The Crew, the Ubisoft street racing game that met an unfortunate end in 2024, may live again. The Crew Unlimited, a fan-made effort to revive the game through a "custom server emulator," says the work is just about complete and will be ready to launch on September 15.
The server emulator is now "feature complete," according to a message on the newly launched Crew Unlimited website (via RPS) states. "All that is left to do is to thoroughly test and validate the software, then prepare the release."
"A lot of our time and effort has been put into the project, and it's finally coming to fruition," project lead whammy4 wrote. "We are as excited as you are. Thank you all for your patience, understanding and support."
The project is a reaction to Ubisoft's 2024 decision to close The Crew's servers, rendering the game unplayable as of April 1, 2024. Making matters worse, Ubisoft began revoking game licenses shortly after the servers went offline, a big step beyond simply delisting a game that seemed intended to make double-extra-sure that nobody would be able to play the game again in the future. The Crew Unlimited project member ChemicalFlood said at the time that the team was "deeply saddened by Ubisoft's choice to start revoking licences to this game when people have paid hard-earned cash for it," but added that the project would be able to bypass that restriction without having to modify any game files, "so the project is still on track."
The Crew Unlimited will be available for download from the TCU website, but The Crew itself will not: You'll need to own the game if you want to play, although the dev team noted in an FAQ that "as long as you manage to run the game files, we have absolutely no way to tell a legit copy from a non-legit one, so we just have to let you in."
The emulator will currently only work with PC versions of the game, but the TCU team says it might be possible to implement console support in the future. Mod support will be wide open in offline modes, but only cosmetic mods will be allowed when playing online.
The bigger question hanging over all of this is how Ubisoft will respond. Projects like these tend to attract the attention of lawyers, typically followed by cease-and-desist letters, but The Crew Unlimited is in something of a unique position: Ubisoft has taken a brutal ass-beating for its handling of The Crew's shutdown, including a lawsuit and a European Citizen's Initiative petition that attracted more than one million signatures. The backlash was strong enough that Ubisoft promised not to do it again with The Crew 2 and Motorfest, and dropping the hammer on a project like this would almost certainly stoke those fires all over again. That's about the last thing Ubisoft needs right now.
On its website, The Crew Unlimited team throws a thanks to Ubisoft "for letting this game happen," but ChemicalFlood clarified with PC Gamer that no actual deal has been done: The team has never received a response from Ubisoft about the project, and a cease-and-desist order "is always a possibility."
"The mod itself doesn't change, replace, or include any existing assets from the game, the install only adds additional files to the game directory which we have created from scratch," ChemicalFlood explained. "We also do not provide any original game files across our official TCU Sources.
"We obviously cannot say for certain what will happen. What we can say however is that annoying anybody, causing tension or legal issues, has never been our goal. The download of the mod is free of charge and always will be as this is a labour of love. We want nothing more but the success of preservation, for not only The Crew but every other current live service game that may reach this impasse."
