Earlier this month, fan-made revival project The Crew Unlimited, brought Ubisoft’s decommissioned racer The Crew back to life in server emulated PC form. Now, its devs have put out an update outlining a couple of things they’re working on to try and take things to the next level.
This looks to be the first time the group have been able to catch their breath since releasing The Crew Unlimited on September 15th, having had to work flat out on fixes for teething issues in the immediate aftermath. Some of those problems stemmed from some players having acquired broken versions of The Crew’s game files from “shady sources”, with TCU’s devs saying they aren’t responsible for the server emulator not working in these cases.
That brings us to the ‘post-launch recap and what’s next’ post The Crew Unlimited lead Whammy put up on the project’s Patreon page late yesterday. “The reception has been quite overwhelming,” they wrote to kick off. “We’re extremely grateful for all the support we’ve received, it really means a lot to us. The amount of people who were eagerly awaiting the return of this decade old game really says a lot about how much this game means to people.”
Getting down to brass tacks, Whammy wrote that the team’s current focus is getting some more “important fixes” for their creation’s launcher and server out of the door, with the former also set for an interface rework. In the long-term, there are two larger initiatives they’ve got in the works, with one being a beefy overhaul mod and the other being a revamp of the project’s website that’ll integrate it with the game’s resurrected online multiplayer.
Starting with the mod, which the modders are collaborating with other Crew community members on, it’s “a collection of essential and lore-friendly fixes, improvements and content restorations”. The goal is to bring The Crew back “to a level of greatness it once had, while retaining all the new DLC content and features”, as The Crew Unlimited’s creators aren’t fans of the “abysmal state” Ubisoft left the racer in once its last updates rolled out. The group seem to particularly dislike the effect 2015’s Wild Run update had.
The second addition the works is dubbed “TCU Net 2.0”, and will be a revamp of The Crew Unlimited’s current website that’ll introduce a system of online features linked to the project’s in-game online experience. For instance, you’ll be able access the likes of “user profiles, scores, friends, posts, [and] rewards”. It sounds quite Rockstar Social Club-ish in principle at least, so it’ll be interesting to see if the modders can pull it off.
“As you can see, we have quite ambitious goals,” Whammy concluded. “But with enough time and your support, we believe we can achieve them.” Given the achievement that just getting their server emulator up and running likely was, it’s cool to see the team continue to aim high. The question remains as to whether The Crew Unlimited might face some lawyerly action from Ubisoft at some point, if the publisher believes it has a case, but all appears quiet on that front thus far.
