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Ubisoft holds firm in The Crew lawsuit: You don’t own your video games (www.polygon.com)
submitted 1 year ago* by to c/games@sh.itjust.works
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Archive: https://archive.is/2025.04.09-191645/https://www.polygon.com/gaming/555469/ubisoft-holds-firm-in-the-crew-lawsuit-you-dont-own-your-video-games

Ubisoft responded to California gamers’ The Crew shutdown lawsuit in late February, filing to dismiss the case. The company’s lawyers argued in that filing, reviewed by Polygon, that there was no reason for players to believe they were purchasing “unfettered ownership rights in the game.” Ubisoft has made it clear, lawyers claimed, that when you buy a copy of The Crew, you’re merely buying a limited access license.

“Frustrated with Ubisoft’s recent decision to retire the game following a notice period delineated on the product’s packaging, Plaintiffs apply a kitchen sink approach on behalf of a putative class of nationwide customers, alleging eight causes of action including violations of California’s False Advertising Law, Unfair Competition Law, and Consumer Legal Remedies Act, as well as common law fraud and breach of warranty claims,” Ubisoft’s lawyers wrote.

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[–] 11 points 1 year ago (8 children)

I would be more open to the “you don’t actually own your games” thing if I wasn’t being sold a digital thing that will definitely get pulled out of my hands at some point, for more than the cost of the physical copies we used to get ($70 minimum now, vs $40-50). And even in the case of The Crew, you got fucked regardless of having a physical copy or not.

I pay for GamePass knowing that I don’t own the games on there. It’s a subscription just like the Sega Channel was.

Online services going away is fine. That’s been a thing that’s happened for years with other games. But the game should still remain playable in some fashion. If it becomes fully inaccessible at the end of life, customers have a legitimate reason to be upset.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago* (7 children)

    Online services going away is fine. That’s been a thing that’s happened for years with other games. But the game should still remain playable in some fashion. If it becomes fully inaccessible at the end of life, customers have a legitimate reason to be upset.

    It's not even just that. Society at large has an even more legitimate reason to be upset, because the whole social contract by which we agreed to even grant the publisher copyright in the first place was predicated on the work eventually entering the Public Domain. Destroying the work to prevent that from happening is more truly "theft" than "pirating" copies of it could ever be!

    The server component of online games ought to be required by law to be submitted to the Library of Congress for eventual release to the public.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (6 children)

    Won't it still eventually go into public domain whether the servers are running or not? Then any company would be free to remake the game or use the IP?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (5 children)

    No, because the server-side code would never be published in the first place. It's entirely possible every copy could just end up deleted once they shut the servers off. It can't be in the public domain if it no longer exists.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (4 children)

    Well right now it no longer exists and its not in the public domain so noone is allowed to recreate it. Once it enters public domain, it will be legal to recreate it. I don't think its on the company to prop up everyone else after they no longer have ownership of the IP. Servers have been reverse engineered before, and in WoW classics case, they brought in the indie devs who were doing it to help them recreate the game again for real.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    so noone is allowed to recreate it

    Arguably that's not true, as doing stuff for the purpose of interoperability is fair use.

    I don't think its on the company to prop up everyone else after they no longer have ownership of the IP.

    This is a perfect illustration of how toxic it is to let the copyright cartel frame the debate with loaded language like "ownership" of "IP." FYI, "IP" is not actually a thing and ideas are fundamentally different from property and cannot be "owned".

    relevant paragraphIt has been pretended by some (and in England especially) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions; & not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. but while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural, and even an hereditary right to inventions. it is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. by an universal law indeed, whatever, whether fixed or moveable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property, for the moment, of him who occupies it; but when he relinquishes the occupation the property goes with it. stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. it would be curious then if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. if nature has made any one thing less susceptible, than all others, of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an Idea; which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the reciever cannot dispossess himself of it. it’s peculiar character too is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. he who recieves an idea from me, recieves instruction himself, without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, recieves light without darkening me. that ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benvolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point; and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement, or exclusive appropriation. inventions then cannot in nature be a subject of property. society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility. but this may, or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body. accordingly it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. in some other countries, it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special & personal4 act. but generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrasment than advantage to society. and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.

    In other words, copyright is a privilege, and there is absolutely no reason we shouldn't expect those granted that monopoly to "property up everyone else" in exchange for receiving that privilege.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    Its not a privilege, its a protection for artists. There is nothing that says they have any responsibilities to their work after the copyright expires. I'm not sure where you got this privilege thing from.

    It will be available in the public domain once the copyright expires, in the case of the crew.

    Feel free to make another racing MMO and call it whatever you'd like though.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (1 child)

    In the United States, copyright exists for the sole and express purpose "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts." (US Constitution, article 1, section 8, clause 8). Protecting artists has nothing whatsoever to do with it; the monopoly privilege is given only as a means to the end of enriching the Public Domain.

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