The Crew Unlimited (or "TCU" for short) is a community project that revives the online-only MMO CaRPG video game The Crew, developed by Ivory Tower and published by Ubisoft in 2014.

(The TCU Project is not affiliated with Ubisoft or Ivory Tower in any way)

TCU started as a simple online community and home for The Crew 1 players on March 2023, however, certain significant events have transpired since then that made TCU grow into something much bigger.

Let us take you on a little history tour...

The year 2006 saw the release of Test Drive Unlimited, a revolutionary open-world driving game set on the island of Oahu. The game features a wide selection of various cars to buy, races to win, and even properties to own, but most importantly - Test Drive Unlimited features a gigantic map of 618 miles² to drive on and explore. That was an incredible video game map size back then, and it's still very impressive now.

The lead developers of TDU wanted to go even bigger. They formed their own studio called "Ivory Tower" in 2007, and started conceptualizing a spiritual successor to TDU right away. The game would once again be an open-world driving game with MMO elements, this time taking place across the entire North US.

The project was codenamed "Road 66". After Ivory Tower found their publisher, they got to work (with Ubisoft Reflections as co-developers).

Some 6 hard-working years later, "The Crew" releases... to a somewhat lukewarm reception, only to become beloved nearly a decade later, after gamers realized what they've lost.

The Crew is a huge multiplayer open-world driving game with MMO elements, set across the entire North US, this time with a map size of 1900 miles², a car list of few hundred cars, an impressively in-depth and epic car customization system that still gives NFS a run for it's money, an entire cinematic action story campaign that takes you across the entire North US (also fully playable in co-op), city streets full of life and pedestrians, countrysides full of rich nature and animals; there has never existed a car game as rich and large in it's content and world as The Crew.
And to top it all off, the game's art and visuals were carefully handcrafted by a team of talented and passionate artists that designed the game to look like a beautiful moving dynamic painting; nothing that has ever been seen before or after in AAA gaming.

Unfortunately, because The Crew was so different, and because of it's marketing presenting it as a racing game competitor to NFS and Forza, it was misunderstood. What you're looking for in racing games, you may not find in driving games, and vice versa.

Despite the mixed critical reception, The Crew was a massive success, with it selling 5 million copies in it's first year, and eventually spawning multiple sequels. Additionally, The Crew was given away for free on Ubisoft's UPlay platform (now known as Ubisoft Connect) for free twice in 2016.
By around 2020, the game had over 12 million players total.

The Crew was supported for 2 years after it's launch, the game received 2 expansions each year: "Wild Run" in 2015, and "Calling All Units" in 2016. The Crew was effectively abandoned in 2017.
The Crew 2 came out next year in 2018, and sealed the original game's fate.

This happens with games all the time, a sequel comes out, the previous is left behind... So what's the problem?

The Crew was designed to be an ONLINE-ONLY game, and no action to preserve the game was taken.

Because of The Crew's online-only nature and reliance on the publisher's central servers to function, once they were shut down on March 31st 2024, The Crew became inaccessible and completely unplayable worldwide; no one was able to get past the start screen. This even applies to owners of physical copies of the game.

Some online-only video games get offline modes or server binaries released before or after their shutdown.
The Crew is not one of those games.

Let's rewind a few months back. We were still playing The Crew as usual, we have been for several years. The servers were still active, the playerbase was still active and dedicated (Note: Steam player counts only represent a tiny fraction of all active players, and on PC only).

On December 14th 2023, Ubisoft has, with no prior warning, taken The Crew off all digital store shelves, then only hours later posted an announcement on their website about the shutdown of The Crew's servers. The scheduled shutdown date was March 31st, 2024. We had 3 months left to play The Crew.

We had to do something.

Besides The Crew players being devastated by the news, the greater gaming community was hit hard. Never before has there been such a high-profile AAA video game shutdown, with no offline mode, server binaries or source code released, leaving the game completely for dead. This was setting an extremely alarming precedent for AAA video games.

Meanwhile, within mere days after the shutdown announcement, a team of specialists was swiftly formed - known as The TCU Team.

We were trying everything we could, anything to preserve the game. We eventually came to the conclusion that writing a Server Emulator for The Crew was the best and only solution. This would allow us to effectively implement both an Offline Mode and an Online Mode back into the game, Offline Mode simply being a local server running on your computer while playing the game.
Your local server, your local savegames, your game. No one will ever be able to take this away from you now.

The TCU Team has been hard at work writing a custom server emulator ever since the game has officially shut down, which is far, far from a simple task.

At the moment of writing this, after a year and half of development, we are mere weeks away from the 1.0 offline release.

What happens next?

Stay tuned.

‣ whammy4: Project Lead, Server Emulator Programmer, TCULauncher Developer, Website Developer, Community Management, Project Graphic Design.
‣ r00t0: Server Emulator Programmer. (Started the emulator development and made it possible, couldn't have done it without him!)
‣ ChemicalFlood: Server Hosting, Archivist, Community Management, Network Support.
‣ Guki: The Crew Data and File Expert, Technical Help.
‣ mono24: Project Advisor, Archivist.

‣ Johnstero
‣ MrSmonk
‣ ChemicalFlood

‣ FTIW: Technical Help with server emulator and The Crew data & files, Beta Tester, Packet Logging
‣ 0xC0000005: Early Reversing Help
‣ AgentDark447: Networking Reversing Help
‣ Aibot: Early Networking Documentation Help
‣ halvors: Early Networking Reversing Help
‣ detanup: Early Networking Reversing Help
‣ midou: Networking Help
‣ Daniel Roster: Beta Tester, Networking Help
‣ BlackPanthaa: Significant Supporter
‣ Black Lotus: Significant Supporter, Packet Logging
‣ Aaron (king.kamina): Significant Supporter, Packet Logging
‣ JackFoxtrot: Supporter
‣ Johnstero: Community Moderator, Beta Tester
‣ MrSmonk: Community Moderator, Beta Tester
‣ Laggywan: Beta Tester, Packet Logging
‣ difiuinfinite: Supporter, Beta Tester
‣ Troll486: Beta Tester
‣ NumberZeroOneSixSeven: Beta Tester
‣ modeewy9: Beta Tester
‣ Ale: Beta Tester
‣ BD622: Beta Tester
‣ Cobra: Beta Tester
‣ Ekey: Beta Tester
‣ kilésengati: Beta Tester
‣ mrlerien: Beta Tester
‣ KekAnTing: Beta Tester
‣ Lobotomirov: Beta Tester
‣ Spidi: Beta Tester
‣ Unique: Beta Tester
‣ WHEELMAN_IS_BACK: Packet Logging
‣ JMTIGRE: Packet Logging
‣ yqrek: Packet Logging
‣ cloinmaster: Packet Logging
‣ viro7921: Packet Logging
‣ Tacsesz: Packet Logging
‣ Derd: Packet Logging
‣ ThzeDuck: Packet Logging
‣ Pob: Packet Logging
‣ Alexandro_Ursu: Packet Logging
‣ penguinpupil: Packet Logging
‣ Aeralise: Packet Logging
‣ Leeroooooy Jenkins: Packet Logging
‣ ketr4x: Packet Logging
‣ djandus: Packet Logging
‣ Darkvapour: Packet Logging
‣ Stigums: Packet Logging
‣ Mortimer: Packet Logging
‣ Awesome sniper: Packet Logging
‣ discussor: Packet Logging
‣ JakeMG: Packet Logging
‣ Jazative: Packet Logging
‣ matus570: Packet Logging
‣ The Longest Rose: Packet Logging
‣ olokos: Packet Logging
‣ ertugd2: Packet Logging
‣ aerratic: Packet Logging
‣ CeipPupFox: Packet Logging
‣ Protect and Serve: Packet Logging

‣ Ross (Accursed Farms)
‣ Stop Killing Games Organizers
‣ CraptasticJack
‣ Game Revo
‣ BlackPanthaa
‣ The Crew Community (TCC)
‣ SidWaj
‣ Fastminer07
‣ Founding Fathers of Ivory Tower
‣ Past, present and future Ivory Tower Developers that support us
‣ Ubisoft, for letting this game happen