About
The Crew is a 2014 open-world racing game set in a scaled-down recreation of the continental United States, letting players drive freely coast to coast with RPG-style car progression. It was built as an always-online title with persistent shared-world multiplayer. Ubisoft delisted it in December 2023 and shut down its servers on March 31, 2024, which made the retail game unplayable because it had no offline mode. A community preservation project, The Crew Unlimited, restored offline single-player access in September 2025.
Identity
Launch
- Binary
- TheCrew.exe
- Needs files
- none beyond the binary
Proton
- Version
- GE-Proton
- Winetricks
- —
- ProtonDB
- ProtonDB Gold runs perfectly after tweaks
⚙ Setup notes
DRM: Delisted always-online Steam game (appid 241560). Ubisoft killed the servers on March 31, 2024, so the retail game alone is dead — there is no offline mode and it will not connect. Without the emulator this game cannot be launched at all.
Fix: It is only playable again through the fan-made The Crew Unlimited (TCU) server emulator (offline mode, released Sept 2025), which runs the game against a local server. With TCU the game runs on the Deck (ProtonDB gold).
Proton: Use GE-Proton. The TCU launcher needs dotnet 8.0 in the prefix (winetricks dotnet8 / dotnetdesktop8), and the game/local server communicate over port 443 on localhost.
Install: deckport only configures the prefix; it never bundles or links the game files.
The one thing to know
Supply your own copy. deckport links nothing.
DRM: Retail game is dead solo — Ubisoft shut the always-online servers on March 31, 2024 with no official offline mode. Only playable via the fan-made The Crew Unlimited (TCU) offline server emulator (Sept 2025).
Install: The community confirms it works on the Deck after a fiddly setup: install the game's latest version, install dotnet 8.0 into the prefix for the TCU launcher, and allow the local server on port 443.
Controller: This is a console racer, so gamepad is native. Community tip is to remove the arrow-key bindings from accelerate/decelerate so the Deck's left stick doesn't double-register Up/Down as throttle; a few users had to disable Steam Input to get the pad working, results vary.
NEEDS-TEST: confirm this exact GE-Proton + TCU setup on a Deck.
Community guides
Write-ups and threads from people who got this (or a similar) game running. deckport links to them — it doesn't reproduce them.
Get the artwork
deckport never hosts game images. Open this game on SteamGridDB, pick
the cover / hero / logo / icon you like, and drop them into the
game folder under .deckport-art/ before you push it to the
Deck. The importer files them under the right names automatically.
Run it on your Deck
Two files: the one-time importer (deckport.py) in your
Deck's home folder, and this game's install helper. Copy the game
into ~/Games and run the helper with Steam closed — it
writes the recipe (binary, launch options, Proton version)
and registers the shortcut with artwork.