On December 14, 2023, Ubisoft delisted The Crew and its expansions from digital platforms, suspended sales of microtransactions, and announced that the game’s servers would be shut down on March 31, 2024, citing “upcoming server infrastructure and licensing constraints”.
People who paid around us$40 for the game on December 13 were being sold a lemon.
Given that it was released in 2014 it seems likely that their licenses were given a 10 year duration and they always intended to shutdown in 2024 at the latest (of course if its user base failed to reach critical mass they could have pulled the plug earlier).
Does selling a game in 2023 when you plan to kill it in 2024 legally qualify as fraud?
Thats not what I’m asking. You just have me evidence that they didnt sell it as soon as an EOL date was announced. Are you saying they should have stopped selling it before they publicly announce the EOL? Should they have announced and removed it as soon as the board meeting ended? How much earlier would that be in this case?
Should they have announced and removed it as soon as the board meeting ended? How much earlier would that be in this case?
My unsubstantiated theory is the the licences they signed for all the vehicles and real world content had a 10 year lifetime.
Usually those contracts would just require that they stop selling the game, but they may have included something about the servers in the contract too.
Either way they new something was going to change in 2024 and realistically they knew which of these possibilities were viable:
sign new deals with all licensors and continue business as usual
sign new deals with cooperative licensors and modify the game to remove the others
remove the game from sale and keep the servers running for current customers
remove the game from sale and kill the servers - tell people to buy the sequal
I’d they waited until December of 2023 to have that meeting then that feels negligent.
If they had that meeting earlier and continued to sell the game (until ≈100 days to EOL) without warning customers that feels fraudulent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crew_(video_game)
People who paid around us$40 for the game on December 13 were being sold a lemon.
Given that it was released in 2014 it seems likely that their licenses were given a 10 year duration and they always intended to shutdown in 2024 at the latest (of course if its user base failed to reach critical mass they could have pulled the plug earlier).
Does selling a game in 2023 when you plan to kill it in 2024 legally qualify as fraud?
Thats not what I’m asking. You just have me evidence that they didnt sell it as soon as an EOL date was announced. Are you saying they should have stopped selling it before they publicly announce the EOL? Should they have announced and removed it as soon as the board meeting ended? How much earlier would that be in this case?
My unsubstantiated theory is the the licences they signed for all the vehicles and real world content had a 10 year lifetime.
Usually those contracts would just require that they stop selling the game, but they may have included something about the servers in the contract too.
Either way they new something was going to change in 2024 and realistically they knew which of these possibilities were viable:
I’d they waited until December of 2023 to have that meeting then that feels negligent.
If they had that meeting earlier and continued to sell the game (until ≈100 days to EOL) without warning customers that feels fraudulent.