It featured a persistent open world environment for free-roaming across a scaled-down recreation of the contiguous United States and included both role-playing and large-scale multiplayer elements.

The second expansion, entitled The Crew: Calling All Units, was announced at Gamescom 2016 and released on November 29, 2016.

The Crew was a racing game set in a persistent open world environment for free-roaming across a scaled-down recreation of the contiguous United States.

Six main cities (one in each region, two in the Midwest) were featured in the game: Detroit and Chicago in the Midwest, New York City on the East Coast, Miami in The South, Las Vegas in the Mountain States, and Los Angeles on the West Coast.

[6] The Single-player campaign was up to 20 hours long,[7] and entailed infiltrating criminal groups with protagonist Alex Taylor (Troy Baker).

They were triggered by driving through them and included objectives such as weaving through gates and staying as close to a racing line as possible for a period of time.

[9][10] The story begins with player character Alex Taylor (Troy Baker) pursued by local law enforcement near Detroit.

After losing the cops, he finds a car loaned to him by his friend and father figure, Harry (Charles Parnell).

Harry explains to him that Alex's older brother and the founder of the 5-10 motor club, Dayton (Travis Willingham), wants to speak to him.

Dayton succumbs to his wound, while Alex is charged and later convicted of murder by FBI Special Agent Bill Coburn (D.C. Douglas).

Five years later, Alex, now in prison, encounters FBI Agent Zoe Winters (Amy Rosoff), who informs him that he will be temporarily released if he agrees to cooperate with the FBI in exposing Coburn's corruption, and finding the truth behind Dayton's murder, which has been committed by the new leader of the 5-10s, Dennis “Shiv” Jefferson (Jason Spisak).

After getting released from prison, Alex accepts his first mission to help the Detroit 5-10 lieutenant Troy (Joel Steingold).

Alex is sent to New York City soon after to help a V6 and Shiv's childhood friend, Eric Tsu (Vic Chao).

After winning a race against her crew, and later Alita herself, Alex is tasked with claiming The South from Cameron “Cam” Rockport, who has been killing various 5-10s to stay in power.

In Las Vegas, Alex meets Roxanne (Tonantzin Carmelo), a technology whiz whose missing sister, Daria, joined the 5-10s.

After several missions, including one revealing that Daria had been killed by Shiv sometime before, Zoe finds out that Coburn is selling impounded contraband.

Alex proceeds to chase Coburn across Las Vegas, and eventually Zoe arrests the corrupt FBI agent for a slew of charges, including his involvement in Dayton's murder.

Alex goes to Los Angeles and meets Vincent (John Paul Pitoc), a former pro racer.

[11] The Crew used Dunia as its video game engine modified with Ubisoft Ivory Tower's proprietary tools.

The beta allowed players to play a portion of the story-driven missions in the Midwest and East Coast and free roam the entire United States of America at their own pace.

[22] Simultaneously with the DLC release, the game received a mandatory free update for all players.

In Calling All Units, the player had the ability to play as a police officer, tasked with arresting street racers and smugglers.

The expansion introduced a great number of police equipments as well as various types of cars for this purpose, in addition to more vehicles.

In early April 2024, days after the shutdown, Ubisoft began revoking licenses from players who have bought The Crew without providing refunds or any way to download the game files.

[34] On November 4, 2024, two Californians—Matthew Cassell and Alan Liu, who respectively purchased physical copies of the game from GameStop stores in early 2020 and November 2018—filed a class action lawsuit against Ubisoft in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California.

[41][44] Mike Channell from Eurogamer gave the game an 8/10, praising its rich content, worthy side-missions and activities, enormous driveable space, successful blend between the story and the multiplayer, huge variety of scenery and rewarding and entertaining co-operative gameplay, but criticizing its poor story and lead character, "outrageous" AI, as well as the inclusion of microtransactions.

He stated that "Despite delivering an impressive playground, The Crew struggles to build out a worthwhile game experience around it.

"[51] Despite the mixed reviews, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences nominated The Crew for "Racing Game of the Year" during the 18th Annual D.I.C.E.

[63] Unlike the two previous The Crew games, Motorfest is set in scaled-down recreations of the Hawaiian Islands of Oʻahu and Maui.