and COO Jeff Skalski about the studio's origins, then we spoke to Chief Creative Officer Mike Laidlaw and Lead Writer Kate MacMullin about their journey to the indie scene, and the characters and story in Eternal Strands.

The prodigal Prince has returned, and his comeback has gone down so well that he is doing it a second time. After his Metroidvania adventures in Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, which came out in January, gaming's iconic dual-blade wielding royalty is coming back for seconds in The Rogue Prince of Persia, a new 2D action-platforming rogue-lite title, arriving in Early Access on Steam on May 14. Developed by Dead Cells maker Evil Empire and published by Ubisoft, the next Prince of Persia game flaunts a colourful, cartoony art style and features platforming and action combat familiar to the series.

Publisher Ubisoft and developer Evil Empire have announced The Rogue Prince of Persia for PC (Steam). It will launch in Early Access on My 14.

A CD Projekt Red executive has slyly poked fun at fellow publisher Ubisoft and its failed attempt to label Skull and Bones as a "AAAA" game.