The Stop Killing Games movement aims to preserve the ownership of video games by requiring game publishers to leave their games in a “playable state” when they eventually discontinue support. “Stop Killing Games is a consumer movement started to challenge the legality of publishers destroying video games they have sold to customers. An increasing number of video games are sold effectively as goods – with no stated expiration date – but designed to be completely unplayable as soon as support from the publisher ends.” One commonly cited example of this is The Crew, which was shut down by Ubisoft earlier this year, after 10 years on the market. The initiative, started and fronted by Joe Scott of the Accursed Farms YouTube channel, just announced that it has officially passed 1,000,000 signatures on its European Citizen’s Initiative petition, which effectively means that it is one step closer to being granted a hearing in the EU parliament, which could potentially result in new consumer protection laws in support of the movement’s goal of protecting game ownership and preserving video games.
According to Scott in a new YouTube video addressing the million-signature milestone, the movement and its EU petition aren’t yet at the finish line. For one, there is a strong likelihood that the petition hasn’t actually received a million distinct signatures, due to issues like invalid signatures caused by errors and signature spoofing by well-intentioned people outside the EU trying to add their signature to the pile. As a result of these issues, Scott is asking viewers to continue pushing the initiative so that it can continue gaining steam. Ideally, he says, the petition would reach 140% of the required signatures before the July 31 deadline. According to the Stop Killing Games Tracker site, which is not officially affiliated with the initiative, the EU petition has received nearly 500,000 signatures in the last week alone, suggesting that it may reach the 1,4 million-signature threshold before the July 31 deadline if things continue at the current rate.
Scott also mentioned that petition to the UK government has also surpassed 100,000 signatures, which could also result in the matter being brought before the UK parliament.
UK citizens and residents can sign a petition where, if it passes 100,000 signatures, 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.
However, Scott is not particularly hopeful that this will be enough to get a law passed in the UK, since the matter has already been dismissed by the Department of Culture, Media, and Sport, with the body declining to amend or create any laws. Instead, the DCMS said that companies selling games in the UK must abide by existing consumer protections laws. Being able to go directly to the UK parliament means that the petition would effectively go around that department.
