Ubisoft’s own shareholders have directly challenged the publisher to respond to the huge swell of support behind Stop Killing Games – a consumer movement generated by Ubisoft’s decision to take The Crew offline last year.
Stop Killing Games was launched last April by Accursed Farms YouTuber Ross Scott, calling upon video game fans around the world to petition their local governments regarding the increasingly common occurrence of purchased games becoming unplayable due to publisher actions.
The games preservation movement was motivated by Ubisoft’s decision to shut down open-world racer The Crew’s servers last March, preventing access to both its multiplayer and single-player content due to its always-online nature. More controversy followed shortly after, when the publisher began revoking customers’ licenses to the game, permanently removing it from their libraries and preventing hopes of resurrecting it through private servers.