Stop Killing Games' proposals for game preservation "prohibitively expensive", major publishers insist

Last week, Stop Killing Games – the consumer-driven initiative demanding games publishers leave their titles in a playable state once support is terminated – surpassed 1m signatures. But now, EU industry body Video Games Europe – which represents the likes of Ubisoft, Take-Two, Warner Bros., Riot Games, Activision Blizzard, Microsoft, and Nintendo – has weighed in, insisting the initiative’s proposals would make games “prohibitively expensive to create”.

Stop Killing Games was launched last April by Accursed Farms YouTuber Ross Scott, calling upon video game fans around the world to petition their local governments regarding the increasingly common occurrence of purchased games becoming unplayable due to publisher actions. The games preservation movement was prompted by Ubisoft’s decision to shut down open-world racer The Crew’s servers last March, preventing access to both its multiplayer and single-player content due to its always-online nature. More controversy followed shortly after, when the publisher began revoking customers’ licenses to the game, permanently removing it from their libraries and preventing hopes of resurrecting it through private servers.

After a year of campaigning and with an official deadline looming, last week finally saw Stop Killing Games’ European petition surpass the 1m signatures needed for it to be submitted to the EU for verification and then, potentially, either progress to a public hearing or full debate session at the European Parliament. However, as that milestone was reached, organiser Scott warned many of those signatures could be invalid due to mistakes or deliberate spoofing (a practice he later noted was illegal on official government petitions such as this), suggesting the real tally was likely around 600–700k genuine signatures. As such, he encouraged EU citizens to continue signing it legitimately before the deadline to ensure it passes the approval process.

Yet while the exact number of legitimate petition signatures remains unclear at present, it seems the threat of its success – and a potential parliamentary hearing – has spooked video games publishers enough to spur them into action. A statement from industry body and lobbying group Video Games Europe, which represents over 30 major publishers and national trade associations around Europe, has now been shared on its website.