Stop Killing Games EU petition reaches new milestone

The Stop Killing Games initiative has reached another milestone. After months of painstaking verification, the European Union petition has officially confirmed 1,294,000 valid signatures, comfortably clearing the threshold required to force a formal debate within the European Commission.

Founded by YouTuber Ross Scott in response to the shutdown of Ubisoft's The Crew, the movement argues that publishers should not be allowed to intentionally render games unplayable by disabling servers without providing offline alternatives. Apparently, quite a few people in the EU agree with Ross, as the petition gathered over 1.4 million signatures. However, these signatures had to undergo a validation process to weed out invalid entries from non-EU residents or bad-faith actors.

According to Moritz Katzner, after the validation process, 1,294,000 signatures were validated, with Germany emerging as the strongest supporter with 233,180 signatures. With this milestone, the European Commission is now mandated to review the proposal and potentially propose new consumer protection laws requiring publishers to provide players with alternatives to access the games they've bought after official support ends.

While this is a monumental achievement for digital ownership, the campaign faces significant opposition. The Video Games Europe group has consistently argued that providing private server tools or single-player patches is too expensive and presents legal issues. Moreover, a similar debate in the UK Parliament took place in late 2025, in which the government promised to keep an eye on the matter but didn't find it appropriate to change the laws surrounding it. However, organisers believe the scale of the EU petition creates much greater political pressure, making it harder for lawmakers to ignore.

KitGuru says: Crossing the 1 million mark for valid signatures is a monumental victory for this movement. If the European Commission takes decisive action, it could set a global precedent that forces publishers to rethink their “live service” shutdown strategies entirely.

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