Those who enjoy online video games have been circulating a petition pushing for greater regulatory action to preserve their favorite games for posterity.
Set in motion by YouTuber Scott Ross, the “Stop Killing Games” initiative is a consumer-driven response to a growing concern among gamers of publisher control over the playability of server-based games.
For those server-dependent games, the fear is that when a game publisher decides to turn the server off, the game is “destroyed” and no longer playable.
“While video games 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,” the petition reads.
As of Wednesday, the petition had garnered more than 820,000 signatures. It will be referred to the European Commission after the July 31 deadline, with the hope of generating legislation aimed at protecting games.
Bob De Schutter, a game designer and associate professor at Northeastern University, spoke about the potential for this consumer-driven movement to make a difference in Europe, where the petition is based.
His comments have been edited for brevity and clarity.
Can you help explain what this initiative is responding to in the gaming world?
I think the ‘Stop Killing Games’ initiative really taps into a growing frustration among players who are seeing the games they invested in become unplayable overnight. The movement was sparked with ‘The Crew,’ an online racing game, being shut down, but there is more to it than just online game servers being shut down.
There is a consumer protection angle, as many offline games require online verification to run. It is also relevant in the context of accurate digital preservation. In the age of digital distribution, it is a lot easier to remove or alter history; just see Elon Musk’s recent tweet about having AI rewrite the corpus of human knowledge.
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You’re a game developer yourself. How does this movement intersect with the work you’re doing?
The matter relates to my work in some ways. First, my research is on older gamers (40-plus), and specifically ‘Lifelong Gamers.’ For them, this issue can run pretty deep as this is also about losing a piece of their personal history. Games often hold deep nostalgic and emotional value, so there’s a strong sense of betrayal when servers shut down or titles are delisted.
I learned that lesson myself when a game that I really enjoyed and spent hundreds of dollars on got shut down in 2011. Oftentimes, it is not just a story of people not being able to play the game, it is also a matter of the community around that game falling apart. The shared activity you had with online friends no longer exists.
As a small indie game developer of a game that has historical value, I am also looking at ways of preserving it for future generations, without platform dependency. That is all a lot easier to do when your game is single player and does not need servers to keep running. It is going to be interesting to see this develop further, as the economic and environmental costs of preserving every game are also a relevant part of the story.
Do you think this movement will hold sway with regulators?
I hope it does. We’re at a tipping point where digital ownership norms are being challenged. Public backlash like this can influence platform policies or push developers to include safeguards, such as offline modes or commitments to keep games alive. It will likely require sustained pressure and clearer consumer rights around digital goods to create real, lasting change. It reminds me of the lootboxes movement, which also started with European pressure.
