Ubisoft announced this month that it is no longer developing "The Crew," citing "server infrastructure and licensing constraints" that made the 10-year-old racing game unplayable. This is not the first time an online game has been sent to the northern farm by a publisher unwilling to continue supporting online games or offer players a way to play offline or on a private server.

Scott has launched a new website, Stop Killing Games, to call for opposition to the gaming industry's "assault on both consumer rights and media protection."

The campaign, of which "The Crew" is a prime example, directs consumers worldwide to sign petitions and file complaints with regulatory bodies such as the DGCCRF, the French consumer protection agency. The basic legal argument is that video games are "goods," not "services," and that no matter what terminology game publishers use, goods should not be rendered inoperable by the seller after purchase.

The most obvious legal defense for publishers is that when we purchase a game digitally these days, we are actually purchasing a conditional license to play the game; Steam's Subscriber Agreement makes this clear, stating that the games we purchase are " licensed, not sold."

However, when placed before a judge, Scott argues that these agreements do not necessarily hold up in all countries. While it will be difficult to get a favorable ruling in the U.S., the hope of this campaign is that if one country, such as France, decides that publishers must find a way to keep their games playable indefinitely, the industry will adopt the new practices worldwide. [Scott is not asking developers to run game servers until the heat of the universe dies down, but he is offering a compromise. If developers decide to stop supporting the game, they should provide some way for owners to continue playing.

There are numerous cases of online games whose support has been discontinued being kept alive by players, with or without support from the original developer or publisher. For example, earlier this year NCsoft granted an official license to a fan-run City of Heroes server. In a speech at GDC last month, Josh Harrison, director of marketing for Velan Studios, urged developers to plan for the inevitable day when online game support will end and Velan's competitive dodgeball game Knockout City, and that the best course of action is to provide private servers for players, as Velan did when it ended support for the competitive dodgeball game "City.

The Stop Killing Games campaign has had mixed success so far, Scott told PC Gamer. He has seen (presumably from the emails he has received) many complaints filed about The Crew, but is frustrated by the slow process of getting government petitions approved. None of them have yet been accepted for signatures, even though they were submitted three weeks before the campaign began.

"As it stands, we are optimistic that at least one arm of the French government will consider the legality of this practice, and if they keep their fingers crossed, there is a possibility of a French court case, and further consideration from Germany and Australia," Scott said. Anything else remains up in the air at this point."

Scott has been banging this drum for some time; in 2019, he posted a lengthy video on his YouTube channel in which he claimed that the whole "game as a service" idea is bogus and that the responsibility of developers to keep games playable after official support ends is His new video introducing the Stop Killing Games campaign has received approximately 200,000 views as of this writing.

Ubisoft declined to comment on the campaign.