The Crew has clocked up 30 million players since the franchise first launched back in 2014.

The milestone was announced as part of last night's Ubisoft Forward presentation (you can catch up now courtesy of Martin's excellent on-the-night liveblogging right here).

"This year has been an incredibly intense one for The Crew 2 and everybody at Ivory Tower," the team explains on the official website. "We managed to deliver an update every four months, as well as a new episode every two months. Our teams have successfully shipped all the content we promised a year ago."

Read more

Ubisoft's first free update for The Crew 2, known as Gator Rush, is now live on Xbox One, PS4, and PC. And to celebrate, the open-world multi-vehicle racing game is free to play on PC for the duration of this weekend.

As previously announced, Gator Rush's additions are predominantly themed around The Crew 2's new hovercraft racing discipline. There are five hovercraft to purchase using in-game credits, 20 new activities on the map - including new Hypercar, Touring Car, and Jetsprint events - plus a new Ace difficulty mode and the Legendary part rarity.

All that, of course, comes on top of The Crew 2's core launch content, which spiced up its predecessor's racing template by adding new water- and air-based vehicles to the original line-up of more traditional two- and four-wheeled racers.

Read more…

Ubisoft has shared a new gameplay trailer showcasing The Crew 2's forthcoming Gator Rush mode, which is now confirmed to arrive on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 in a free update on September 26th.

The vast majority of Gator Rush's additions are themed around the hovercraft, a brand-new racing discipline for The Crew 2. According to Ubisoft's announcement blog, hovercrafting "has taken over the entire US, transforming some of the most iconic places into dedicated competition spots, from the lush and muggy Bayous to the crystal-clear waters of the Western lakes". You can see some of the new hovercraft action in the trailer below.

Gator Rush also introduces a total of five new vehicles to The Crew 2. Three hovercraft - the Bumblebeex, Double L-EEX, and Speedster - will be available to purchase using in-game credits on launch day. An additional hovercraft, the XK Armored, and the new Ariel Nomad Rally Raid off-road car also arrive on September 26th, but will initially only be available to season pass holders. That exclusivity only lasts seven days, however, and all players can access both vehicles from October 3rd.

Read more…

It's launch morning for The Crew 2, and I've logged in to do a final network test. The always-online racing game's predecessor had serious network issues on release, so I want to see if the new game is holding up. It's been stable playing with early access players this week, but would the influx of new people cause problems? So far, all is well (unless you're on Steam.) Players are popping up nearby, rather than halfway across the map as they have done during the sparsely populated early access period. They crawl their Lamborghinis up to my stationary 1993 Porsche and rev in wordless invitation to a drag race. They don't need to ask twice and we roar off up the Pacific coast road out of Malibu.

It's a fun moment, but then we just peel off and go our separate ways, because there is hardly anything for us to do together in this game.

The Crew was a scrappy but ultimately lovable open-world racing game with unrealised massively multiplayer aspirations. It was made by Lyon studio Ivory Tower, itself formed by veterans of Eden Studios, makers of the Test Drive Unlimited games, which were scrappy but ultimately lovable open-world racing games with unrealised massively multiplayer aspirations. Things have changed, a little: The Crew 2 doesn't feel so scrappy. It is almost polished (though my PS4 version crashed three times during review). But those aspirations are still unrealised, and the game is underdeveloped in other areas than its network code and bug fixes. There's a sense that it will be much better in six months to a year's time than it is at launch - just like The Crew was. Plus a change.

Read more…

UPDATE: And it's fixed - Ubisoft has worked with Valve to get The Crew 2 back up and running on PC, and supplied us with the following statement: The Steam key activation issue should now be resolved, and affected players should be able to launch the game. A Steam restart might be necessary. Thank you for your patience.

ORIGINAL STORY: The Crew 2, Ubisoft's massively ambitious and absolutely massive open world racing game, has just launched today - although players who've bought the game on Steam are currently locked out.

RPS spotted the issue earlier, with the slightly cumbersome pairing of Steam and Ubisoft's own uPlay store seemingly the source of the problems as players are told they need an activation key that hasn't been released just yet - and it seems like the issue won't be addressed until Valve itself gets to it, with a member of the Ubisoft team taking to Reddit with a brief update. We've contacted Ubisoft to see if there's a timeline on when the issue will be resolved, and they provided us with the following statement: We're aware of an issue where some players are not able to access their Steam preorder of The Crew 2. We are working together with Steam to resolve this issue as soon as possible and we'll continue to keep you updated here regarding the fix.

Read more…