- Primary Subject: Stop Killing Games (Video Game Preservation & Server Shutdowns)
- Key Update: The European Commission and California lawmakers rejected legal bans on shutting down always-online games, leaving preservation in publishers' hands or with fan emulators.
- Status: Confirmed
- Last Verified: October 16, 2026
- Quick Answer: Always-online racing games frequently face unplayable shutdowns, prompting the Stop Killing Games campaign to push for mandatory offline patches and fan preservation efforts.
On June 16, the European Commission answered a citizens' initiative backed by 1,294,188 verified signatures by saying it "cannot propose a legal obligation to keep video games playable" once they stop being sold.
The Stop Killing Games campaign behind that initiative started with a racing game, and the genre keeps supplying it with examples.
Leaderboards and live events sit on a publisher's hardware, and in some racing games so does the save file. That means the game lasts exactly as long as somebody keeps paying to host it.
The Crew Is Why Stop Killing Games Exists
Ivory Tower's open-world racer launched on December 2, 2014, and required a constant connection to Ubisoft's servers, even when playing alone.
Ubisoft delisted it in December 2023, citing "upcoming server infrastructure and licensing constraints," and switched the servers off on March 31, 2024.
The aftermath is what turned a shutdown into a cause. Owners found The Crew moved to an inactive games list in Ubisoft Connect, with a notice saying they no longer had access. Ross Scott launched Stop Killing Games days later.
Two players sued Ubisoft in November 2024, and the refiled case produced a $2 million settlement offering class members $7 in cash or $15 in Ubisoft store credit, with Ubisoft denying wrongdoing. Final approval goes before the court on November 13.
Fans got it running again first, with The Crew Unlimited releasing a PC server emulator on September 15, 2025. Ubisoft eventually patched an offline mode into The Crew 2 in October 2025, while The Crew Motorfest is still waiting on its own.
Real Racing 3 Went Dark After Twelve Years on Phones
Firemonkeys' free-to-play racer launched in 2013 and ran until EA pulled it from the App Store and Google Play on December 18, 2025. The servers went off on March 19, 2026, and the game went with them.
I played it and enjoyed the driving, but I always measured it against the Real Racing 2 of my childhood, a game you paid for once and then simply played.
Real Racing 3 kept putting servicing timers and repair waits that only gold could skip between me and the next race, and the free price tag never felt free.
The end was visible from June 2023, when layoffs hit up to two-thirds of Firemonkeys' staff and Real Racing 4 was cancelled. EA said at the time that support would "transition to existing teams at EA."
Need for Speed World Runs Again on Community Servers
Need for Speed World was EA's free-to-play, online-only racer, launched in 2010 and never designed to exist without a server. I used to play it alongside Battlefield Heroes, another EA free-to-play game of that era.
Firing a Traffic Magnet at whoever was leading down the final straight was the kind of chaos that made it feel nothing like the mainline games.
EA shut it down on July 14, 2015, the same day it closed Battlefield Heroes. With no offline mode to fall back on, the game simply stopped existing.
It didn't stay gone. Fan-run community servers under the Soapbox Race World banner brought it back.
Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown's Publisher Is Insolvent
KT Racing's open-world racer is still getting updates, so it’s really more just at risk. Solar Crown launched on September 12, 2024, as an always-online game, and its Gold Edition early access opened a week earlier to hours of server outages.
Even the solo mode added in Season 3 needs a connection, and Nacon's Alexander Arthur has said offline play would come "likely at the end of the game's life." The risk sits in the business around it.
Nacon filed for insolvency and sought judicial reorganization on February 25, 2026. Kylotonn, which trades as KT Racing, entered insolvency proceedings in March, and Nacon confirmed job losses at the studio on May 18.
Support is confirmed through 2026, and there is no public word on what comes after.
Need for Speed (2015) Fans Are Building the Offline Mode EA Never Shipped
Ghost Games' reboot needs an internet connection even for its single-player campaign, something EA confirmed in May 2015, months before launch. Its servers are still up, and it isn't on EA's list of online service shutdowns.
The rest of the picture is shakier. EA ended Need for Speed Rivals' online services on October 7, 2025, and by July 2026 Criterion said it was focused solely on Battlefield.
No other studio has been publicly attached to the series. A franchise on ice is a bad place to be for a game that cannot boot without EA's backend.
Fans aren't waiting to find out. Afterhours 2015 is an open-source server emulator built for custom servers and offline play, and its developers report reaching free roam with the EA app closed and outside game traffic blocked.
New accounts start after the scripted prologue, and full progression and garage changes are still unfinished. It ships as source code only, so running it means building it yourself.
Gran Turismo Sport Shows How to Shut Down a Game Properly
Gran Turismo Sport launched on PS4 in 2017 with progress that could not be saved offline, so when Polyphony Digital announced the end of online services in September 2023, it was facing the same fate as The Crew.
Polyphony patched it instead. Two days before the servers closed on January 31, 2024, the studio confirmed that progression "will continue to be saved through Saved Data on the PlayStation 4 system."
Sport mode, Open Lobby, the Mileage Store, and custom liveries are gone, but the offline campaign survived. That precedent matters for Gran Turismo 7, which carries the same server dependency.
In March 2022, a faulty update left it unplayable outside arcade mode for about 30 hours, and Polyphony has made no public commitment to offline play.
GT Sport proves the studio knows how to close a game well. It doesn't promise a repeat.
The Off Switch Still Belongs to Publishers
Whether a racing game outlives its servers is still up to whoever owns them. Lawmakers had two chances to change that this year.
The European Commission declined in June, and California's Protect Our Games Act stalled in a state Senate committee at the end of that month.
Polyphony made the right call with GT Sport, and Ubisoft got there with The Crew 2 eighteen months after the original went dark. Every other always-online racer in your library is waiting to find out which kind of publisher it has.
Stay tuned to racinggames.gg: the best website for racing game coverage.