The Gaming Movement with Over 1.4 Million Signatures Whose Outcome Will Have A Major Impact On Consumer And Internet User Rights Globally.
“Stop Killing Games”. You may have heard this catchphrase in the news recently or glimpsed it online, but even if you have never touched a video game in your life, you should care about it.
“You may not care about politics, but politics still cares about you”.
The same can be said about video games, the behemoth corporations behind them, and your personal rights.
Depending on how online you are, your level of interest in video games, and your level of nerdiness for consumer and digital rights (this writer is guilty on all accounts), you may be familiar with the following issues. What happens when you buy a digital and intangible product? Does buying the same item in physical or digital form matter? And when almost every modern product requires a constant internet connection to function, or to redownload them each time you want to access them, what do you do when the server or platform you bought or downloaded from is shut down permanently?
Should individuals or trusts be required to sustain servers after companies abandon them or die? Worse still, what if you spent thousands of euros on buying products, skins or characters, only for the server containing your multi-thousand-euro account to be wiped as if it never existed a few years after the developers have finished the story or moved on to the next project?
These questions raise serious legal concerns for consumer and digital rights, which are yet to be addressed, resulting in gaping holes in EU laws, and exploitation with ramifications that spread far beyond the realm of gaming.
“Stop Killing Games” began in 2024, when Ubisoft, a Goliath in the video games industry, shut down the servers, delisted, and revoked the game license of “The Crew”, a 2014 mostly single-player racing game which required constant internet connection. Without servers and no support to host or replace them, the game was dead code. The company that sold it simply moved on and killed the living product it had designed to require constant connection (despite not needing to), still sitting in the consumer's own hands.
It's the equivalent of if Tesco revoked your can of beans and snuck into your house and took them back just because you were enjoying their long shelf life.
The founder of the “Stop Killing Games” movement, Ross Scott, describes it as equivalent to the first film productions "burning their own films after they were done showing them to recover the silver content", while also pointing out that "most films of that era are gone forever”. So when Goliath stole David's beans (shut the servers down), David (Ross Scott, a YouTuber) invoked the almighty (the EU).
The European Citizens Initiative is a petition whereby EU citizens can directly call on the European Commission to propose new laws. Once an initiative has reached 1 million signatures, the Commission will decide on what action to take. Scott, upon the demise of “The Crew” and in the wake of identical cases unfolding with other games and publishers, launched multiple national and multinational petitions. From the Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Protection (France), to the European Citizens Initiative of the European Union.
As per the European Commission, “the initiative calls to require publishers that sell or license videogames to consumers in the European Union (or related features and assets sold for videogames they operate) to leave said videogames in a functional (playable) state. Specifically, the initiative seeks to prevent the remote disabling of video games by the publishers, before providing reasonable means to continue functioning of said video games without the involvement from the side of the publisher.”
The petition also directly addresses the upcoming EU Digital Fairness Act.
“The Digital Fairness Act does not currently address the problem of publishers permanently disabling video games they have already sold to customers, but covers adjacent issues.”
Within the first two months, it reached over 350,000 signatures. Following this initial burst of support, the campaign struggled to spread awareness and gain the reach required to gather the signatures from all corners of the EU. It was only when YouTubers, including Jacksepticeye, PewDiePie, and MoistCr1TiKaL, with a combined audience of over 159 million subscribers, discovered the petition and made videos in support, highlighting the broad consumer and digital rights issues, that it quickly surged past the 1 million mark required for the Commission to take action.
Ireland contributed 36,753 signatures, meaning that in Ireland alone, the EU threshold number of 9,165 was surpassed by 401.01%. A clear signal from EU citizens that the EU must step up to protect consumer and digital rights. A sign that gamers, YouTubers, and consumer rights concerned citizens are shapers with real political power and influence. They can catch the eye of millions of EU citizens, be a force for good, and directly influence EU policy and legislation.