It’s available as an official European Citizens’ Initiative Proposal.
Deadline: 31/07/2025
Edit: Swapped the links to direct straight to the initiative page.
Is that page broken or something? I can’t do anything.
I would love to sign this but I’m in the UK. I’ll spread the word instead!
Without using any videos, explain to me what this is.
Short version: it’s a campaign to force publishers to provide some way to play online only games after they decide to shut down the servers. That or letting us know, by law, that games can be killed without repercussion. It’s not about forcing publishers to keep the servers alive forever if that’s what you’re wondering.
Long version: check out the official website for the Stop Killing Games campaign. It has FAQ with all the important info.
Would this include the availability of playing single player offline games without the need to log in to different accounts and signing in to third party clients? That shit makes me completely crazy. I just want to build a pretty little city all by myself, why in the world would I need to be online and sign into shit for that.
Not really. This isn’t about completely preventing publishers from adding account systems etc. (even if that would be ideal), it’s about publishers removing your ability to play games after they the shut down the servers. The former would hopefully be a side effect of a potential law change/ruling but the main point is keeping games playable after the official support ends.
In your example it could be removal of the sign in requirement once the account system is down but not necessarily preventing them from existing in the first place.
Oh holy hell that’s a good idea. I’m not a citizen of EU, but I am currently a working resident. Would my name qualify for this?
Unfortunately not, initiatives can only be signed by EU citizens. For this specific campaign you can help by spreading the word, besides that you can also check the “Take Action” tab on the site I linked previously - there are multiple campaigns started in various countries so you might be able to help with one of those.
Takes less than a minute to fill out. If you’re a citizen of the EU, please take a few seconds and sign this.
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.
The initiative does not seek to acquire ownership of said videogames, associated intellectual rights or monetization rights, neither does it expect the publisher to provide resources for the said videogame once they discontinue it while leaving it in a reasonably functional (playable) state.
Already signed it. Took about two seconds thanks to eID.
Yeah it was very easy actually. Though fair warning to people who are sensitive to flashing lights: after logging in with DigiD (Netherlands) my screen went full strobe mode. Looked like multiple pages loading in quick succession with different background colours before finally landing on the success screen.
I had the exact opposite experience! I went through a lengthy process of signing up for and activating the weird nonstandard eID that most places don’t accept over the normal one I already have and use for everything, the only one they supported, only to be told I can’t use it without manually contacting the company, have them invalidate my activation and then go into some office to get manually re-activated.
As with everything in the EU, eId needs to be implemented separately by 27 member states and some states do it better than others. I am just lucky to live in a state that does e-government quite well all things considered.
