Ubisoft says you "cannot complain" it shut down The Crew because you never actually owned it, and you weren't "deceived" by the lack of an offline version "to access a decade-old, discontinued video game"
www.gamesradar.com
The Crew players "received the benefit of their bargain and cannot complain now that they were deceived," Ubisoft argues

Full title: Ubisoft says you “cannot complain” it shut down The Crew because you never actually owned it, and you weren’t “deceived” by the lack of an offline version “to access a decade-old, discontinued video game”

Ubisoft’s lawyers have responded to a class action lawsuit over the shutdown of The Crew, arguing that it was always clear that you didn’t own the game and calling for a dismissal of the case outright.

The class action was filed in November 2024, and Ubisoft’s response came in February 2025, though it’s only come to the public’s attention now courtesy of Polygon. The full response from Ubisoft attorney Steven A. Marenberg picks apart the claims of plaintiffs Matthew Cassell and Alan Liu piece by piece, but the most common refrain is that The Crew’s box made clear both that the game required an internet connection and that Ubisoft retained the right to revoke access “to one or more specific online features” with a 30-day notice at its own discretion.

  • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    2·
    4 天前

    I mean, I can be as much of a pedant as you and post an unsourced definition of ‘ip theft’ … or maybe you could just admit you’d never heard of the term ‘ip theft’, or are unaware of its use.

    Its a pretty commonly used term, especially amongst government regulatory and business organizations, as well as academics who study policy, in the US.

    The term itself, its phrasing, is intentionally constructed to frame copyright infringement as a form of theft, stealing something that doesn’t belong to you.

    The psychological framing of the term is meant to frame losses from someone committing copyright infringement against you as equivalent to losses from being robbed.

    The entire point of the usage of this term is to mold public perception.

    Here’s some examples where very prominent US institutions/organizations use some construction or variation of ‘ip theft’ as an umbrella term to refer to all kinds of copyright, trademark and/or patent infringement:

    FBI

    https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/countering-the-growing-intellectual-property-theft-threat

    KPMG (huge business consulting group)

    https://kpmg.com/us/en/articles/2022/theft-intellectual-property.html

    DHS (Homeland Security)

    https://www.dhs.gov/intellectual-property-rights

    IPRC (Intellectual Property Rights Center)

    https://www.iprcenter.gov/

    And finally, literally IPTheft.org, which basically functions as an all-in-one training/resource hub that connects business people to all kinds of resources to report when they have suffered… IP theft.

    https://www.iptheft.org/

    • null@slrpnk.netEnglish
      1·
      4 天前

      The claim was that Ubisoft called piracy “theft”. Have they done that, or not?