The Crew Motorfest arrives on Steam in April, weeks after The Crew 1 turns off
A ten-year rental
On March 31st, Ubisoft's open world racing game The Crew will be turned off for good. As of right now, no one can buy the ten-year-old racer, but come the end of the month, even those that did buy it will no longer be able to play it.
On April 18th, The Crew Motorfest will arrive on Steam after several months available via the Epic Games Store and Ubisoft's own launcher, providing a new venue to buy the third entry in the series. Or perhaps that should be "rent".
The Steam store page for Motorfest appeared today, with the April 18th release date. There are standard, deluxe, gold and ultimate editions, with the latter two including a Year 1 Pass of additional content. Assuming the pricing is the same as for the Epic release, the standard edition will cost £60 and the ultimate edition will cost £100.
Perhaps if you pay them £110 there's a 'Year 10 Pass' that will stop them taking it away from you again a decade from now.
"Decommissioning a game, and especially our first one, is not something we take lightly," wrote Ubisoft Ivory Tower when announcing the switch-off last year. They said the move had become a "necessity" due to "upcoming server infrastructure and licensing constraints."
It is sadly not uncommon for racing games to disappear into the ether. My beloved OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast is no longer purchasable due to an expired Ferrari license, for example, nor are Forza Horizons 1 and 2, which were delisted from sale in 2018 and had their servers switched off in 2023.
On the other hand, the Forza Horizons remain playable in offline mode to those who bought them previously, and OutRun 2006 didn't self-destruct if you owned a physical copy. It sucks by an order of magnitude more that The Crew 1 will be rendered completely unplayable - no offline, no singleplayer, nothing. I think it sucks no matter how few people are trying to play it today.
So, yeah, The Crew Motorfest is coming to a new store next month. Apparently it's pretty good! Enjoy it while it lasts.