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A European Citizens Initiative has been launched by the Stop Killing Games campaign, as one of multiple methods being pursued to challenge planned obsolescence in videogames. As summarized by the initiative itself:

This initiative calls to require publishers that sell or license videogames to consumers in the European Union (or related features and assets sold for videogames they operate) to leave said videogames in a functional (playable) state.

Specifically, the initiative seeks to prevent the remote disabling of videogames by the publishers, before providing reasonable means to continue functioning of said videogames without the involvement from the side of the publisher.

If the Citizens Initiative reaches the signature requirement, the European Comission is required to issue a formal reply and explain its decision on if it will or will not propose new EU legislation based on the initiative. The initiative runs for one year, by which time it must have surpassed one million valid signatures.

In order to be eligible for the petition, participants must be:

1. A citizen of a EU country
2. Of voting age

Those wishing to sign can find the Initiative on the ECI website, as well as further information and guides on StopKillingGames's website. The form only requires basic information, but if a mistake is made the signature is invalidated and that individual cannot try again.

The Stop Killing Games campaign was launched by Ross Scott based on the shutdown of Ubisoft's The Crew, a primarily single-player game that nonetheless required an online connection to Ubisoft's servers. Support for the game was dropped in March 2024, rendering it entirely unplayable to those who had purchased it possibly three months prior - despite indications that an offline mode already existed to some degree within the game's code.

If the campaign is successful, publishers could be required to have end-of-life plans for their games: such as a patch to remove connection requirements in cases similar to The Crew, or allowing players to host their own servers for multiplayer games that significantly rely on them. The campaign explicitly does not require anything while support continues.

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Scott has published numerous videos detailing the different stages and justifications for the campaign, one of which is shown above. Although there is a full year to reach the target, he emphasizes the need for others, especially multilingual and non-English EU citizens, to reach out to those with audiences within the EU.

Source

 

[The Real Jdbye]

I would love for this to be approved into legislation.
I really, really doubt it's going to happen, though. I just don't think governments are willing to make the push and enforce something like this. Not now, but maybe when things get worse. I think they're gonna get worse before they get better.

Realistically, it wouldn't take a whole lot of work on the part of the devs/publishers, as they would just have to release the server files. It might be more work for games with online functionality tied into specific platforms, like Steam or Xbox. They can't very well release the Steam/Xbox server files and I don't know how easy it would be to separate the online functionality from the platform it's using.

While I fundamentally agree with what this is setting out to achieve, I can't help but think that it is somewhat short-sighted.
If it is put into action it may steer developers future projects into avoiding online functionality entirely. And while I'm not against this, it could mean that the types of games that we are used to just don't get made anymore.

Forced online functionality in single player games is dumb and needs to die.
Multiplayer games should have local multiplayer as an option.
Encouraging devs to keep online functionality optional, so that a game can still function without it (in single player or local multiplayer) would be a good thing.

 

[Tofu_mommy]

Multiplayer games should have local multiplayer as an option.

Good luck doing that in MMOs or battle royale games. Some things are simply too much to ask for out of any hardware, especially if the player count is high and there are pretty involved interactions and simulation. Being able to just host your own servers is what should be pushed.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Good luck doing that in MMOs or battle royale games. Some things are simply too much to ask for out of any hardware, especially if the player count is high and there are pretty involved interactions and simulation. Being able to just host your own servers is what should be pushed.

Not much would change for those, they keep being supported forever. On the off chance one does get shut down, yeah they'd have to release the server files. But it's unlikely, they just make way too much money.

I do think MOBAs and Battle Royale games should have a LAN multiplayer option though.

 

[Tofu_mommy]

they keep being supported forever

The big ones seem to, because they captured a ton of the market, but there are BR games out there that got shut down within 24h of launching, or even ones that get announced alongside an end of life date (SMB35).

they just make way too much money

Not every game is profitable, and plenty of games that make money aren't profitable enough to the publishers. All I'm saying is that some games are so heavy that having a local multiplayer option without dedicated server software is a no-go because of the necessary processing power and the amount of memory to keep track of the entire game state. This gets even worse once you consider consoles, and not just putting the blame on someone not having a PC powerful enough.

 

[BeniBel]

It's an interesting idea, but I don't think it's realistic, so I'm not signing it.

Especially for MMO games it wouldn't be possible. I see a lot of people saying they should just release the servers source code, but I think that's too far. A lot of code gets reused for other projects too, and code should never be taken or forced away from a developer.

What I would find a more realistic solution, is that every game requiring online should come with a warning about this (might be already the case), and should be supported for a minimum amount of time, let's say 3 years from release, and at least 1 year from purchase.

 

[Tofu_mommy]

It's an interesting idea, but I don't think it's realistic, so I'm not signing it.

Especially for MMO games it wouldn't be possible. I see a lot of people saying they should just release the servers source code, but I think that's too far. A lot of code gets reused for other projects too, and code should never be taken or forced away from a developer.

What I would find a more realistic solution, is that every game requiring online should come with a warning about this (might be already the case), and should be supported for a minimum amount of time, let's say 3 years from release, and at least 1 year from purchase.

In a perfect society GPLv3+ would be forcibly applied to ALL code.

 

[grandosegood]

god bless the european chads of gaming preservation

 

[Tofu_mommy]

Keeping servers online is side hustle in game preservation. After giving it considerable thought, I came to conclusion that it's simply a superset of piracy.

 

[linuxares]

People really give publisher and devs so much benefit of the doubt. Most of these aren't hard to patch out the requirements. MMOs are also barley any release today since it all moved to live service games (example Diablo 4)

 

[Tofu_mommy]

People really give publisher and devs so much benefit of the doubt. Most of these aren't hard to patch out the requirements. MMOs are also barley any release today since it all moved to live service games (example Diablo 4)

Live service is more of a term to describe the update schedule and business model of a game than the actual genre, or how much heavy lifting a server does. Sometimes, even seemingly straightforward games are incredibly heavy even on the client side. I wouldn't want to see how poorly Fortnite STW would run with a proper local server for just the instance I'm running in with the hordes of enemies, projectile physics and keeping track of damage to structures. I struggle to hit consistent 240 FPS in that game, and if you just take a basic look at it, it's a 4 player co-op game with small maps.

Another thing is the mindset, I'm willing to give considerable amounts of money to Epic to have a fun game that constantly changes while knowing that some day it will be shut down, and that the things I "bought" have a real world value of 0 since I can't even sell them off without getting the account banned. The lowest level of such legislation going through would be warning labels about games depending on external servers that WILL go down some day. Even games with dedicated community servers will "stop functioning", because they use a master server to provide a server browser function. For example, UT99 from Epic is such a "dead" game, where you need to patch it to point at an alternate server ran by the fan community, and you can't even buy it anymore.

If an average game were to be announced like SMB35 (optionally replace the end of life date with end of minimum support period), then I think it would make people more aware of things. Providing a smell test as to what is a "pointless" server would also help, but the terms would be either easy to work around, or very vague and broadly reaching,

 

[linuxares]

You're still giving them the benefit of the doubt. Industries have been forced legislation and forced to adapt before. Why all of a sudden can't the game industry? Come on... it's obvious that some games (if not most) could easily be patched or fixed to get offline working.

If this become law, games might need to adapt their development to fit to the law. Any new game after it, would just need to fit within the specifications of it.

Take Overwatch as a prime example. I paid for it, and now I can't play it anymore? They even removed it from the launcher. You bought it? TO BAD FOR YOU!

Why couldn't they just release a patch so you could do direct p2p to each other? Or release a community server manager? Anything really. Blizzard got money, so that ain't an excuse.


EDIT: Plan obsolescence should be illegal. Else it's just renting with extra steps.

 

[Tofu_mommy]

Plan obsolescence should be illegal. Else it's just renting with extra steps.

Don't buy from Steam then, you rent games for 999 years there, as they don't want you to be able to sell off your games. If you don't like some practice, don't pay for the games. I have a list of publishers I don't intend to buy from, even if I'm interested in their games (and I rarely am).

 

[Xzi]

Don't buy from Steam then, you rent games for 999 years there, as they don't want you to be able to sell off your games. If you don't like some practice, don't pay for the games. I have a list of publishers I don't intend to buy from, even if I'm interested in their games (and I rarely am).

This has nothing to do with the ability to re-sell digital games though, you can't do that for digital movies or music you've purchased either. It's about keeping multiplayer and online-only digital games functional as long as the community wants to continue supporting them.

 

[LightBeam]

I'm going to say something that may sound controversial, but making developers/publishers responsible for preserving their own stuff until the end of times has a potential to do more harm to everyone than anything else, not all of them have the resources or interest to do this (and in my opinion that is perfectly fine), this also has the potential to discourage them from making certain type of games just because they can't guarantee it will last forever.

I think It's better to leave media preservation the way it currently is, let the individuals interested on the matter do the work if they want, we should focus on making this less of a gray area for these people than trying to shift responsibility to the original authors.

I still don't understand how releasing server source code has the potential of doing more harm than good.

From what I've seen, either small companies care enough about their games they will release binaries or source code (sometimes even rewrite it when they're willing to, and that's commendable but obv can't expect that from everyone), or they already knew that server cost could be a huge barrier so it's either playable with P2P or anyone can host/rent a server. Many survival games do that, for example. Therefore, that's not something that's going to affect them anyway.

So I fail to see how it's really not just about big publishers for 99% of the time (if not 100%). Not making their game playable in any way after its commercial exploitation is 100% a choice, and if, somehow, they don't want to make anymore live-services because it would be mandatory to release server binaries, or server code, or whatever. Then I would still see that as an absolute win.

I mean, I could understand Epic's choice : they removed all Unreal games on all stores because the servers were now incompatible with whatever they updated for Fortnite. We can still play those because of how they were designed. Lots of games were done like that.
Still can't understand why CSGO shouldn't be available to download on Steam, or why OW1 shouldn't be available .... Actually, we all know : they have a subpar sequel to exploit commercially and don't want people to mod and enjoy the previous game for free.

 

[Exnor]

Signed. Thank you for the information,

 

[NinStar]

I still don't understand how releasing server source code has the potential of doing more harm than good.

I never said that, quite the opposite, did you even bother to read the rest of my posts?

 

[LightBeam]

I never said that, quite the opposite, did you even bother to read the rest of my posts?

But you did say that having people being responsible for how their games are going to be preserved could do more harm than good. So yes I did read through all of it, don't think there's some bad intent behind my post

I don't see why it could be a problem for them to be responsible for how they preserve their own games. I mean ... they already are, and most of them handle that in a very good way in my opinion (specifically talking about everyone but big publishers in that case). That's why I think that if they had legal obligation to preserve their game, it wouldn't do much to them anyway, therefore talking about the author's responsibility doesn't seem like a big issue to me

 

[NinStar]

But you did say that having people being responsible for how their games are going to be preserved could do more harm than good. So yes I did read through all of it, don't think there's some bad intent behind my post

I don't see why it could be a problem for them to be responsible for how they preserve their own games. They can release the source code that they've already made or make another version or whatever they want .... then it's up to the community and they don't need to be involved. But how they want to preserve their own game is their own responsibility, I still don't see why it could be a bad thing, they already have that responsibility when nobody can play their games after they shut down.

Yes, that doesn't mean I'm against them releasing their source code for stuff they no longer plan on supporting, I'm totally in favor of them being incentivized to do that and would prefer that to always be the case as I said in my third post, however I'm against the sentiment that this should be something enforced by law. This might be a dramatic way of describing it, but I don't like the idea of law enforcement coming in and saying "keep it running or hand it over" for some entertainment media you made available once but decided you no longer want to make it available nor support it, whatever the reason may be (and just to be clear, I'm also including games that are 100% live services on this)

But I also think that anyone making their own initiatives to keep supporting these games should be allowed to do their work without fearing repercussion, whether the original owners like it or not. That is the only thing I think should be changed or at very least taken more seriously, it's something like "you may not want to support or give them the resources, but if someone else manages to do it on their own you shouldn't be allowed to intervene".

 

[LightBeam]

Yes, that doesn't mean I'm against them releasing their source code for stuff they no longer plan on supporting, I'm totally in favor of them being incentivized to do that and would prefer that to always be the case as I said in my third post, however I'm against the sentiment that this should be something enforced by law. This might be a dramatic way of describing it, but I don't like the idea of law enforcement coming in and saying "keep it running or hand it over" for some entertainment media you made available once but decided you no longer want to make it available nor support it, whatever the reason may be (and just to be clear, I'm also including games that are 100% live services on this)

But I also think that anyone making their own initiatives to keep supporting these games should be allowed to do their work without fearing repercussion, whether the original owners like it or not. That is the only thing I think should be changed or at very least taken more seriously, it's something like "you may not want to support or give them the resources, but if someone else manages to do it on their own you shouldn't be allowed to intervene".

That's something I can understand, even if I don't necessarily have an immediate problem with the assumption that the law could intervene (to a certain extent of course). Thank you for clarifying, your opinion seems clearer to me and quite reasonable.

 

[BeniBel]

In a perfect society GPLv3+ would be forcibly applied to ALL code.

It wouldn't, it would kill gaming or software production in an instant.