A new European citizens' initiative wants to prohibit game makers from making games unusable for players. If it collects one million signatures, the European Commission will have to consider enacting the law.
One of the most frustrating things you can experience as a gamer is when a publisher decides to discontinue one of your favorite games. This can happen for a number of reasons – licensing deals expiring, server maintenance becoming too expensive, end-of-life strategies to attract players to new titles, etc.
More and more games rely on servers, and if a publisher decides to shut down a server, they essentially “kill” the game and no one can ever play it again.
Needless to say, this can lead to strong reactions from the communities of dedicated gamers – and also from the developers, whose hard work goes up in smoke.
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Not only because it deprives players of a favorite pastime, but also because a company decides to make a product disappear that they paid for and into which they may have put a lot of extra money in the form of downloadable content, boosts or skins.
Some disgruntled campers have even announced they plan to sue video game publisher Ubisoft for shutting down the popular racing game The Crew by revoking players' licenses. The move, which many Reddit users called “theft,” sparked a new wave of outrage over the practice.
The initiators of the citizens' initiative say that killing games “robs customers, destroys games as an art form and is unnecessary.” They hope that if they get enough people to sign their petition, the EU will have to consider banning publishers from killing games.
What is a European Citizens’ Initiative?
A European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) is a mechanism that allows EU citizens to participate more directly in the development of the bloc's policies by proposing new laws. If more than a million people (from at least seven countries) sign a petition, the Commission must propose new laws or provide a detailed reason why it does not do so.
Politically conscious gamers have now made it their mission to mobilize Europe’s committed online gamer base to “stop the destruction of video games.”
We first became aware of the “Stop Killing Games” initiative through PC gamers. If successful, publishers will be required to leave their games in a “reasonable” working state at the time of closure. This would also apply to games that are free to play but offer microtransaction features to customers.
For more details, see the campaign video below. The petition can be found here. Rarely has direct democracy been exercised by so many nerds.
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