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Game Publishers Push Back as "Stop Killing Games" Campaign Surges Past 1 Million Signatures

EUROPEAN UNION, JUL 4 – The consumer campaign demands laws requiring offline modes or refunds when game servers shut down, with over 1.2 million signatures collected to prompt EU legislative review.

  • YouTuber Ross Scott launched the 'Stop Killing Games' petition after Ubisoft shut down The Crew servers on March 31, 2024, making the game unplayable for about 12 million players.
  • The petition calls for companies to provide offline modes and end-of-life plans to keep games accessible and has gathered over 1.25 million signatures across at least seven EU countries, triggering Commission review.
  • Video Games Europe, representing major publishers, responded that mandating indefinite server support would raise development costs, risk intellectual property, and complicate player safety and privacy.
  • The petition contends that shutting down server connections essentially deprives players of access to the games they bought and prevents any possibility of reinstating them, while Video Games Europe highlights that private servers lack the safeguards necessary to protect player data and manage inappropriate content.
  • The European Commission will verify the signatures' legitimacy, with any decision to legislate requiring a full EU process, while the campaign remains active amid ongoing debate over game preservation.
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56 Articles

Lean Left

A European petition cumulates nearly 1.3 million signatures in the hope of curbing the planned obsolescence of video games.

·Montreal, Canada
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Left

The Stop killing games petition wants eternal online games. Now the computer game companies are fighting back, saying it could make games more expensive. "Their argument is that

·Stockholm, Sweden
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WellPlayed broke the news in on Friday, July 4, 2025.
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