The Stop Killing Games campaign is gaining momentum overseas, with organizers closing in on verifying enough signatures to allow them to go before the European Commission.
“Stop Killing Games is a consumer movement started to challenge the legality of publishers destroying video games they have sold to customers,” the movement’s site reads.
Supporters effectively want to force game companies to provide a way to play games indefinitely, even when they’ve been shut down. That doesn’t mean companies have to pay to keep servers up forever, but they should have a way for gamers who have purchased it to continue playing, regardless of what the companies themselves do with the property.
It emerged last year after Ubisoft announced it was ending support for an online game called The Crew. YouTuber and gamer Ross Scott started Stop Killing Games shortly after, arguing that it was “an obvious assault on consumer rights.”
In the US, the FTC is unlikely to take up the issue; however, the EU has a European Citizens’ Initiative, which allows citizens to lobby the European Commission to propose new laws. Organizers need to get at least 1 million verified signatures from EU residents who support their cause. Stop Killing Games has almost 1.5 million signatures and is now powering through the verification process.
Users of the Stop Killing Games subreddit have been keeping track of the verification process and found that “Out of 1,448,270 signatures, 689,035 are already verified, and 15 countries have met their thresholds.” Germany and France still haven’t met their thresholds, but based on the current progress and a Nov. 8 deadline, it looks like the movement is going to get a chance to argue its case to the EU Commission.
PC Gamer confirmed via a subreddit user that only around 3% of all the signatures on the movement’s lists have proved to come from outside the EU or are otherwise unverifiable. That suggests that the movement is both real and full of individuals who genuinely care about this issue. Out of the near 1.5 million signatures, 3% would equate to less than 45,000. As long as a large number of others complete verification, they should all be good to go.
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For now, the movement asks that anyone who has yet to verify do so, but it doesn’t need anyone else to sign up to the original complaint to the EU Commission.
UK citizens are asked to sign the “Prohibit publishers irrevocably disabling video games they have already sold,” petition, which has already passed 189,000 signatures at the time of writing, 89,000 more than required to force a debate on the issue in the British parliament.
Those in the EU can also contact their Member of the European Parliament to raise the issue and contribute to the Digital Fairness Act public input period.
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Jon Martindale is a tech journalist from the UK, with 20 years of experience covering all manner of PC components and associated gadgets. He’s written for a range of publications, including ExtremeTech, Digital Trends, Forbes, U.S. News & World Report, and Lifewire, among others. When not writing, he’s a big board gamer and reader, with a particular habit of speed-reading through long manga sagas.
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