In July 2018, YouTuber Ross Scott released a video about the racing game The Crew. The video had its typical format: a thorough and humorous review of the game, in this case in the form of a road trip through the large open map based on the United States. Eventually, however, the video took on a more serious tone.
“Yes, this game is going to die. It relies on a central server and neither Ubisoft nor Ivory Tower have made a statement about an end-of-life plan. So without divine intervention, you will never be able to play this game in the future.” was Scott’s message at the time.
The prediction turned out to be true. In 2024, Ubisoft shut down its servers and The Crew, a game whose DNA is 95% single-player, became unplayable. The gods had not intervened. But then Scott took matters into his own hands.
These days, Scott is not “just” a YouTuber. He is also the man who can change the gaming landscape forever.
Since April 2024, his “Stop Killing Games” campaign has been trying to reach politicians, lawyers, consumer groups, yes anyone with the power to save the games of the future. It’s been hard work, as evidenced by his YouTube channel, Accursed Farms. There are few funny thumbnails and humorous videos.
Most of it is about the Stop Killing Games movement, which is currently approaching a potentially decisive turning point.
A new hope
When I catch up with Scott via video link, he’s just coming out of a long meeting. Another one. The past year and a half has been one long campaign, as Scott and other volunteers in the initiative have tried to make politicians and judges aware of the problem.
Several of the cases – particularly those involving The Crew – have been referred to higher courts in countries such as France, Germany and Australia. In most cases, however, the overall effort to ensure better consumer protection in gaming has ended in rejections or dead ends. Other times, it has even led to outright bureaucratic labyrinths.
“When we started out, we lost about a month’s worth of work pursuing dead ends,” he said. Scott recalls. “I was surprised to learn that so many governments did not have clear laws about this situation. When we first called the European Consumer Center network last year, we got different answers from different offices. Some said there was nothing we could do because these were licensing agreements. Others said the developers had to support the games indefinitely, and another said there was no clear legal arrangement for it.
So when Scott released the video “The end of Stop Killing Games” three weeks ago, the tone was resigned. Most attempts had failed, and now there was really only one left, a last shot down the barrel. It was the big weapon – a European citizens’ initiative – but it would also take a lot of effort – at least one million valid signatures, spread across at least seven EU member states.
At that point, the citizens’ proposal had barely reached half a million signatures, and with just over a month to go before the July 31 deadline, things looked bleak. But suddenly it took off. The initiative gained momentum – due in no small part to a flurry of YouTube drama – and suddenly the campaign took off. On July 3, the initiative reached the required one million signatures.
At the time of writing, with just over two weeks to go before the deadline, the initiative has collected just over 1,360,000 signatures. But that does not necessarily mean the citizens’ initiative will go forward. Online signature collections tend to attract many invalid signatures, so Scott is not yet ready to celebrate.
“We have more signatures, although we still don’t have data on the proportion in which we can expect them to be valid. So it’s hard to say how many there really are, but we’re optimistic, I think.”
A bigger problem?
What is the citizens’ initiative about? Quite simply, it’s about preventing game publishers from making games unplayable by requiring online functionality and then shutting down the server. Or, as the movement calls it, “killing” games.
It may sound like a strong statement. But it highlights that how we talk about games matters. Publishers themselves talk about “shutting down” games. Or sending them “into retirement. That’s not how Scott sees it. He believes they are killing them.
“That sentence didn’t actually come from me. It came from one of my viewers. I thought “that’s pretty good.” It’s blunt and to the point. Maybe we should have called it stop destroying games instead, for fewer translation problems. Because a few people thought we were trying to ban violent games or something like that through translation. But we didn’t want something like saving video games, because there is some kind of culprit in this. It’s an active decision made by the industry when this happens.”
But why shut down games at all? The game industry can have many motives – and most are, not surprisingly, financial. However, there may also be legal or technical reasons why games stop working.
First and foremost, online games like The Crew need constant maintenance. The game needs patches to work with the latest PCs. And the game’s servers need to be maintained. This can often pay off as players spend money in the game through microtransactions.
At some point, however, the numbers no longer add up. This may be because players move on to another game. Or because third-party licenses, such as music, need to be renewed. In such cases, many games fall victim to cold calculations. This is especially true for so-called live-service games, where we have seen examples of games closing after a few years or even a few months.
But even popular and profitable games can risk being shut down for good. This was the case with Overwatch, for example. The game sold for full price when it launched in 2016 and won several awards for game of the year. Six years later, the game was still raking in money through microtransactions, but it had yet to be shut down to make way for its successor, Overwatch 2.
According to Stop Killing Games and its many supporters, such a practice not only harms consumers, who have paid for a product that no longer works. It also harms the industry as a whole. All the hard work the developers put into Overwatch is now lost and future players will no longer be able to try the award-winning game.
To prevent this practice, the proposal calls for a requirement that developers, when they want to stop supporting a game, leave the game at least “in a functional (playable) state.”
“The initiative is specifically designed to prevent publishers from remotely deactivating video games before providing reasonable means to continue those video games without the publisher’s involvement.” reads the description in the European Citizens’ Initiative.
Industry strikes back
Stop Killing Games has been clear in its communications from the beginning. Nevertheless, other YouTubers have criticized Stop Killing Games for demanding that game developers support games forever – an unrealistic demand the group has never made. They just want developers to leave games in a playable state. But this “just” may not be so simple after all.
The day after the European Citizens’ Initiative reached the required one million signatures, a powerful new voice entered the debate: Video Games Europe.
Video Games Europe is a European lobbying organization and trade association. Its members include 21 of the largest game publishers (only a majority of which are headquartered in Europe), including Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony, EA, Ubisoft and Epic Games. In short, all the big names in the industry. The organization also includes several national industry associations, including Games Denmark.
Video Games Europe advocates “industry self-regulation” when it comes to, for example, the controversial loot boxes, from which its members collectively earn billions of dollars a year. Many have questioned whether they have addressed the problem. Among them is the Danish Consumer Council, which last year, along with several other European industry associations, filed a lawsuit against several Video Games Europe members.
The day after the European Citizens’ Initiative passed one million signatures, Video Games Europe published a position paper explaining their position on Stop Killing Games.
In the four-page document, Video Games Europe does not mince its words. Among other things, they argue that Stop Killing Games will have just the opposite effect if it becomes law. That it will stifle the European game industry and kill future games.
“It will deter game design and create a barrier to making such games available in Europe.” says.
In a game industry already under severe pressure, such warnings can sound ominous. But does the argument hold water?
There is evidence that the document was either hastily drafted or that the authors deliberately distorted Stop Killing Games’ message. Among other things, they write that the initiative “includes a requirement to offer online services for as long as a consumer wants them, regardless of the price paid.” which appears nowhere on the citizens’ initiative or the Stop Killing Games website. In fact, it says in black and white that they are for the opposite: “We are in favor of publishers ending support for a game whenever they want.”
That said, the document also contains some more good arguments. In all, Video Games Europe lists 10 reasons why Stop Killing Games will not work, dividing them into implications for consumers, game developers and IP law, respectively.
Many of the arguments, however, undermine Video Games Europe’s own members. Not with words, but with actions.
A good example is The Crew 2. Like its predecessor, the game is primarily a single-player game, but it requires a constant Internet connection to function and has certain social elements. Although, according to Video Games Europe, it would require all sorts of technical and copyright sacrifices to make the game available in an offline version when support one day ends, this is nevertheless exactly what Ubisoft has promised. And others have done it before. Among others, Gran Turismo Sport can now be played offline, while Knockout City – a multiplayer game by Velan Studios – can be played via private servers.
Scott has a surprising answer: the vast majority of developers – including those of games where online elements are part of their structure – already indirectly meet the potential requirement for a playable offline version.
“Let’s say you’re developing a game, and it depends on this extra service that’s online. But as you develop it, that service goes down. You as the developer don’t want to have to stop all your work just because that particular service has a problem. In this case, a good practice is what is known as a local test environment. Which means it’s essentially a version of the game that’s on its own, so that if there are problems online, it doesn’t affect them. They can keep working on it. Just creating it could be almost completely compliant.”
Will it cost small developers? And what about the players?
It may seem ironic that the large lobbying organization Video Games Europe, whose members no doubt have enough resources to make offline versions of their older games – and have done so in several cases – argues that it may become too expensive to make online and live service games. But the organization also indirectly represents smaller developers through its member national industry associations.
In theory, it is conceivable that a small developer of, say, online games for mobile devices would have to spend precious man hours making their games available offline after shutdown. Similarly, smaller companies also spend – proportionately – more resources on GDP legislation than the big players, who are otherwise the primary targets of data protection law.
In response to this criticism, Scott says he is confident that the industry will find solutions. And that any challenges, all other things being equal, will be far in the future.
“Whatever happens, at best this is still years away. If there are any legal changes at all, the industry will pay a lot of attention to this. And the industry will probably come up with solutions, just like with the AVG. I think it could be a kind of gold rush for vendors to offer middleware solutions to small developers, provide software that complies with EU laws and at a reasonable price.”
One of the arguments that immediately seems most credible in Video Game Europe’s position paper is point seven. It argues that a private server version of a previous online game could lead to “community-supported versions of games that compete with official versions, potentially jeopardizing video game companies’ financial investments.”
Video Games Europe does not mention it, but it really has happened that games have returned from the dead in a new commercial release. One example is Defiance. The MMO game was released in 2013 for PC and console. In 2021, the game’s servers were shut down by then-rights holder Gamingo. The game went dark. But then the unexpected happened.
Publisher Fawkes Games announced in March 2025 that they had bought the rights to the game, and a month later the servers were available again on PC.
You can think what you want about the game’s former owners, Gamingo. The German game publisher has been accused of buying up MMO games, introducing a host of microtransactions and otherwise dropping the games once the player base was milked for every last penny. But wouldn’t it still have hurt their commercial rights – and made a sale to Fawkes Games more difficult – if Defiance had already been revived via a non-commercial version on private servers?
Scott disagrees, and to make his case, he turns one of Video Games Europe’s other criticisms against them.
“One thing I agreed with Video Games Europe on is that you have much less protection as a player once the game is in that state [offline of op privéservers speelbaar, maar niet officieel ondersteund]. There can be bugs. There may be security holes. If somebody wants to come in and write or say a lot of unpleasant things, there are no administrators to protect you from that. It becomes more of a niche and rough experience. So if the game were to come back under an official company, there’s staff monitoring it, there are administrators taking care of things, people fixing bugs, and so on. That in itself will have a lot of appeal.”
The games are coming back
As mentioned, the ultimate goal of Stop Killing Games is quite simple: they want legal measures to ensure that games that users have paid money for are still playable the day the developers have had enough of the game. Just as is the case with physical games for older PlayStations and Nintendo consoles, for example.
However, it is far from certain that this will be the outcome. Even if the European Citizens’ Initiative actually succeeds in collecting enough valid signatures. The process for citizens’ initiatives is long and complicated, and the European Commission is ultimately free not to implement measures and legislative proposals resulting from a citizens’ initiative.
But what is the minimum outcome that Stop Killing Games would still consider a victory? Scott has several suggestions.
“If video game regulations were treated more like laws for planned obsolescence, the game would not have to remain in working condition, but you – as a company – would have to add repair instructions to the customer as soon as you shut it down. It takes technical knowledge to deal with it, of course, but this includes things like network documentation, information about how the game is structured, and so on. As long as they give technically gifted people a fighting chance to somehow be able to keep the game, I think that would be a very acceptable compromise.”
Another outcome could be more transparency. Scott doesn’t have too high expectations on that particular point, however.
“I don’t think it will happen because I think the industry really doesn’t want it, and it’s not our main question, but it would be positive if there was a hard expiration date for games that require online connectivity. If the box or web page says, “this game will be discontinued in four years,” that might wake up customers. I think the industry, from a psychological standpoint, really relies on this being an unknown variable to the customer. Because if they know a game is ending, they’re less likely to buy it.”
But, of course, you can also dream big.
In recent years we have seen many new consumer-unfriendly practices. From cars whose features are locked if you don’t pay subscriptions, to printers that don’t print even if the cartridge is full of ink because you didn’t pay for a subscription.
So we asked Scott if he thinks Stop Killing Games could have a positive spillover effect on other consumer legislation.
“I don’t think directly, but if this were to succeed, it might encourage more customers or consumer protection groups to try to get more regulation of those things you’re talking about in other areas. Yes, it may spread, but I think that will be someone else’s job.” replies Ross Scott with a grin.
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