Ten years after its release, Ubisoft closed The Crew’s servers in March last year. Because the open-world racer always requires an online connection, taking the servers offline rendered it unplayable, even if you have a physical disc. Boot the game up now, and you won’t get past the main menu.
With no offline patch released, the move was met with backlash, prompting angry fans suing Ubisoft. It also resparked debate about game preservation, leading to the Stop Killing Games campaign.
Meanwhile, a passionate group of fans has been working on reviving the game with a fan-made mod dubbed The Crew Unlimited. Instead of removing the online requirement, the mod emulates the servers to make the open-world racer playable again.
Over a year and a half later, the project’s leader, whammy4, has announced that The Crew Unlimited’s 1.0 release is set to launch on 15th September.
Since it’s a third-party mod, The Crew Unlimited is not supported by Ubisoft. To install the mod, you’ll need to own The Crew already and download the server emulator when it goes live on The Crew Unlimited website.
Once downloaded, The Crew will be playable both online and offline, allowing players to access the single-player campaign and online multiplayer once again. The only downside is that original save files won’t work unless you used the team’s save dumper tool before the server shutdown.
The project began days after Ubisoft announced the server shutdown. But creating a custom server emulator was “far from a simple task”, according to the modding team.
“We were trying everything we could, anything to preserve the game. We eventually came to the conclusion that writing a Server Emulator for The Crew was the best and only solution,” The Crew Unlimited’s website reads.
“This would allow us to effectively implement both an Offline Mode and an Online Mode back into the game, Offline Mode simply being a local server running on your computer while playing the game.
“Besides The Crew players being devastated by the news, the greater gaming community was hit hard. Never before has there been such a high-profile AAA video game shutdown, with no offline mode, server binaries or source code released, leaving the game completely for dead. This was setting an extremely alarming precedent for AAA video games.”
For now, The Crew Unlimited will only work on PC, but the team is investigating solutions for consoles. Footage released last year shows The Crew in a playable state with the server emulator mod.
Released in 2014, The Crew was an ambitious open-world racing game with MMO elements, co-developed by former Test Drive Unlimited developers at Ivory Tower and Ubisoft Reflections. Over ten years on, its scale remains unmatched, with a gigantic 1,900 square mile map set in the US to explore.
Thankfully, The Crew’s sequels won’t suffer the same fate. Ubisoft announced that The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest will receive offline patches. The Crew 2 will be playable offline first, with a ‘hybrid’ mode planned by the end of 2025, allowing players to switch between online and offline play.
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