In shutting down the first The Crew, Ubisoft received massive criticism, now part 2 is getting an important update. The racing MMO is now also playable offline.
What was the fate of The Crew? The racing game, developed by Ubisoft’s internal studio Ivory Tower, was released in 2014 and combined a fully drivable version of the USA with seamless online multiplayer. This built a large player base for The Crew, and four years later, a sequel followed.
The MMO aspect of the game world was one of The Crew’s biggest strengths – but also its biggest weakness, as it turned out later. In April 2024, Ubisoft took the servers of the game offline. Since then, The Crew has not been playable, as it never had an offline mode. This caused a major uproar.
- In the USA, Ubisoft was sued by two players who purchased The Crew as a disc version. They demanded financial compensation and damages for all those affected by the server shutdown.
- The drama surrounding The Crew was so great that a Europe-wide initiative wanted to prevent such scenarios in the future: “Stop Destroying Games” (also called “Stop Killing Games”) demands that games must always remain in a playable state.
The Crew 2 is now playable forever
What does this mean for The Crew 2? Fortunately, Ubisoft has taken precautions for the sequel. In a new update that went live on October 16, 2025, Ivory Tower added the “Hybrid Mode”.
When starting the game, you can now choose from two modes:
- The classic online mode, which remains the main experience of the game – including multiplayer features, leaderboards, competitions and community sharing.
- The new offline mode, in which you can play the game without an internet connection
However, separate save files are used for online and offline modes. Your progress from the online mode can be transferred to the offline mode, but the reverse is not the case. So, if you unlocked a vehicle while you were offline, you must get it again for your online save.
Read more about how the new hybrid mode works in the developers’ blog at www.ubisoft.com.
The Crew 2 is currently on sale on Steam: There is a discount of 90% on all editions. The Standard Edition costs only €2.99 instead of €29.99, and the Gold Edition is available for €4.99 instead of €49.99.
The same fate that befell the first The Crew will meet Anthem starting January 2026. However, fans are demanding that the developers do not lock out those who have invested money in the game. How this could work, you can find out in this article: Gamers demand some love from EA for Anthem before it disappears forever, recognizing a “dangerous” pattern for the community
