If you are out of the loop, this may not make a lot of sense to you – so allow me to recap.
“Stop Killing Games” is a consumer movement that aims to challenge the legality of publishers ‘destroying’ games that have been sold to customers. The idea is that publishers and developers shouldn’t really have the capacity to just ‘unplug’ their product and leave paying customers with nothing to show for their initial purchase. The whole case of ‘you will own nothing, and you will be happy’ made gloriously real and dystopic.
Remember that whole The Crew debacle from 2024? Where Ubisoft casually announced that the game was going to entirely die and that it was a case of “too bad, so sad” for people who owned it? Well that was a big catalyst for many to openly ask “Yo what the fuck” and it snowballed into this kind of thing, with a player-driven movement to argue that it really shouldn’t be acceptable. Digital obsolescence kinda sucks no matter how you slice it.
Of course, the story of The Crew had a somewhat happy ending, with public pressure leading to Ubisoft announcing that it will be adding offline modes to The Crew Motorfest and The Crew 2. But that is a drop in the bucket of a much larger gaming industry, with many many games all depending on some kind of live service architecture that means the product could die at a moments notice.
So, people decided to appeal to the legal side of things – and get something in legal writing that essentially dictates that gaming companies should be required to ‘implement an end-of-life plan to modify or patch the game so that it can run on customer systems with no further support from the company being necessary’.
In other words, when they are ‘done’ with it, you should still be able to play it.
The little car game that defied digital death
On the Stop Killing Games website, there is an FAQ that breaks down a few facets of this movement that are worth sharing here:
- Q. How are publishers ‘destroying’ videogames?
- A: An increasing number of videogames are designed to rely on a server the publisher controls in order for the game to function. This acts as a lifeline to the game. When the publisher decides to turn this off, it is essentially cutting off life support to the game, making it completely inoperable for all customers. Companies that do this often intentionally prevent people from ‘repairing’ the game also by withholding vital components. When this happens, the game is ‘destroyed’, because no one can ever operate it again.
- Q. Why should people care about publishers destroying videogames?
- A: While videogames are primarily just for entertainment and not of much consequence, the practice of a seller destroying a product someone has already paid for represents a radical assault on consumer rights and even the concept of ownership itself. If this practice does not stop, it may be codified into law and spread to other products of more importance over time, such as agricultural equipment, educational products, medical devices, etc. It is important consumers maintain a basic level of rights so as to not be overrun by predatory practices. Additionally, videogames are unique creative works. The concept of destroying every existing copy of a book, song, film, etc. would be considered a cultural loss for society. While a less recognized medium, videogames still deserve to have basic protections against the complete and willful destruction of many of its works.
- Q. Aren’t you asking companies to support games forever? Isn’t that unrealistic?
- A: No, we are not asking that at all. We are in favor of publishers ending support for a game whenever they choose. What we are asking for is that they implement an end-of-life plan to modify or patch the game so that it can run on customer systems with no further support from the company being necessary. We agree that it is unrealistic to expect companies to support games indefinitely and do not advocate for that in any way.
There are more clarifying statements, but the general message is simple – publishers and the like should have a plan for what they will do when the game reaches end of life, and the plan shouldn’t be switching off the lights and ignoring customers.
The plan is to reach out to consumer-friendly bodies that could consider ratifying some words that make this a reality. In this case, the organisers are pushing a European-housed petition that will result in the parliamentary body reviewing the case, and deciding if the current situation serves a consumers best interests.
Why Europe? Simply: they take petitions seriously, if they reach enough signatures. The idea is that if something is coded into law from the European perspective, it will flow on to the rest of the world. This has happened before – for example, while not coming from Europe specifically, those Steam refund windows that you enjoy so much? They came about from the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission making a point that not allowing refunds was actually pretty illegal:
In March 2016, the Court found that Valve had breached the Australian Consumer Law by making false or misleading representations to consumers in relation to its online gaming platform, Steam.
The Court held that the terms and conditions in the Steam subscriber agreements, and Steam’s refund policies, included false or misleading representations about consumers’ rights to obtain a refund for games if they were not of acceptable quality.
Go Aussie. Our little sunburnt country made game purchasing a whole lot better for everyone.
That brings us to the now, where the petition (after experiencing numerous stalls due to some gross misrepresentation of the movement by some arrogant online personalities) has managed to hit a few milestones, including the UK Government and Parliament petition hitting 143,922 signatures out of a required 100,000, meaning the UK parliament will now consider this for a debate. If successful, that could mean plans to amend UK consumer law on disabling video games. That’s good.
The other big milestone, and this is a hearty one – the European Citizens’ Initiative petition hit 1,054,434 signatures towards a 1,000,000 signature goal. Hitting this number would mean that new law will be considered to be brought before Parliament for debate to prohibit publishers from destroying video games that customers have already paid for. While the UK looking into this would be great, having the entirety of Europe considering change would be even gooder.
While this is great, the spokesperson for Stop Killing Games, Ross Scott, acknowledged that there will be a lot of redundancy within the European Citizens’ Initiative signatures – with as many as 20% of them either being spoofed, or filled out incorrectly. He is confident that the vast majority of these names are legit – using metrics such as sign time, and spikes that coincide with online media coverage of the initiative – and so remains pretty positive.
Update: Never mind the above, as of today (07/07/2025) the total amount of signatures for the The European Citizens’ Initiative now number 1,216,975, which is well beyond the threshold of safety – and the petition is still gaining more day by day.
Knockout City was an online-only game amended to exist after the servers shut down
So in summary – the movement has got some real legs. We are getting there.
As an Australian, you can’t directly sign the petition as it pertains exclusively to EU citizens, but you can still champion the cause by doing your reading and educating those who have been misled to think it is a waste of time.
As it currently stands, things are looking well enough for the relevant eyes to behold the cause and ask the relevant questions. Is it acceptable that people are only purchasing limited access to a product? Is it acceptable that the parties offering this access have no recourse when disabling that access? These are questions that deserve better answers.
So keep an eye on Stop Killing Games, and let your EU mates know that they are on the frontline of perhaps making digital ownership a little less shit. If you are a fan of digital game preservation, initiatives like this will do a lot to make that a great deal easier.
