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The Crew accidentally erases player stats
Whoops: It seems as though The Crew's launch wasn't without a few speed bumps after all. Ubisoft admitted that the game's servers had been erasing or showing incomplete player statistics due to a minor issue. Before you get frightened that the game has erased your identity and progress entirely, know that the good news is that "major data" weren't affected at all and that a patch is coming to fix the problem. The Crew launched on Tuesday, December 2nd. Ubisoft refused to provide the media with review copies of the game.
Ubisoft's The Crew: Not pre-screened for critics
I used to love reading movie reviews in the local paper when I was a kid, though sometimes it puzzled me when a film was listed as "not pre-screened for critics." Generally these were B-movies that critics were prone to savaging, so the distribution companies figured they'd make more money if prospective customers didn't see Siskel and Ebert ripping a film up one side and down the other. Fast-forward 20 years and Ubisoft is doing something similar with The Crew. According to the latest company blog post, the open world MMO racer won't be given to media outlets in advance of its December 2nd release, ostensibly so that reviewers can experience the game in "optimal conditions" that include lots of other players. "The Crew was built from the beginning to be a living playground full of driving fans, so it's only possible to assess our game in its entirety with other real players in the world," the company says. "And by other, we mean thousands and thousands and thousands of players – something that can't be simulated with a handful of devs playing alongside the press." Ubisoft goes on to say that any reviews that do appear on release day will be built around media preview sessions from the title's beta phases and thus will not "reflect the finished game."
