Back in July 2018, YouTuber Ross Scott released a video about the racing game The Crew. The video was in his typical format: a thorough and humorous review of the game, in this case shaped as a road trip through its large open map based on the United States. In the end, however, the video took on a more serious tone.
“Yes, this game is going to die. It relies on a central server, and neither Ubisoft nor Ivory Tower have made any statement regarding an end of life plan. So without divine intervention, in the future you are never going to be able to play this game,” was Scott’s message at the time.
The prediction turned out to be accurate. In 2024, Ubisoft shut down its servers, and The Crew, a game whose DNA is 95% single-player, became unplayable. The gods had not intervened. But then Scott took matters into his own hands.
Today, Scott is not “just” a YouTuber. He is also the man who can change the gaming landscape forever.
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Since April 2024, his “Stop Killing Games” campaign has been trying to reach out to politicians, lawyers, consumer groups, indeed anyone who has the power to save the games of the future. It has been hard work, as reflected in his YouTube channel, Accursed Farms. There are few funny thumbnails and humorous videos.
Most of it is about the Stop Killing Games movement, which is currently approaching a potentially decisive turning point.
A new hope
When I catch up with Scott via video link, he has just come out of a long meeting. Another one. The last year and a half has been one long campaign, as Scott and other volunteers in the initiative have tried to make politicians and judges aware of the issue.
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Several of the cases – particularly those involving The Crew – have been referred to higher courts in countries such as France, Germany, and Australia. However, in most cases, the overall attempt to ensure greater consumer protection in gaming has ended in rejections or dead ends. Other times, it has even resulted in outright bureaucratic labyrinths.
“When we started, we lost about a month’s worth of work pursuing dead ends,” Scott recalls. “I was surprised to learn that so many governments did not have clear laws on this situation. When we originally called the European Consumer Centre network last year, we got different answers from different offices. Some said there was nothing we could do because it involved licence agreements. Others said the developers had to support the games indefinitely, and another said there was no clear legal regulation on this.”
When Scott released the video “The end of Stop Killing Games” three weeks ago, the tone was therefore resigned. Most attempts had failed, and now there was really only one attempt left, one last shot in the barrel. It was the big gun – a European citizens’ initiative – but it would also take a lot of effort – at least one million valid signatures, spread across at least seven EU member states.
At that point, the citizens’ proposal had just barely reached half a million signatures, and with just over a month to go before the July 31 deadline, things were looking bleak. But suddenly, things took off. The initiative gained momentum – not least due to a good dose of YouTube drama – and suddenly the campaign took off. On July 3, the initiative reached the required one million signatures.
At the time of writing, with just over two weeks to go before the deadline, the initiative has collected just over 1,360,000 signatures. But that does not necessarily mean that the citizens’ initiative will go through. Online signature collections tend to attract many invalid signatures, so Scott is not ready to celebrate just yet.
“We have more signatures, though we still have no data as to what ratio we can expect them to be valid. So it’s hard to say how many are real, but we’re optimistic, I guess.”
A bigger problem?
What is the citizens’ initiative about? Quite simply, it is about preventing game publishers from making games unplayable by requiring online functionality and then closing the server. Or, as the movement calls it, “killing” games.
It may sound like a strong statement. But it emphasises that how we talk about games matters. The publishers themselves talk about “shutting down” games. Or they send them “into retirement.” That’s not how Scott sees it. He believes they are killing them.
“That phrase actually didn’t come from me. It came from one of my viewers. I thought “that’s pretty good.” It’s blunt and to the point. Maybe we should have called it stop destroying games instead, for less translation problems. Because a few people thought we were trying to ban violent games or something through the translation. But we didn’t want something like save video games because there is kind of a culprit in this. It is an active decision being made by the industry when this happens.”
But why shut down games at all? The gaming industry may have many motives – and most of them are, unsurprisingly, financial. However, there may also be legal or technical reasons why games stop working.
First and foremost, online games like The Crew require constant maintenance. The game needs patches to work with the latest PCs. And the game’s servers need to be maintained. This can often pay off because players spend money in the game through microtransactions.
At some point, however, the numbers no longer add up. This may be because players move on to another game. Or because licences for third parties, such as music, must be renewed. In such cases, many games fall victim to cold calculation. This is especially true for so-called live service games, where we have seen examples of games closing after a few years or even a few months.
But even popular and profitable games can risk being shut down for good. This was the case with Overwatch, for example. The game was sold at full price when it launched in 2016 and won several awards for game of the year. Six years later, the game was still raking in money through microtransactions, but it still had to be shut down to make way for its successor, Overwatch 2.
According to Stop Killing Games and its many supporters, such a practice is not only harmful to consumers, who have paid for a product that no longer works. It also harms the industry as a whole. All the hard work that the developers put into Overwatch has now been lost, and future players will no longer be able to try the award-winning game.
To prevent this practice, the proposal calls for a requirement that developers, when they no longer wish to support a game, at least leave the game “in a functional (playable) state.”
“The initiative specifically aims to prevent publishers from remotely deactivating video games before providing reasonable means for these video games to continue without the involvement of the publisher,” reads the description in the European citizens’ initiative.
The industry strikes back
Stop Killing Games has been clear in its communication from the outset. Nevertheless, other YouTubers have criticised Stop Killing Games for demanding that game developers support games forever – an unrealistic demand that the group has never made. They simply want developers to leave games in a playable state. But this “simply” may not be so simple after all.
The day after the European citizens’ initiative reached the required one million signatures, a new, powerful voice joined the debate: Video Games Europe.
Video Games Europe is a European lobby organisation and industry association. Its members include 21 of the largest game publishers (only a majority of which actually have their headquarters in Europe), including Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony, EA, Ubisoft, and Epic Games. In short, all the big names in the industry. The organisation also includes several national industry associations, including Games Denmark.
Video Games Europe advocates “industry self-regulation” when it comes to, for example, the controversial loot boxes, which its members collectively earn billions of euros from each year. Many have questioned whether they have actually tackled the problem. Among them is the Danish Consumer Council, which last year, together with a number of other European industry organisations, filed a lawsuit against several of Video Games Europe’s members.
The day after the European citizens’ initiative passed one million signatures, Video Games Europe published a position paper explaining their stance on Stop Killing Games.
In the four-page document, Video Games Europe does not mince words. Among other things, they argue that Stop Killing Games will actually have the opposite effect if it becomes law. That it will stifle the European gaming industry and kill future games.
“It will have a deterrent effect on game design and act as a barrier to making such games available in Europe,” it says.
In a gaming industry that is already under severe pressure, such warnings may sound ominous. But does the argument hold water?
There are indications that the document was either drafted in haste or that its authors deliberately distort the message of Stop Killing Games. Among other things, they write that the initiative includes “a requirement to provide online services for as long as a consumer wants them, regardless of price paid,” which does not appear anywhere on either the citizens’ initiative or Stop Killing Games’ website. In fact, it states in black and white that they are in favour of the opposite: “We are in favour of publishers ending support for a game whenever they choose.”
That said, the document also contains a number of more sound arguments. In total, Video Games Europe lists ten reasons why Stop Killing Games will not work, dividing them into consequences for consumers, game developers, and IP legislation, respectively.
However, many of the arguments undermine Video Games Europe’s own members. Not with words, but with actions.
A good example is The Crew 2. Like its predecessor, the game is predominantly a single-player game, but it requires a constant internet connection to function and has certain social elements. Although, according to Video Games Europe, it would require all sorts of technical and copyright sacrifices to make the game available in an offline version when support ends one day, this is nevertheless exactly what Ubisoft has promised. And others have done it before. Among other things, Gran Turismo Sport can now be played offline, while Knockout City – a multiplayer game from Velan Studios – can be played through private servers.
Scott has a surprising retort: The vast majority of developers – including those of games where online elements are part of their very structure – already indirectly meet the potential requirement for a playable offline version.
“Let’s say you’re developing a game, and it depends on this extra service that’s online. But while you’re developing it, that service goes down. You as a developer don’t want to have to stop all your work just because that particular service is having a problem. In this case, a good practice is what’s known as a local test environment. Which means it’s essentially a version of the game that’s self-contained, so that if there are problems online, it doesn’t affect them. They can keep working on it. Just the creation of that in the first place might almost fulfil the requirements entirely.”
Will it cost small developers? And what about the players?
It may seem ironic that the large lobby organisation Video Games Europe, whose members undoubtedly have enough resources to make offline versions of their older games – and in several cases have done so – argues that it can make it too expensive to make online and live service games. But the organisation also indirectly represents smaller developers through its member national industry associations.
In theory, it is conceivable that a small developer of, for example, online games for mobile devices would have to spend valuable man-hours making their games available offline after shutdown. In the same way that smaller companies also spend – proportionally – more resources on GDP legislation than the big players, which are otherwise the primary target of the data protection law.
In response to this criticism, Scott says that he is confident that the industry will find solutions. And that any challenges, all other things being equal, will be far in the future.
“Whatever happens, best case scenario, this is still years out. If any legal changes happen at all, the industry is going to have a lot of notice on this. And the industry will probably come up with solutions, just as with GDPR. I think it could be a gold rush of sorts for vendors to provide middleware solutions to small developers, delivering software that is compliant with EU laws and at a reasonable price.”
One of the arguments that immediately seems most credible in Video Game Europe’s position paper is point seven. It states that a private server version of a previous online game could lead to “community-supported versions of games competing with official versions, potentially jeopardising the financial investments of the video game companies.”
Video Games Europe does not mention it, but it has actually happened that games have returned from the dead in a new commercial release. One example is Defiance. The MMO game was released in 2013 for PC and console. In 2021, the game’s servers were shut down by the then rights holders from Gamingo. The game went dark. But then the unexpected happened.
Publisher Fawkes Games announced in March 2025 that they had purchased the rights to the game, and a month later, the servers were back up on PC.
You can think what you want about the game’s former owners, Gamingo. The German game publisher has been accused of buying up MMO games, introducing a ton of microtransactions, and otherwise dropping the games as soon as the player base has been milked for every last penny. But wouldn’t it still have damaged their commercial rights – and made a sale to Fawkes Games more difficult – if Defiance had already been given a new lease of life through a non-commercial version on private servers?
Scott disagrees, and to argue his case, he turns one of Video Games Europe’s other criticisms against them.
“One thing I agreed with Video Games Europe on is that you as a player have a lot less protections once the game is in that state [playable offline or on private servers, but not officially supported]. There could be bugs. There could be security vulnerabilities. If somebody wants to come in and write or say a bunch of obnoxious things, there are no admins protecting you from that. It’s going to be more of a niche and rough experience. So if the game were to come back under an official company, there’s staff monitoring it, there’s admins taking care of things, people fixing bugs, and so on. That’s going to have a lot of appeal in itself.”
The games are coming back
As mentioned, the ultimate goal of Stop Killing Games is quite simple – they want legal measures to ensure that games that users have paid money for are still playable on the day the developers have had enough of the game. Just as is the case for physical games for older PlayStations and Nintendo consoles, for example.
However, it is far from certain that this will be the outcome. Even if the European citizens’ initiative actually manages to obtain enough valid signatures. The process for citizens’ initiatives is long and complicated, and the European Commission is ultimately free to choose not to implement measures and legislative proposals resulting from a citizens’ initiative.
But what is the minimum outcome that Stop Killing Games would still consider a victory? Scott has several suggestions.
“If video game regulation was treated more like planned obsolescence laws, the game doesn’t have to be left in working condition, but you – as the company – need to include repair instructions to the customer once you shut it down. Obviously it takes technical savvy to handle it, but this includes things such as network documentation, info on how the game is structured and so on. As long as they give technically gifted people a fighting chance to be able to preserve the game in some fashion, I think that would be a very acceptable compromise.”
Another outcome could be greater transparency. However, Scott does not have overly high expectations on that particular point.
“I don’t think it’ll happen, because I think the industry really doesn’t want it, and it’s not our main ask, but it would be a positive if there was a hard expiry date on games that require online connectivity. If the box or webpage says, “this game will shut down four years from now,” that might wake customers up. I think, from a psychological standpoint, the industry really relies on that being an unknown variable for the customer. Because if they know a game is going to end then they’re less likely to buy it.”
But of course, one can also dream big.
Over the past few years, we have seen many new consumer-unfriendly practices. From cars that have features locked if you don’t pay subscriptions, to printers that won’t print even if the cartridge is full of ink because you haven’t paid for a subscription.
We therefore asked Scott whether he thinks Stop Killing Games could have a positive spill over effect on other consumer legislation.
“I think not directly, but if this did pass, it might embolden more customers or consumer protection groups to try to get more regulation on those things that you’re talking about in other areas. Yeah, it could spread, but I think that’ll be somebody else’s job,” Ross Scott replies with a grin.
