Last week, Stop Killing Games – the consumer-driven initiative demanding games publishers leave their titles in a playable state once support is terminated – surpassed 1m signatures. But now, EU industry body Video Games Europe – which represents the likes of Ubisoft, Take-Two, Warner Bros., Riot Games, Activision Blizzard, Microsoft, and Nintendo – has weighed in, insisting the initiative’s proposals would make games “prohibitively expensive to create”.
Stop Killing Games was launched last April by Accursed Farms YouTuber Ross Scott, calling upon video game fans around the world to petition their local governments regarding the increasingly common occurrence of purchased games becoming unplayable due to publisher actions. The games preservation movement was prompted by Ubisoft’s decision to shut down open-world racer The Crew’s servers last March, preventing access to both its multiplayer and single-player content due to its always-online nature. More controversy followed shortly after, when the publisher began revoking customers’ licenses to the game, permanently removing it from their libraries and preventing hopes of resurrecting it through private servers.
After a year of campaigning and with an official deadline looming, last week finally saw Stop Killing Games’ European petition surpass the 1m signatures needed for it to be submitted to the EU for verification and then, potentially, either progress to a public hearing or full debate session at the European Parliament. However, as that milestone was reached, organiser Scott warned many of those signatures could be invalid due to mistakes or deliberate spoofing (a practice he later noted was illegal on official government petitions such as this), suggesting the real tally was likely around 600–700k genuine signatures. As such, he encouraged EU citizens to continue signing it legitimately before the deadline to ensure it passes the approval process.
Yet while the exact number of legitimate petition signatures remains unclear at present, it seems the threat of its success – and a potential parliamentary hearing – has spooked video games publishers enough to spur them into action. A statement from industry body and lobbying group Video Games Europe, which represents over 30 major publishers and national trade associations around Europe, has now been shared on its website.
“We appreciate the passion of our community,” it reads. “However, the decision to discontinue online services is multi-faceted, never taken lightly and must be an option for companies when an online experience is no longer commercially viable. We understand that it can be disappointing for players but, when it does happen, the industry ensures that players are given fair notice of the prospective changes in compliance with local consumer protection laws.”
“Private servers are not always a viable alternative option for players,” it continues, “as the protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist and would leave rights holders liable. In addition, many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create.
“We welcome the opportunity to discuss our position with policy makers and those who have led the European Citizens Initiative in the coming months.”
Stop Killing Games organiser Scott shared a brief response to Video Games Europe’s statement on social media, calling its arguments against allowing customers to keep their purchases “flimsy”. Scott added he’d provide a more lengthy video response soon.
Away from Stop Killing Games’ EU activities, the initiative’s official UK petition has now surpassed over 150K signatures. A previous government response, mandatory for any parliamentary petition that surpasses 10K signatures, said: “There are no plans to amend UK consumer law on disabling video games”. However, having now passed the 100K signatures threshold, the petition must now be considered for a debate in parliament.