With a late rush of signatures since late May, the Stop Killing Games at the European Citizen's Initiative has reached it's minimum goal of 1M signatures, meaning if all are valid then it will get debated in the European commission how to handle the issue effectively, meaning the chances are very high to result into a law protecting videogames and forbidding publishers to make games someone bought unusable like Ubisoft did with The Crew, which started the initiative in the first place.

However, like I said, this is just the minimum goal and more are needed to ensure invalid signatures don't bring the total back down to under 1M, so if you live in the EU and haven't signed the petition yet, now's the time to do it.

Also if you live in France or the UK, they also have additional petitions in those countries concerning the same issue.

https://www.stopkillinggames.com/

I had not heard of this before- signed now (which is super easy - barely an inconvenience). Actually a really good EU feature. It says an initiative needs to meet 1 million in total, but also a minimum threshold in seven countries, so together with the high probability of invalid signatures being subtracted it is still a good idea to sign to bolster the number beyond the bare minimum of 1 million.

Well, turns out PewDiePie is mobilizing his fans to sign the initiative:

No wonder the number of signatures is rising pretty fast these last few days, having such a YouTube heavyweight supporting the initiative is certainly helping it a lot.

The UK leaving the EU really should have decreased the amount of signatures needed for stuff like this, Lol.

Did my part. Hadn't signed yet, so cheers for the link.

Good. It really should be legally required that any online-only game must, if the developer/publisher ceases support, make it to where the game remains functional and playable indefinitely without their support. They shouldn't be allowed to just make a game vanish into oblivion with the flip of a switch.

This is why I love the EU. Democratization of issues like this has proven to be highly beneficial for the entire planet.

This has potential to do good but there are genuine concerns since something like the recent Flight Simulator games are just not feasible without enough infrastructure to handle the high amount of data streaming. Flight Simulator 2020 for example has literal petabytes of data involved so unless Microsoft is expected to keep the game running for the rest of time eventually they'll stop supporting it leaving it unplayable. They could severely gimp the game and let it remain in that form but that wouldn't truly be preserving it.

In general games where aspects of them require things like external hardware could be at risk if a poorly written law gets passed so instead I'd prefer if it was required for games with an expiration date to openly disclose that and give a lifespan expectation from the get go for example over 10 years so people know what they're buying into and can request refunds if it gets shut down before then. I'm not a fan of governments regulating art but that seems like it could be a good solution that benefits consumers without overly burdening game developers. Temporary experiences happen with all sorts of things and not just video games so I don't think it's inherently a bad thing but stuff like The Crew situation is definitely shite. If not governments platforms like Steam should step in and require something like the above.

I'll sign one when it gets lawmakers to force companies to have patch reversals, perhaps you play offline or something but I honestly don't care if a MP game dies.

I have my doubts about this actually doing anything even if it passes, but one can hope. Good stuff, although I do have some concerns as well.

Simply making server software available and making it possible for clients to connect to other servers should tackle a lot of the issues.