The campaign group's organisers will be meeting with lawmakers in the EU

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The Stop Killing Games EU petition has reached 1.3 million verified signatures out of 1.5 million total, surpassing the 1 million threshold needed for European Commission discussion. The campaign, which started after Ubisoft shut down The Crew in 2024, aims to prevent game publishers from permanently disabling games when online services end. Germany and France led contributions with 233,180 and 145,239 signatures respectively. The petition achieved a low 10% rejection rate, placing it among the most successful European Citizens Initiative campaigns. Industry trade body Video Games Europe and the UK government have responded, arguing that maintaining older game servers may not be commercially viable and that no law currently requires indefinite support.

Stop Killing Games EU petition hits 1.3m verified signatures

If I hear one more time “but nobody can pay for servers infinitely”…
Just open source the server software. Nobody asked you to run servers from your pocket forever.

Good luck gamers! Hope they will find a solution so it can be feasible for all of you! :)&lt;3 well done collecting that amount of signatures! You’re united!

Same old smooth brain human behaviour.
“We demand this!”
<ul>
<li>Okay, how would it work?</li>
</ul>
“Oh… don’t know. But we demand it!”
It seems no one ever wants to look beyond the black and white anymore.
<ul>
<li>Maintaining a game beyond life is not commercially viable.</li>
<li>Releasing software for self hosting still requires maintenance, even if lesser so.</li>
<li>Aging codebases eventually become exploitable and present security flaws</li>
<li>Handing over this maintenance to platforms like GoG is like giving your IP away, it’s not gonna’ happen.</li>
<li>Handing server software to communities still has flaws.</li>
</ul>
The argument itself isn’t necessarily bad. There are indeed companies out there that collect cash and shut things down within months; but I see that as a separate issue. A legal grey area.
Releasing server software into public domain for communities is potentially viable, but also exploitable. Which one is official? Where is it hosted? Is the company responsible for paying to host this to ensure it’s the genuine copy too? Or are we relying on downloading the copy xXAnonymooseXx posted on definitelylegitshit.kom? This is becomes more important if the server software is open-source. If it’s not, it’s safer, but we circle back around to maintenance and aging codebases.
Still, just my two coins. I don’t think it’s as black and white as some like to make it out to be.

Would’ve been nice if the article presented the initiative’s ideas and arguments instead of just quoting the corporation’s propaganda.

it is simple: by law games with online features should provide at least one last update to allow players use their purchased content forever, with a playable offline mode.
not doing this should allow players to recclaim refunds for purchased content. the same should apply to game e-shops and app stores.