Buying a digital video game doesn’t mean owning it: Ubisoft demonstrates this with The Crew

In recent days Ubisoft has permanently closed the servers of The Crewthe first chapter of the racing franchise that challenged giants of the caliber of Need for Speed. However, Ubisoft has also completely removed the game from digital stores and Ubisoft Connect users have seen the title removed from their library.

Naturally, this last maneuver has sparked quite a bit of controversy among the players, some of whom called Ubisoft’s actions amounting to theft.

As questionable as Ubisoft’s move may seem, it actually delivers an already tried and tested system put into practice for several years by all the major publishers. In fact, when you buy a video game, you do not acquire ownership of a finished product, but a license to use it. Simply put, we don’t buy the video game, but only the possibility of using it as long as it is available.

The Crew represents a title completely online, so continuing to use it without active servers is practically impossible. This does not mean, however, that the purchase of a digital asset is extremely volatile and although you may think you own something, in reality you own nothing other than a permit, an authorization constantly at risk of revocation as in the case of The Crew.

However Philippe Tremblayhead of subscription services at Ubisoft, was quite clear on the topic during an interview with GameIndustry: players will have to get used to the idea of “don’t own your own games”.

Treblay compared video game collections to CD and DVD collectionsnow completely replaced by subscription services such as Spotify And Netflix. However, there are some differences: CDs and DVDs, unless the optical medium is damaged, can continue to be used indefinitely and without any limitation following their purchase. It is no coincidence that, although the market has shrunk, the purchase of the physical format for music and films has never died.

Video games represent a different medium, highly subject to technological advancement. In summary, unlike music and films, they tend towards obsolescence. For this reason, it is difficult to understand whether users will continue to be willing to pay in full for a product that will never belong to them, even though this has been the case for some time, especially with always online titles. Posterity will judge.