"Stop Ruining Video Games"

The European citizens' initiative "Stop destroying video games" reached the necessary number of signatures early: on Thursday evening, the initiative reached the threshold of one million declarations of support, which is necessary for the European Commission to start dealing with the subject.

"Stop Killing Video Games" is an initiative of the "Stop Killing Video Games" project started by Youtuber Ross Scott. The project aims to prevent video game shutdowns. "The initiative requires that publishers who sell or license video games (or related functions and goods) to consumers in the European Union are obliged to maintain these video games in a functional (playable) condition. Specifically, the purpose of the initiative is to prevent publishers from remotely disabling video games until they provide a reasonable means to continue the operation of said video games without the involvement of the publisher," reads the EU citizens' initiative website.

Even in June, the collection of signatures was quite slow, half of the necessary votes were missing. Thanks to a new campaign on social networks on Reddit, YouTube and other platforms, which also led to additional coverage in traditional media, the project only managed to gather the necessary votes in a short time. Meanwhile, a separate petition in Great Britain has also reached the required number of signatures.

Nevertheless, those responsible are not satisfied with this: to be sure that the European Commission will really have to deal with the initiative, they want to collect at least 1.4 million signatures. In this way, they want to replace any invalid signatures that could subsequently be eliminated, explains Stop Killing Games on its website. The collection of signatures is open until the end of July.

In addition to the total number of signatures, the initiative must also reach a certain threshold in at least seven EU member states, which is determined according to the total population. Even this obstacle was overcome weeks ago by the initiative, for example in Germany. 230,000 people signed up there, and the threshold is just under 68,000 signatures. All signatures above this threshold still count towards the total number of signatures.

The initiative began when French publisher Ubisoft shut down its MMO racing game "The Crew" (cover image) on April 1st, rendering it unusable. Youtuber Ross Scott deemed this action not only annoying, but possibly illegal. With its "Stop Killing Games" initiative, it aims not only to raise awareness, but also to initiate legal scrutiny of this practice.

Source: EU

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