Seven months after the initial launch, all four The Crew Motorfest versions and a 5-hour demo arrived on Steam on April 18. Until May 2, you'll find it at a 50% discount. Ubisoft's open-world arcade racing game is great; there's no doubt about it. So why are people "review bombing" the game and giving it a 51% Mixed Score?
A 51% review score on Steam resembles a car with a one-star safety rating. You simply don't have the proper incentive to buy one because it's not what you would want from a product. Autoevolution gave it a well-deserved 85/100 rating and said, "The Crew Motorfest is a bullseye for those looking for a casual racing experience."
So how does such a good game come under review assault shortly after appearing on a digital storefront like Steam, especially when many players have been eagerly awaiting this? Well, it doesn't seem to have much to do with Motorfest itself, but it's related to Ubisoft pulling the plug on 2014's The Crew.
When the clock struck midnight after March 31, The Crew's servers got shut down for good with no possibility of a revival story. The Crew 2 still functions as intended, but people lost access to the game's first iteration, no matter how much money they invested. You can imagine this didn't bode well at all with the gaming community.
Not long ago, Ubisoft said gamers should start getting comfortable with not owning their games, albeit the context was entirely different. During an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Philippe Tremblay, director of subscriptions at Ubisoft, talked about the revamped Ubisoft+ subscription model and how gamer behavior changed since these services started appearing on the market.
Photo: autoevolution
Because of this, Tremblay said, "it's about feeling comfortable with not owning your game." However, right before that, he also said, "As gamers grow comfortable in that aspect… you don't lose your progress. If you resume your game at another time, your progress file is still there. That's not been deleted. You don't lose what you've built in the game or your engagement with the game."
The subscription model adoption rate on the market has been impressive, which stays true, but the part with player progress not being deleted is not entirely true regarding the online-only The Crew.
At least you can import your vehicle list from The Crew 2 at any time to Motorfest, so maybe that's how Ubisoft thought of future-proofing their Games as a Service lineup. Meanwhile, people are hard at work signing petitions on StopKillingGames.com and leaving negative reviews on the game's Steam page.
Users have left comments like "Ubisoft: Gamers need to get comfortable not owning their games. Ubisoft needs to get comfortable with piracy." Some said, "When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty," or "Honest review: Game okay, Ubisoft bad," while others simply left a link to the Horizon 5 Steam page, which is actually funny.
Codrin just loves American classics, from the 1940s and ‘50s, all the way to the muscle cars of the '60s and '70s. In his perfect world, we'll still see Hudsons and Road Runners roaming the streets for years to come (even in EV form, if that's what it takes to keep the aesthetic alive). Full profile
Would you like AUTOEVOLUTION to send you notifications?
Google News