In April last year, the Stop Killing Games initiative was founded, a grassroots effort by YouTuber Ross Scott to pass laws prohibiting publishers from making older games playable. Despite the long and undoubtedly dizzying task he has undertaken, Scott is pressing on, this time hoping to collect enough signatures for a European citizens’ initiative to push member states to act.
“This initiative requires that publishers who sell or license video games (or related features and assets sold for the video games they operate) to consumers in the European Union must keep those video games in a functional (playable) state. “Specifically, the initiative aims to prevent the remote deactivation of video games by publishers before adequate means are provided to maintain the functionality of those video games without the involvement of the publisher.”
The initiative has so far collected over 230,000 signatures, which is certainly a significant number, but still falls short of the required total of one million signatures that must be reached before the initiative’s deadline of 31 July 2025. This is important because, as the initiative’s page explains, one million statements of support must be reached, as well as minimum thresholds in at least seven countries; at the time of writing, only Finland has reached this minimum.
Scott has released a short summary video as well as a much longer FAQ about the effort, and while he seems fairly certain that the initiative will fail, he still urges players to join the fight. “Sign this if you don’t want things that belong to you destroyed,” he says. “I don’t know how much easier I can make this.”
