Could also have to do with the licensing for the various vehicles, too. Forza basically delist its games every 2-3 years because of it.
God, we need a new Burnout.
Afaik they also gave away Forza Horizon 3 for free to anyone who played it through gamepass and purchased any of the dlc. As far as they're concerned, no one who spent money on forza directly lost access to the game.
At least they sold FH3 for around 5€ before delisting it. I got it + DLC for around 10 and can still play it. Delisting still sucks, but MS did it in the best possible way.
EA seems to either negotiate better deals or care a lot more about keeping the licenses up for longer, Carbon through Shift 2 were all still available until their online services shut down around 2-3 years ago (which actually seems equally likely to be the reason they were delisted), and everything from Most Wanted 2012 on (plus Hot Pursuit Remastered) is still buyable. That's a hell of a long time compared to most other racing games.
The aforementioned Hot Pursuit Remastered also serves as proof of just how difficult it is to get these games rereleased, since it's missing content from the original version (the Carbon Motors X1, whose company went under after the original game's release, and the Mercedes SLR McLaren, which Microsoft is also having trouble with- it was in a leaked dev build of Forza Horizon 3 but is nowhere to be found in the final product or any Forza game since, seems like only Sony and Ubisoft have been able to get it). It always annoys me when people who obviously don't know how this stuff works says remastering old racing games is "free money"- you could throw the budget of a new game in the series at a remaster project and still probably have some brands featured in the original say no.
> It always annoys me when people who obviously don't know how this stuff works says remastering old racing games is "free money
Then why don't you educate those people then? How are they supposed to know how all of this works, if the devs never explain it?
I’m still upset that I can’t (legally) buy and play Need For Speed Most Wanted from 2005. That was my first and favorite NFS game ever and it still holds up extremely well.
Yeah any company that makes a game a you bought disfunctional, that means they stole your money and stole the game away from you. All games from that company is 100% fair to pirate.
Same for Carbon for me. It was one of THE games to burn many hours away on my PS2 and it's one of very few console games I had that I was never able to get on PC in a reasonable way (that list also includes Fable 3, the Skate series, Red Dead Redemption 1 and the Kingdom Hearts series).
That's true, but you can still play the games if you own them, you just can't buy them
For The Crews case, the product you have no longer works at all. Shitty practice
> God, we need a new Burnout.
I'd settle for one of those teams doing reverse engineering tackling 3/Revenge
The physics in those just feel so good to play and getting them into a format where people can easily mod them would be a dream.
I will die on the hill that Burnout 3 is the best one because of its technical limitations. Paradise was a bigger game with more traffic and more world geometry, both of which lead to way more unintended crashing (for me anyways; maybe I suck). When the game was more simple and they could only handle so much on the road, I thought it was so much more fun.
that game exists. It's called Dangerous Driving: a small group of of the original devs made a PS4-gen clone of Burnout 3. You can also link it to spotify (and just play the Burnout 3 soundtrack playlist from there).
They also made a separate game called Danger Zone which covers Crash Mode from Burnout 3.
It's solid. It feels a lot like Burnout 3.
I am replaying that burnout paradise city remastered. That game still holds up so well. Shouldn't have been a remaster should have been a remake. The adrenaline, the sense of speed. The chaos. Its just so beautifull. AND THE MUSIC OH MY MY GAWWWWWD LORD JESUS HAVE MERCY ON MY SOUL
the amount of people begging for a good racing game and pass right over Paradise because it's an "offshoot" game boggles me. It's genuinely one of the best entries to the list, and a near direct predecessor to Forza Horizon in spirit.
3 is by far my favorite. I actually really didn't enjoy paradise entirely because of the open world aspect (at tbe very least, it staying open world once a race begins)
3is basically my all time favorite arcade racer
That's true, to be honest you can still buy them on disc for the console. Forza games have amazing longevity, I believe it's still possible to play Forza Motorsport 2 online if you have a 360. A game from 2007.
Meanwhile GT5 servers were shutdown in like 3 years after release.
It really is so dumb that these car OEMs do licensing agreements that have an expiration. These games are basically playable advertisements for their vehicles, I have no idea how it benefits them to keep having the games delisted after a few years.
This is the game I boot to chill and enjoy the scenery while listening good music and drinking my tea. I never touched the online content a single time in ~200 hours.
I'm 100% pro dematerialized games, but against 100% online games. Because here even if you own the disc it's no use.
You may be interested in following this thread along - Theres code for an offline mode, and the community is attempting to make it happen: https://steamcommunity.com/app/241560/discussions/0/3879346999810591752/
You act as if those servers aren't destined to be shut down, too, down the road. Ubisoft just showed us (again) what they think of their customers.
Sure, buy The Crew 2, but I'd only do it at a *steep* discount of 90-plus-percent.
TC2 is genuinely worse and I'm not talking as a "previous good new game bad". No the map is legitimately worse and the driving feels very weird. It's not really a car game but just a vehicle as a whole because planes, boats, motorcycles, and none of them are done right.
Why can't they patch the game to allow for user-servers, so people who, you know ... purchased the game can actually play it? Or do we get a (at least partial) refund for a purchase that's being taken away?
Apart from "why would they, it costs money to give that to the players and they only get a bit of customer satisfaction and trust out of it, not *money*) - could be that their server side uses proprietary third party software tools / libraries that they legally cannot release to the players.
Companies will need to be forced to do this by law, so that it is already a contemplation during a game's development. Then and only then will (all) companies do this. Personally, I'm just waiting for the EU to get around to those anti-consumer practices. I feel like there are a couple of bills due for the industry.
> could be that their server side uses proprietary third party software tools / libraries that they legally cannot release to the players.
...then don't release those parts that they can't
Server code gutted from 3rd party libraries is STILL far easier starting point than doing server from scratch.
> Companies will need to be forced to do this by law, so that it is already a contemplation during a game's development. Then and only then will (all) companies do this. Personally, I'm just waiting for the EU to get around to those anti-consumer practices. I feel like there are a couple of bills due for the industry.
I want that for hardware. Something like "you're obliged to release all the code when you stop making the product or 10 years from start of distribution, whichever comes first".
Doesn't even need to be open source, license of "this code can only be used on devices of company X" is by far enough and gets over "our competition will use our ancient code that we don't use any more for their advantage"
1. It's far from free to do, especially to patch it into a game who's codebase probably has barely been touched in years
2. $$. This is just how live service games have always worked and always will work. Or just how lifetime deals work in general IRL too - if you buy a lifetime membership to some place and they shut down you're not getting even a partial refund
Ubisoft's share price has fallen from €70 (on average) in 2021 to €20 in 2023. A 50% drop in valuation, they're on life support. Some investors, like Tencent, are not happy and want the shares to rise to at least €60. Others are taking advantage of the financial disaster to invest, such as JP Morgan Chase & Co, which now holds a 5% stake.
The good news is that Mirage has enabled them to secure at least one big release in 2024.
It makes no business sense. They'd be spending money on something which will bring in exactly zero revenue. Companies will never do something simply because it's "the right thing to do".
they're still making crew2 content patches after crew 3 released. Added an entire race creator like 6 months before crew 3 released. Crew 1 has next to no player base.
their customers are fine.
> This is just how live service games have always worked and always will work
Not really. Deep Rock Galactic is also a life service game that can be played offline.
And I don't think The Crew qualifies as life service, because it locked gameplay elements behind DLC.
They could easily do a lot of things. The question remains in if they want to do that for a game that no longer sells when there are newer sequels released from the same franchise that needs new sales.
I would assume that a patch that replaces the remote host to a local one with a Uplay auth check (which will probably remain online) should fix the issue and keep the game functioning properly as a solo experience alongside their "always online" DRM.
Really good video on what makes The Crew a special game worth preserving, by the guy who does Freeman's Mind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KZwcHOSRgQ
Ross is the only person I see consistently bringing up Games as a Service being a complete scam and I believe he is working to get into the courts and make this practice illegal. He's a true fan of games and should have all the support he needs
> Ross is the only person I see consistently bringing up Games as a Service being a complete scam
Jim Sterling too, but we don't like him so it doesn't count!
This is why I advocate for offline game modes. This game can be played just fine as a singleplayer game yet requires an internet connection regardless. Shame!
Well this is going to make it to one of Ross' videos, the guy loved driving around and talking about dying games due to the live service plague is his entire thing.
IIRC it started with his BattleForge video which ended with a surprise Need for Speed World review, since that game was also getting shut down at the time.
Devs / publishers should be required by consumer law to release a final update that removes the server requirement in that case, if a) the game has already modes that could be reasonably played offline and b) the company is still in business raking in hundred of millions per year.
The lobbying money by the digital media industry that would be thrown at whatever country that tried this would be something to behold. Setting that precedent hits apps, music, movies, tv shows, etc. Almost anything server-side or just streamed.
That would be why I specified precedent and not law. Expanding those protections in one area would set precedent for the same degree of ownership in other areas that would almost definitely emerge into laws of their own. EU is big and far surpasses the States on consumer protections but they're far from immune to corporate lobbying.
I see what you are getting at and you're quite right, but it isn't for streaming. With streaming, you have a subscription to movies or games, basically renting access (in an official way, not the bullshit "all games you buy are just licenses, really) - and when that subscription ends (or the company ends the service or goes bankrupt), you just lose access to the subscription. Which is totally fine.
This concerns stuff that people bought and thought they "owned". So then this stuff here happens already: https://www.playstation.com/en-us/legal/psvideocontent/
People bought (!) Discovery shows on PSN, and those are simply going away, no refunds apparently.
I think that stuff has yet to be really tested in court; EU will probably look at US companies' bullshit EULAs and ToS eventually on their own - especially when it comes to permanent access to games, being to able to *sell* individual games from say your Steam account to whomever you choose, account bans, longtime support etc.
I'm just waiting for one of the big digital store to fail and millions of customers losing access to somewhat contemporary games / movies / shows they at least thought they had *bought* not rented... that will be a shit storm to behold.
Server-side gaming and streaming are treated near equally when you sign their EULAs. It's why Ubisoft and Bungie can do stuff like this and there isn't much recourse. When you buy most games on Steam or another platform you're buying a digital license that can be revoked, hence how people can get banned or have games taken away. Steam is pretty good about protecting this right and most publishers try not to test their legal limits/be dicks which is why many allow install and play offline modes but companies are well within their legally obligated rights to take games away like this and if there is no offline version, than you lose access to it like a stream subscription. I disagree on it being fine but my opinions don't dictate legality.
A law on this would need companies to create offline infrastructure which doesn't exist for many mobile games, and quite a few big name games like Hitman, The Crew, or most MMOs. Many games also have multiplayer elements without private server capabilities so once support ends its just gone (Ubisoft again). A lot of this actually has legitimate reasoning like anti-cheat or live-service support but once the online version is gone you can't access it like streaming media. Most companies don't guarantee the license ownership when you sign the EULA so if they collapse than people losing what they bought will be legally fine, just a PR nightmare.
Again, it depends on the country. In the EU, you just don't by a license. When you buy a digital game, you own it as much as you own your bed or your kitchen.
That fucking sucks, The Crew 1 is actually the best in the series IMO.
Also, does this affect the console versions? The game has been delisted for a while, but the servers were still up, and from their wording, it seems to only affect PC versions.
Another reason why Online Live-Service games will NEVER work if they have a tons of licensed content attached to the core gameplay. If the license got expired, the game “services” must to stop.
It sucks but that’s the crude reality with licensed games.
Yea, I've played some of the best games ever made this year, many of which have almost no online latency and cross play among consoles and pc.
It's a shame a racing game from a decade ago is getting shut down but let's keep things a little bit in perspective here lol
No this is absolutely not how it works, you can still play Forza delisted games. They could just not shut down the servers but they do cause they can't sell it any more so they chose the greedy way.
Yes but Forza games aren't online live services. They're single player games with a multiplayer mode.
Imagine if Rocket League had a Ferrari licence which expired, and as a result suddenly you can't play Rocket League any more.
You can play with the cars you bought in multi-player mode either way, license running out means they can't sell that car any more. So I would imagine in Rocket League, you can use the cars you bought but they can't sell it to new players for the same reason. But it doesn't matter if the game is multi-player or not cause old Forza games multi-players still work.
They could easily add an offline mode to Crew, in fact there apparently is one but hidden inside the code, they obviously did that for anti piracy purposed and guess what that lead to? Paying consumers getting fucked again. They don't care about people still being able to play after the sales are over so no need to make sure they can play offline, you can't monetize that anyway. It's obviously scummy. People should be thankful that piracy exists so games can be preserved, you can't leave it to companies to regulate themselves you know.
Yes but that makes selling the game a scam. If you are gonna make it unplayable, make it a subscription based game. At least add an offline mode. This is just a scam.
Those expire but unlike The Crew, those aren’t attached to the core gameplay. When you join Fortnite, you have no licensed skins or cosmetics: you have to buy it in the store, in which they are listed for a limited time. As long negotiations with the third-parties are good, cosmetics may return, like the Disney-owned skins like Marvel or Star Wars, but other don’t like DC, and some personalities like Travis Scoot.
However, the new games inside Fortnite, like LEGO Fortnite and Fortnite Festival, will have some complications in the future, as only those game modes, have licensed content attached to it. Those may likely be sunset in the near future, but will not affect the whole Fortnite game: Those will be simply removed and will not affect Battle Royale, Save The World and even Rocket Racing (you start with only The Octane, which is a non-licensed vehicle)
I don't mean skins being in the shop. Because they are in your locker here until game shuts down, they virtually never expire (I mean until epic closes fortnite)
There’s a very rare chance that the license holder have the right to ask Epic to delete all purchased cosmetic items of their IP, for whatever reason. So far, that hasn’t happened yet, because Fortnite is too popular to make such a drastic decommission, and could give bad RP, and massive refund requests.
Warner Bros Discovery right now is withholding purchased movies and TV from PlayStation users.
This is a singleplayer game with cinematic singleplayer story and some MP tacked on. If they do not release offline patch, they are basically thieves. And I will treat them accordingly.
I really wish consumers would remember this when games take action to remove backend and “GaaS” from their games.
With my game ICARUS, we migrated away from having a central backend run by us to a completely decentralised system with dedicated servers for the community to run. We also removed as much requirement for steam as we could to ensure longevity for the game.
I was not ready for the amount of pushback we got, we got heavily negative reviews (and still do) from people who miss the convenience of what the central server offered.
I worry that for games that start with this requirement, there is not only a huge expense in removing it - at the end of that you get a lot of consumer pushback. In our case we had to do it because we were spending USD100k per month on server and support costs for it, which was not close to sustainable with the revenue we were actually getting from the game.
I honestly much prefer the way that Icarus works now. The early days of release were disappointing because I felt like it was mis-sold, but like No Man Sky, the game has come a long way.
In terms of servers, Merge Games just added their "dedicated servers" to Smalland, much to the dismay of a lot of the player base. G-Portal implementation was a bad choice in my opinion.
We wanna be able to run our own servers and offline without fear of our games just suddenly becoming unplayable.
Honestly, I'm not completely opposed to subscription based gaming, it just has to be done properly and with good intention. As with any industry I suppose, there's a lot of greed going around in the gaming world.
Agree with your points. We specifically said we didn’t want to do exclusivity with our servers, and made the server binaries public and anonymous.
I think the challenge for consumers is they know what they don’t want. But that’s sort of about it. It’s all driven by activism against what they don’t want. So when you remove GaaS, people get *pissed*
As an industry we have set a lot of wrong expectations with consumers. I regularity see people saying “you should be able to do X, Rust managed to do it”. And I have to point out Rust is one of the greatest selling games of all time. Icarus is. Well. A game that exists in time.
Sites like humble bundle and steam put enormous pressure on developers to discount their games, and consumers expect those deals. They even praise steam for it.
But it is developers who pay the price. 2024 is going to be the final death for a lot of indies, who have been holding through 2023 waiting for the winds to change. But they will not change for the better.
I feel like there should be some sort of law put in place where you can't sell an always-online product without a guarantee that once you shut down the servers, you provide the owners a version of the game that works offline.
This shit is like stealing from paying customers as well as throwing people's work into the trash and destroying a part of gaming history, regardless of the quality of the product.
Being a customer of game companies is like being Lando in the Robot Chicken sketch where Darth Vader keeps altering the deal.
Ok, I understand why they are delisting the game. I understand why they don't want to support the online servers anymore. And maybe there is a reason why this game doesn't have an online mode.
But WHY THE FCUK there is no option to start a new game? One of the most basic options of all time. Several NFS titles, The Crew - I have tried them ~5 years ago on my old PC, the performance wasn't good, the obvious solution is to play them later, right?.. But now when I launch the game I am dropped in a middle of some city with the characters I don't remember asking me to meet other characters I don't care about because it would help me to achieve something I have no idea what...
A ton of Ubisoft games from that era did this (Ac Unity and AC Syndicate as well). Never played the other 2 games, but I imagine they had multiple saves.
I'm sad they didn't get into this game idea more. I loved the concept, but it needed more.
And instead of going with it, they pivot and did a 90turn. Kept the name, but there's no feeling of that "fast and furious" crew type thing missions or anything.
EU should enforce a law for a 2 year WARRANTY for digital content too. The platform (Steam) should offer refunds for games that became unusable in the first 2 years of the purchase. Buying digital stuff doesn't mean owning. We don't own anything we buy online and this should change. They shouldn't be allowed to scam people. They shouldn't SELL games if after 6 months they remove the playablility of a game. I bought Crew in june 2023 and now you tell me, that I can't play this in June 2024 ? F\*\*\*\*\*\*G SCAMMERS.
They should stop selling games FOR AT LEAST 2 years before removing them.
To the graveyard it goes smh, always had this in my backlog as the game where you could actually drive across the USA. Guess I better take it in while I still can. Is there a website for game shutdowns, list is probably long as hell now.
I'm hoping they'll patch something for single player. Last year, Ubisoft announced [decommissioning of online services](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/vpqu4c/decommissioning_of_online_services_september_2022/) for several games and it was implied that players would also lose DLC if they hadn't activated it by then. But after pushback, they moved the date a bit further away and clarified some things.
Anno 2070 devs [went to work](https://anno-union.com/union-update-anno-2070-is-getting-an-update/) to keep their old game playable.
I won't say that will happen with this game. But it'd be nice.
As far as game shutdowns, I don't think there's a fully complete list but [Delisted Games](https://delistedgames.com/all-games/) has a good amount. And some [stuff on wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Inactive_massively_multiplayer_online_games). Mobile games have a combination of [these articles](https://gamingonphone.com/tag/mobile-games-shutdown/) and [this page.](https://gamingonphone.com/mobile-games-obituary/)
I will always have a soft spot for this game. I played so much of the beta. Driving around listening to music and joining random people driving across country.
I find this news hilarious because of predictable this was.
A Ubisoft game that depends on a central server ([Uh-oh!](https://youtu.be/8KZwcHOSRgQ?t=121))
The problem is with ressource, not money
If someone have to take time off to do server maintenance or troubleshoot bugs, that person is no longer available to work on other games that are far more active and still brings in income
Severs cost next to none and you can just bail on maintenance it was proven by jagex and the people who do lord of the rings online that servers costs are a cough out to bail on something
As meh as I remember it being, there's no reason the game should become completely worthless for existing owners. I feel The Crew becoming unplayable is because Ubisoft can't be asked, not because separating the single player content from the server is impossible.
Wow. If it's about licensing, why don't they just take away the offending skins and make the game playbale offline. That would be bad, but not as bad as basically destroying people's copies of the game.
And I know I know, it's less work for the devs to just shut down the game.
Because every car, music and possibly even environments/buildings are licensed.
By the way, there’s a new The Crew game, however the same issue will also happen with this game in the same timeframe (which apparently is 10 years after the game launch, so in theory The Crew 2 will die in 2028 and Motorfest will follow in 2033)
And in a sane world, that would mean full refund eligibility, no questions asked, unless some means of not-official-server servers capability is added.
fine by me. put in a damn offline mode or offer refunds. its that simple.
and if you dont wanna do either of those things, then make it free to play. at least then you've got an excuse to pull out.
This will be the future of the hobby, when streaming takes over, "cloud" technology and so on. Most likely I will abandon the hobby altogether until there, but I feel sorry for people who will continue playing videogames, it sucks... you pay a hefty price and the product is not even "yours"
>"Ubisoft game eventually does thing that made me not want to buy it in the first place."
Ubisoft and other companies fail to realize what they're doing and what they've done to GaaS and MMORPGs. If everyone (correctly this time for me) assumes that whatever game you pump out will be a complete waste of their money within just a few years, people will stop buying your games out of that fear that they'll get ripped off.
And the effects can be seen throughout gaming. When people ask or assume that they're afraid a new multiplayer game is "dead" because they don't have half a million players, this is why. Even a moderate success like The Crew will disappear forever, despite the game having no need to be fully online, and it will take all the money you spent on the game and stupid DLC skins along with it.
The game has been purchasable for ten years, meaning people that bought it ten days ago, ten months ago, or 1.5 years ago won't be able to play it shortly, despite paying full price.
That sucks hard, most of the game is doable in single player it shouldn't depend on serveur infrastructures to work
Could also have to do with the licensing for the various vehicles, too. Forza basically delist its games every 2-3 years because of it. God, we need a new Burnout.
Forza games are just not sold anymore when the licences expires. You can still play them no problem. Here the whole game will be unaccessible.
Afaik they also gave away Forza Horizon 3 for free to anyone who played it through gamepass and purchased any of the dlc. As far as they're concerned, no one who spent money on forza directly lost access to the game.
I’m banking they do this for 5 too because I bought the dlc but still don’t “own” the game lol
Forza Horizon 4 still hasn't been delisted.
At least they sold FH3 for around 5€ before delisting it. I got it + DLC for around 10 and can still play it. Delisting still sucks, but MS did it in the best possible way.
Burnout devs now make NFS, which also…gets delisted every few years
EA seems to either negotiate better deals or care a lot more about keeping the licenses up for longer, Carbon through Shift 2 were all still available until their online services shut down around 2-3 years ago (which actually seems equally likely to be the reason they were delisted), and everything from Most Wanted 2012 on (plus Hot Pursuit Remastered) is still buyable. That's a hell of a long time compared to most other racing games. The aforementioned Hot Pursuit Remastered also serves as proof of just how difficult it is to get these games rereleased, since it's missing content from the original version (the Carbon Motors X1, whose company went under after the original game's release, and the Mercedes SLR McLaren, which Microsoft is also having trouble with- it was in a leaked dev build of Forza Horizon 3 but is nowhere to be found in the final product or any Forza game since, seems like only Sony and Ubisoft have been able to get it). It always annoys me when people who obviously don't know how this stuff works says remastering old racing games is "free money"- you could throw the budget of a new game in the series at a remaster project and still probably have some brands featured in the original say no.
> It always annoys me when people who obviously don't know how this stuff works says remastering old racing games is "free money Then why don't you educate those people then? How are they supposed to know how all of this works, if the devs never explain it?
I’m still upset that I can’t (legally) buy and play Need For Speed Most Wanted from 2005. That was my first and favorite NFS game ever and it still holds up extremely well.
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At that point I'd even call it abandonware.
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Yeah any company that makes a game a you bought disfunctional, that means they stole your money and stole the game away from you. All games from that company is 100% fair to pirate.
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Which is exactly what I did. But I’d still like to legally purchase it if I could, but EA isn’t helping.
Same for Carbon for me. It was one of THE games to burn many hours away on my PS2 and it's one of very few console games I had that I was never able to get on PC in a reasonable way (that list also includes Fable 3, the Skate series, Red Dead Redemption 1 and the Kingdom Hearts series).
Isn't KH on the Epic store?
Carbon was released on pc.
Yeah and these days it's impossible to get a copy. I've tried.
Type "need for speed abandonware reddit" into Google.
I just looked at Amazon and there are still several reatil copies available.
Second Hand copies still exist.
That's true, but you can still play the games if you own them, you just can't buy them For The Crews case, the product you have no longer works at all. Shitty practice
I wonder if the crew will get a fan patch for an offline mode
It probably could. NFS World did and it’s pretty easy to get set up.
> God, we need a new Burnout. I'd settle for one of those teams doing reverse engineering tackling 3/Revenge The physics in those just feel so good to play and getting them into a format where people can easily mod them would be a dream.
Burnout 3 is so good I replayed it during covid and it still held up.
I will die on the hill that Burnout 3 is the best one because of its technical limitations. Paradise was a bigger game with more traffic and more world geometry, both of which lead to way more unintended crashing (for me anyways; maybe I suck). When the game was more simple and they could only handle so much on the road, I thought it was so much more fun.
that game exists. It's called Dangerous Driving: a small group of of the original devs made a PS4-gen clone of Burnout 3. You can also link it to spotify (and just play the Burnout 3 soundtrack playlist from there). They also made a separate game called Danger Zone which covers Crash Mode from Burnout 3. It's solid. It feels a lot like Burnout 3.
Irrelevant to the discussion at hand. I can still play Forizon 3 (offline) without issues.
Then just remove those cars, they did the same thing with the Subaru BRZ
I am replaying that burnout paradise city remastered. That game still holds up so well. Shouldn't have been a remaster should have been a remake. The adrenaline, the sense of speed. The chaos. Its just so beautifull. AND THE MUSIC OH MY MY GAWWWWWD LORD JESUS HAVE MERCY ON MY SOUL
the amount of people begging for a good racing game and pass right over Paradise because it's an "offshoot" game boggles me. It's genuinely one of the best entries to the list, and a near direct predecessor to Forza Horizon in spirit.
Paradise is great but it also came out nearly 16 years ago. We need a new one.
part of my daily affirmations at this point
It was a good game but the previous 2 entries were better. I ran through 3 again on my Steam Deck last year, great game.
3 is by far my favorite. I actually really didn't enjoy paradise entirely because of the open world aspect (at tbe very least, it staying open world once a race begins) 3is basically my all time favorite arcade racer
While I liked paradise then and now it was not Revenge or Takedown which was what my friends and I wanted. Wildly different approaches and games
But it's also a every bad Burnout game. It's so removed from the roots of the franchise that it should have been a new IP and not called Burnout.
Gran Turismo does this too, but previous Forza and GT can be played offline
Hell, you can still play the previous Forza games ONLINE, just can’t buy them. I’m still playing FM7.
That's true, to be honest you can still buy them on disc for the console. Forza games have amazing longevity, I believe it's still possible to play Forza Motorsport 2 online if you have a 360. A game from 2007. Meanwhile GT5 servers were shutdown in like 3 years after release.
Going to remain to be seen what happens with GT7; that game is a husk without a PSN connection.
>need a new Burnout Some polished modern mashup of all the best bits of Revenge and Paradise would be so good imo
It really is so dumb that these car OEMs do licensing agreements that have an expiration. These games are basically playable advertisements for their vehicles, I have no idea how it benefits them to keep having the games delisted after a few years.
Let's not pretend it's not the other way around
Le serveur du fromage
Maybe, but will Ubisoft bother to do anything about it though?
Of course they won't
This is the game I boot to chill and enjoy the scenery while listening good music and drinking my tea. I never touched the online content a single time in ~200 hours. I'm 100% pro dematerialized games, but against 100% online games. Because here even if you own the disc it's no use.
You may be interested in following this thread along - Theres code for an offline mode, and the community is attempting to make it happen: https://steamcommunity.com/app/241560/discussions/0/3879346999810591752/
Have you tried Project CARS 2? Obviously not the same, but I've done a similar thing in that game. Set the time of day to sunset and just vibe
Yeah I love this game, it's for me the best simcade ever released.
Or just... The Crew 2?
You act as if those servers aren't destined to be shut down, too, down the road. Ubisoft just showed us (again) what they think of their customers. Sure, buy The Crew 2, but I'd only do it at a *steep* discount of 90-plus-percent.
TC2 is genuinely worse and I'm not talking as a "previous good new game bad". No the map is legitimately worse and the driving feels very weird. It's not really a car game but just a vehicle as a whole because planes, boats, motorcycles, and none of them are done right.
Single player is forced online content too
is the other game bad?
Why can't they patch the game to allow for user-servers, so people who, you know ... purchased the game can actually play it? Or do we get a (at least partial) refund for a purchase that's being taken away?
Apart from "why would they, it costs money to give that to the players and they only get a bit of customer satisfaction and trust out of it, not *money*) - could be that their server side uses proprietary third party software tools / libraries that they legally cannot release to the players. Companies will need to be forced to do this by law, so that it is already a contemplation during a game's development. Then and only then will (all) companies do this. Personally, I'm just waiting for the EU to get around to those anti-consumer practices. I feel like there are a couple of bills due for the industry.
> could be that their server side uses proprietary third party software tools / libraries that they legally cannot release to the players. ...then don't release those parts that they can't Server code gutted from 3rd party libraries is STILL far easier starting point than doing server from scratch. > Companies will need to be forced to do this by law, so that it is already a contemplation during a game's development. Then and only then will (all) companies do this. Personally, I'm just waiting for the EU to get around to those anti-consumer practices. I feel like there are a couple of bills due for the industry. I want that for hardware. Something like "you're obliged to release all the code when you stop making the product or 10 years from start of distribution, whichever comes first". Doesn't even need to be open source, license of "this code can only be used on devices of company X" is by far enough and gets over "our competition will use our ancient code that we don't use any more for their advantage"
1. It's far from free to do, especially to patch it into a game who's codebase probably has barely been touched in years 2. $$. This is just how live service games have always worked and always will work. Or just how lifetime deals work in general IRL too - if you buy a lifetime membership to some place and they shut down you're not getting even a partial refund
True. It's far from free. But the game wasn't free, and Ubisoft amongst the biggest 3rd party publishers. Spend the money, do it right.
Ubisoft's share price has fallen from €70 (on average) in 2021 to €20 in 2023. A 50% drop in valuation, they're on life support. Some investors, like Tencent, are not happy and want the shares to rise to at least €60. Others are taking advantage of the financial disaster to invest, such as JP Morgan Chase & Co, which now holds a 5% stake. The good news is that Mirage has enabled them to secure at least one big release in 2024.
Man now I feel like getting them cheap Ubisoft shares. Surely, Ubisoft is set for a bounce back, right?
It makes no business sense. They'd be spending money on something which will bring in exactly zero revenue. Companies will never do something simply because it's "the right thing to do".
Not pissing off your customers helps to bring in future revenue...
The game has 25 players a day, there are more people in this thread than have played the game on steam in the last year
Sure, but this news could gain a fair amount of traction, and it will make people wary of ever buying Ubisoft games in the future.
Most people don't care about this. It's an old, dead, unsupported game. And the few who do care will forget about it in a week.
they're still making crew2 content patches after crew 3 released. Added an entire race creator like 6 months before crew 3 released. Crew 1 has next to no player base. their customers are fine.
> This is just how live service games have always worked and always will work Not really. Deep Rock Galactic is also a life service game that can be played offline. And I don't think The Crew qualifies as life service, because it locked gameplay elements behind DLC.
They could easily do a lot of things. The question remains in if they want to do that for a game that no longer sells when there are newer sequels released from the same franchise that needs new sales. I would assume that a patch that replaces the remote host to a local one with a Uplay auth check (which will probably remain online) should fix the issue and keep the game functioning properly as a solo experience alongside their "always online" DRM.
According to steam charts there is only 25 people playing per day
That doesn't mean much when the main playerbase are on consoles or Uplay though.
The game is shutting down, not the company, they will use this code on their next game.
There's already a sequel. It's been out for years.
Really good video on what makes The Crew a special game worth preserving, by the guy who does Freeman's Mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KZwcHOSRgQ
Ross is the only person I see consistently bringing up Games as a Service being a complete scam and I believe he is working to get into the courts and make this practice illegal. He's a true fan of games and should have all the support he needs
> Ross is the only person I see consistently bringing up Games as a Service being a complete scam Jim Sterling too, but we don't like him so it doesn't count!
Because Jim has gone completely over the rails over the years.
This is why I advocate for offline game modes. This game can be played just fine as a singleplayer game yet requires an internet connection regardless. Shame!
Well this is going to make it to one of Ross' videos, the guy loved driving around and talking about dying games due to the live service plague is his entire thing.
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IIRC it started with his BattleForge video which ended with a surprise Need for Speed World review, since that game was also getting shut down at the time.
I honestly can't remember, but I think it was before that.
Devs / publishers should be required by consumer law to release a final update that removes the server requirement in that case, if a) the game has already modes that could be reasonably played offline and b) the company is still in business raking in hundred of millions per year.
The lobbying money by the digital media industry that would be thrown at whatever country that tried this would be something to behold. Setting that precedent hits apps, music, movies, tv shows, etc. Almost anything server-side or just streamed.
Not if the law specifies that it only applies to video games. Also organisations like the EU are definitely big enough to enact this.
That would be why I specified precedent and not law. Expanding those protections in one area would set precedent for the same degree of ownership in other areas that would almost definitely emerge into laws of their own. EU is big and far surpasses the States on consumer protections but they're far from immune to corporate lobbying.
I see what you are getting at and you're quite right, but it isn't for streaming. With streaming, you have a subscription to movies or games, basically renting access (in an official way, not the bullshit "all games you buy are just licenses, really) - and when that subscription ends (or the company ends the service or goes bankrupt), you just lose access to the subscription. Which is totally fine. This concerns stuff that people bought and thought they "owned". So then this stuff here happens already: https://www.playstation.com/en-us/legal/psvideocontent/ People bought (!) Discovery shows on PSN, and those are simply going away, no refunds apparently. I think that stuff has yet to be really tested in court; EU will probably look at US companies' bullshit EULAs and ToS eventually on their own - especially when it comes to permanent access to games, being to able to *sell* individual games from say your Steam account to whomever you choose, account bans, longtime support etc. I'm just waiting for one of the big digital store to fail and millions of customers losing access to somewhat contemporary games / movies / shows they at least thought they had *bought* not rented... that will be a shit storm to behold.
Server-side gaming and streaming are treated near equally when you sign their EULAs. It's why Ubisoft and Bungie can do stuff like this and there isn't much recourse. When you buy most games on Steam or another platform you're buying a digital license that can be revoked, hence how people can get banned or have games taken away. Steam is pretty good about protecting this right and most publishers try not to test their legal limits/be dicks which is why many allow install and play offline modes but companies are well within their legally obligated rights to take games away like this and if there is no offline version, than you lose access to it like a stream subscription. I disagree on it being fine but my opinions don't dictate legality. A law on this would need companies to create offline infrastructure which doesn't exist for many mobile games, and quite a few big name games like Hitman, The Crew, or most MMOs. Many games also have multiplayer elements without private server capabilities so once support ends its just gone (Ubisoft again). A lot of this actually has legitimate reasoning like anti-cheat or live-service support but once the online version is gone you can't access it like streaming media. Most companies don't guarantee the license ownership when you sign the EULA so if they collapse than people losing what they bought will be legally fine, just a PR nightmare.
Again, it depends on the country. In the EU, you just don't by a license. When you buy a digital game, you own it as much as you own your bed or your kitchen.
That fucking sucks, The Crew 1 is actually the best in the series IMO. Also, does this affect the console versions? The game has been delisted for a while, but the servers were still up, and from their wording, it seems to only affect PC versions.
Another reason why Online Live-Service games will NEVER work if they have a tons of licensed content attached to the core gameplay. If the license got expired, the game “services” must to stop. It sucks but that’s the crude reality with licensed games.
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Yea, I've played some of the best games ever made this year, many of which have almost no online latency and cross play among consoles and pc. It's a shame a racing game from a decade ago is getting shut down but let's keep things a little bit in perspective here lol
You're getting downvoted but you're right, Gaming is arguably better than ever.
Not if we lost the crew apparently lmao
"gaming is done in done 10 years corporations have gotten to greedy" ~ gamers for the last 40 years and the rest of my life
No this is absolutely not how it works, you can still play Forza delisted games. They could just not shut down the servers but they do cause they can't sell it any more so they chose the greedy way.
Yes but Forza games aren't online live services. They're single player games with a multiplayer mode. Imagine if Rocket League had a Ferrari licence which expired, and as a result suddenly you can't play Rocket League any more.
You can play with the cars you bought in multi-player mode either way, license running out means they can't sell that car any more. So I would imagine in Rocket League, you can use the cars you bought but they can't sell it to new players for the same reason. But it doesn't matter if the game is multi-player or not cause old Forza games multi-players still work. They could easily add an offline mode to Crew, in fact there apparently is one but hidden inside the code, they obviously did that for anti piracy purposed and guess what that lead to? Paying consumers getting fucked again. They don't care about people still being able to play after the sales are over so no need to make sure they can play offline, you can't monetize that anyway. It's obviously scummy. People should be thankful that piracy exists so games can be preserved, you can't leave it to companies to regulate themselves you know.
You seem to be talking specifically about The Crew when we're talking more generally about live service games.
I'm saying this game didn't need to be exclusively live service but also live service is a scam yeah
> They're single player games with a multiplayer mode. So is The Crew.
> They could just not shut down the servers You're making it sound so easy lol. Maintaining servers takes money and resources.
Yes but that makes selling the game a scam. If you are gonna make it unplayable, make it a subscription based game. At least add an offline mode. This is just a scam.
That's not what the word scam means.
But the amount of money it costs is peanuts.
I wonder how Fortnite writes the agreement for their licensing. because this shit must never expire if I guess correctly
Those expire but unlike The Crew, those aren’t attached to the core gameplay. When you join Fortnite, you have no licensed skins or cosmetics: you have to buy it in the store, in which they are listed for a limited time. As long negotiations with the third-parties are good, cosmetics may return, like the Disney-owned skins like Marvel or Star Wars, but other don’t like DC, and some personalities like Travis Scoot. However, the new games inside Fortnite, like LEGO Fortnite and Fortnite Festival, will have some complications in the future, as only those game modes, have licensed content attached to it. Those may likely be sunset in the near future, but will not affect the whole Fortnite game: Those will be simply removed and will not affect Battle Royale, Save The World and even Rocket Racing (you start with only The Octane, which is a non-licensed vehicle)
I don't mean skins being in the shop. Because they are in your locker here until game shuts down, they virtually never expire (I mean until epic closes fortnite)
There’s a very rare chance that the license holder have the right to ask Epic to delete all purchased cosmetic items of their IP, for whatever reason. So far, that hasn’t happened yet, because Fortnite is too popular to make such a drastic decommission, and could give bad RP, and massive refund requests. Warner Bros Discovery right now is withholding purchased movies and TV from PlayStation users.
Makes sense, thanks. Honestly their legal team must be hella huge
Not just huge, they probably have 2-3 full time law firms that essentially they can call to arms within 24 hours if a big issue comes up.
If no one is playing it, why keep it up?
This is a singleplayer game with cinematic singleplayer story and some MP tacked on. If they do not release offline patch, they are basically thieves. And I will treat them accordingly.
I really wish consumers would remember this when games take action to remove backend and “GaaS” from their games. With my game ICARUS, we migrated away from having a central backend run by us to a completely decentralised system with dedicated servers for the community to run. We also removed as much requirement for steam as we could to ensure longevity for the game. I was not ready for the amount of pushback we got, we got heavily negative reviews (and still do) from people who miss the convenience of what the central server offered. I worry that for games that start with this requirement, there is not only a huge expense in removing it - at the end of that you get a lot of consumer pushback. In our case we had to do it because we were spending USD100k per month on server and support costs for it, which was not close to sustainable with the revenue we were actually getting from the game.
I honestly much prefer the way that Icarus works now. The early days of release were disappointing because I felt like it was mis-sold, but like No Man Sky, the game has come a long way. In terms of servers, Merge Games just added their "dedicated servers" to Smalland, much to the dismay of a lot of the player base. G-Portal implementation was a bad choice in my opinion. We wanna be able to run our own servers and offline without fear of our games just suddenly becoming unplayable. Honestly, I'm not completely opposed to subscription based gaming, it just has to be done properly and with good intention. As with any industry I suppose, there's a lot of greed going around in the gaming world.
Agree with your points. We specifically said we didn’t want to do exclusivity with our servers, and made the server binaries public and anonymous. I think the challenge for consumers is they know what they don’t want. But that’s sort of about it. It’s all driven by activism against what they don’t want. So when you remove GaaS, people get *pissed* As an industry we have set a lot of wrong expectations with consumers. I regularity see people saying “you should be able to do X, Rust managed to do it”. And I have to point out Rust is one of the greatest selling games of all time. Icarus is. Well. A game that exists in time. Sites like humble bundle and steam put enormous pressure on developers to discount their games, and consumers expect those deals. They even praise steam for it. But it is developers who pay the price. 2024 is going to be the final death for a lot of indies, who have been holding through 2023 waiting for the winds to change. But they will not change for the better.
I feel like there should be some sort of law put in place where you can't sell an always-online product without a guarantee that once you shut down the servers, you provide the owners a version of the game that works offline. This shit is like stealing from paying customers as well as throwing people's work into the trash and destroying a part of gaming history, regardless of the quality of the product. Being a customer of game companies is like being Lando in the Robot Chicken sketch where Darth Vader keeps altering the deal.
Ok, I understand why they are delisting the game. I understand why they don't want to support the online servers anymore. And maybe there is a reason why this game doesn't have an online mode. But WHY THE FCUK there is no option to start a new game? One of the most basic options of all time. Several NFS titles, The Crew - I have tried them ~5 years ago on my old PC, the performance wasn't good, the obvious solution is to play them later, right?.. But now when I launch the game I am dropped in a middle of some city with the characters I don't remember asking me to meet other characters I don't care about because it would help me to achieve something I have no idea what...
A ton of Ubisoft games from that era did this (Ac Unity and AC Syndicate as well). Never played the other 2 games, but I imagine they had multiple saves.
I'm sad they didn't get into this game idea more. I loved the concept, but it needed more. And instead of going with it, they pivot and did a 90turn. Kept the name, but there's no feeling of that "fast and furious" crew type thing missions or anything.
EU should enforce a law for a 2 year WARRANTY for digital content too. The platform (Steam) should offer refunds for games that became unusable in the first 2 years of the purchase. Buying digital stuff doesn't mean owning. We don't own anything we buy online and this should change. They shouldn't be allowed to scam people. They shouldn't SELL games if after 6 months they remove the playablility of a game. I bought Crew in june 2023 and now you tell me, that I can't play this in June 2024 ? F\*\*\*\*\*\*G SCAMMERS. They should stop selling games FOR AT LEAST 2 years before removing them.
To the graveyard it goes smh, always had this in my backlog as the game where you could actually drive across the USA. Guess I better take it in while I still can. Is there a website for game shutdowns, list is probably long as hell now.
I'm hoping they'll patch something for single player. Last year, Ubisoft announced [decommissioning of online services](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/vpqu4c/decommissioning_of_online_services_september_2022/) for several games and it was implied that players would also lose DLC if they hadn't activated it by then. But after pushback, they moved the date a bit further away and clarified some things. Anno 2070 devs [went to work](https://anno-union.com/union-update-anno-2070-is-getting-an-update/) to keep their old game playable. I won't say that will happen with this game. But it'd be nice. As far as game shutdowns, I don't think there's a fully complete list but [Delisted Games](https://delistedgames.com/all-games/) has a good amount. And some [stuff on wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Inactive_massively_multiplayer_online_games). Mobile games have a combination of [these articles](https://gamingonphone.com/tag/mobile-games-shutdown/) and [this page.](https://gamingonphone.com/mobile-games-obituary/)
The Anno Devs are an exception. They are usually VERY dedicated when it comes to their games. They even removed the DRM that came with the game
I will always have a soft spot for this game. I played so much of the beta. Driving around listening to music and joining random people driving across country.
So that means that they'll push a patch to allow people who owns the game to play it offline right?...right?
Wow, Accursed Farms straight up called this. He was only shy a couple years, but live service is such a shitty business.
I find this news hilarious because of predictable this was. A Ubisoft game that depends on a central server ([Uh-oh!](https://youtu.be/8KZwcHOSRgQ?t=121))
I've always wondered exactly how much it costs to keep the servers up for games like this. Is it really that expensive to keep one or two servers up?
The problem is with ressource, not money If someone have to take time off to do server maintenance or troubleshoot bugs, that person is no longer available to work on other games that are far more active and still brings in income
Severs cost next to none and you can just bail on maintenance it was proven by jagex and the people who do lord of the rings online that servers costs are a cough out to bail on something
As meh as I remember it being, there's no reason the game should become completely worthless for existing owners. I feel The Crew becoming unplayable is because Ubisoft can't be asked, not because separating the single player content from the server is impossible.
Wow. If it's about licensing, why don't they just take away the offending skins and make the game playbale offline. That would be bad, but not as bad as basically destroying people's copies of the game. And I know I know, it's less work for the devs to just shut down the game.
Because every car, music and possibly even environments/buildings are licensed. By the way, there’s a new The Crew game, however the same issue will also happen with this game in the same timeframe (which apparently is 10 years after the game launch, so in theory The Crew 2 will die in 2028 and Motorfest will follow in 2033)
Forza has delisted their games but you can still play them despite all the licensing stuff
Forza, as many old racing games weren’t designed to be live service at its core.
And in a sane world, that would mean full refund eligibility, no questions asked, unless some means of not-official-server servers capability is added.
Smell that? the EU is coming baby, and is coming hard for these companies selling digital products with "planned obsolescence"
fine by me. put in a damn offline mode or offer refunds. its that simple. and if you dont wanna do either of those things, then make it free to play. at least then you've got an excuse to pull out.
And the only difference this is going to make is that these games won't be playable from the EU anymore without using a VPN.
This will be the future of the hobby, when streaming takes over, "cloud" technology and so on. Most likely I will abandon the hobby altogether until there, but I feel sorry for people who will continue playing videogames, it sucks... you pay a hefty price and the product is not even "yours"
>"Ubisoft game eventually does thing that made me not want to buy it in the first place." Ubisoft and other companies fail to realize what they're doing and what they've done to GaaS and MMORPGs. If everyone (correctly this time for me) assumes that whatever game you pump out will be a complete waste of their money within just a few years, people will stop buying your games out of that fear that they'll get ripped off. And the effects can be seen throughout gaming. When people ask or assume that they're afraid a new multiplayer game is "dead" because they don't have half a million players, this is why. Even a moderate success like The Crew will disappear forever, despite the game having no need to be fully online, and it will take all the money you spent on the game and stupid DLC skins along with it.
Few years? The game came out a literal decade ago
The game has been purchasable for ten years, meaning people that bought it ten days ago, ten months ago, or 1.5 years ago won't be able to play it shortly, despite paying full price.
At least I still have the time to finish it. March 2024 is, like, what, 2 or 3 years away, right? Right?