It’s an interesting debate, so I’ll start with the counter argument.

It’s not reasonable to expect game studios to keep paying for multiplayer servers and services forever. Eventually, not enough people are buying the game to warrant continued maintenance.

Multiplayer and online services aside for one moment, racing games need licences. Licenses for tracks and licenses for cars. As you’ll know if you listen to the Traxion.gg podcast (available wherever you get your podcasts from), licenses aren’t cheap or simple to acquire.

It stands to reason therefore that if a game has a natural shelf-life, sales will taper and licenses will expire, there is no good reason for a game studio to keep paying for life support for the 40 or 50 people who want to keep playing it.

I was alerted to this US-based movement by an article on the BBC’s website - of all places!

The march for justice was stepped off by YouTuber Ross Scott, aka Accursed Farms, and it was triggered by a game from our neck of the woods - The Crew.

Predictably, the studio announced the game’s demise by citing "upcoming server infrastructure and licensing constraints". I.e. they can’t keep paying for servers and there’s no commercial reason to renew the licenses.

Unperturbed, Scott, lobbied a petition to the European Commission that harvested 1.3 million signatures. The EU Commission will be reviewing the case and must respond by 27th July. I will of course cover their response in this newsletter.

It stands to reason that Ubisoft, publishers of The Crew, cannot expect the gaming community to accept that after purchasing the title and possibly its DLCs, they can simply deactivate the game - delete it entirely from existence.

You could understand if they were required to delist it, no longer sell it, but still allow those who have purchased it to keep playing. Yet, The Crew always required an online connection, even to play the single player campaign.

Well, looking into my crystal ball, I predict the following:

It feels right. It looks right. But it's costing you time.

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If you’ve ever read a Traxion.gg article, you’ll know that the writers over here all have very distinct voices and opinions. It’s this character and sound that I think makes Traxion special.

Human creation is becoming a rare commodity with which the media seem to trade less and less. But not at Traxion. We don’t use AI to write our articles on the website, and I pledge to you, that I will never use AI to write this newsletter.