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Wasn't this an online-only game that was already being shut down? What good is a license if there's no way to play?
People have already started trying to bring it back online. That's why they're revoking it.
Is this game available on PC? I thought you couldn't kill an online game on PC because the servers work in a different way.
I have it through Steam, but it just forwards me to Ubisoft Connect, their own game launcher. Since their game servers are shut down, they're just not letting it load through their launcher.
Nope. Usually these games share servers across all platforms. That's how a lot of games get crossplay. Sometimes shit gets fucked up and people can accidentally crossplay.
Wouldn't that require modifying the game in some way to function? At that point, it's already an EULA-violating action which a publisher would normally revoke a license over, anyway. So why not just use pirated/cracked copies if the community's going to go the route of hosting their own network, anyway?
I'm not familiar with The Crew or its community, so I'm just not understanding what practical difference this makes for anybody still trying to play the game at this post-shutdown time.
Not necessarily. For a game like this that only functions online, you could presumably determine all the possible server calls and point them to a server you own. You could do this purely via clever network settings without modifying the game at all. If you could do that, the game would run fine and you could even use the original authentication server to ensure the user holds a valid license.
At that point, you "just" need to implement and run a server for the game. This also doesn't involve modifying the game, but could run afoul of potential laws against reverse engineering if not done in a clean room manner (I'm not a lawyer so there could be other things too since unfortunately US law tends to not favor the end user).
Regardless of any of that, it always feels silly to me when companies fight tooth-and-nail against people not only performing free work and hosting for a dead game but ALSO trying to ensure people actually own the game before playing on their private server. Of course they could just use 🏴☠️ versions and black-hole the authentication server. All the company does by withdrawing licenses is ensure they have to skip authentication so the company loses out.
An analogue would be: petrol stations stop being a thing as the world transitions to electric/hydrogen/whatever cars. You start working on a way to modify your car in some way to account for this - perhaps you plan on making your own biofuel, or manually converting it to a electric/hydrogen/whatever car. The manufacturer of your car hears about this, comes along to your house and repossesses your car and takes it to be crushed, despite it being something you own and that they should have no say in any more.
self-hostable servers and less reliance on superfluous online features.