On March 31, 2024, Ubisoft flipped a switch and The Crew—a racing game 12 million people had bought—stopped working. Forever. The servers went dark. If you owned a physical disc, tough luck. If you'd paid $60 in 2014, too bad. The game you purchased was now a coaster.
That pissed off a YouTuber named Ross Scott enough that he started what became the largest consumer rights campaign in gaming history. By July 2025, 1.4 million people across Europe had signed a petition demanding publishers stop "killing" games they'd sold. The UK Parliament debated it. An EU Vice President backed it. And the gaming industry? They're terrified.
It's now 2026. The petition is being verified by EU authorities. The European Commission will have to respond—by law—sometime in the next few months. And depending on what they decide, the entire relationship between players and publishers could change.
Or it could all collapse into nothing.
Time to find out.
How We Got Here: The Crew That Broke the Camel's Back
The Crew wasn't the first game to get shut down. Hell, it wasn't even close.
Battleborn died in 2021. LawBreakers lasted barely a year. EA killed Anthem after dumping millions into it. Blizzard shut down the original Overwatch to force everyone onto Overwatch 2.
But The Crew was different for two reasons.
First: it was primarily a single-player game that required an internet connection. You couldn't play solo without Ubisoft's servers being online. An MMO this wasn't—it was DRM disguised as game design.
Second: Ross Scott had a platform and the patience to do something about it.
Scott runs a YouTube channel called Accursed Farms. He's best known for Freeman's Mind, where he voice-acts Gordon Freeman's inner thoughts while playing Half-Life. It's niche, it's weird, and he's been doing it for over a decade.
But Scott also cares—really cares—about game preservation. He'd talked about it for years. The Crew shutdown was the moment he stopped talking and started organizing.
On April 1, 2024—the day after The Crew's servers went dark—Scott released a video titled "The largest campaign ever to stop publishers destroying games."
That video launched Stop Killing Games.
What Stop Killing Games Actually Wants
Things get messy when critics—especially industry critics—start misrepresenting what the campaign actually wants.
What Stop Killing Games does NOT demand:
- Publishers keep servers running forever
- Companies give away source code
- Free ongoing support for decade-old games
What it DOES demand:
- Publishers provide an "end-of-life plan" before shutting down online-dependent games
- That plan could be: offline mode, private server tools, or any other method that lets players keep playing what they bought
- Transparency about whether a game can be permanently disabled at purchase
From the official European Citizens' Initiative petition text:
"This initiative calls to require publishers that sell or license videogames to consumers in the European Union 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."
That's it. Not "keep servers running." Not "give us everything for free." Just: don't sell us something, then remotely destroy it.
Rock Paper Shotgun analyzed 738 online-only games in May 2025 and found 68% were either unplayable or at risk of becoming so. That's over 500 games people paid for that no longer work or will stop working soon.
The Campaign Almost Died in Early 2025
By January 2025, the European Citizens' Initiative had stalled at around 450,000 signatures—less than halfway to the 1 million needed.
Scott uploaded a video in June expecting the campaign to fail. He said the problem "isn't getting gamers to care about games; it's getting people to care about anything."
Then something unexpected happened.
Jason Hall—better known as PirateSoftware—a Twitch streamer and former Blizzard developer, released a video in late 2024/early 2025 criticizing Stop Killing Games.
Hall's main arguments:
- The campaign was unrealistic and would hurt developers
- Maintaining server infrastructure forever is impossible
- Players don't understand how complex modern online games are
The video went viral. And signature growth tanked.
Scott tried reaching out to Hall multiple times for clarification. Hall refused.
On June 23, 2025, Scott released a response video calling out Hall for misrepresenting the campaign. He pointed out—again—that Stop Killing Games doesn't ask for infinite server support. It asks for a way to keep playing after official support ends.
Other YouTubers started piling on. Cr1TiKaL (MoistCr1TiKaL) made multiple videos defending Scott and criticizing Hall's takedown. PewDiePie, jacksepticeye, Asmongold, and xQc all voiced support.
Louis Rossmann—the right-to-repair activist who's fought Apple and John Deere over similar issues—backed the campaign publicly.
And then something hilarious happened: the Streisand Effect kicked in hard.
Within a week of Scott's response, signatures exploded. The campaign went from 500,000 signatures on June 26 to over 1 million by July 3.
PirateSoftware's attempt to kill the movement accidentally turbocharged it.
July 2025: The Turning Point
July 2, 2025: The UK Parliament petition hit 100,000 signatures, guaranteeing a parliamentary debate.
July 3, 2025: The EU petition crossed 1 million signatures.
Scott immediately cautioned that not all signatures would be valid—some would be bots, duplicates, or from non-EU citizens. He set a new target: 1.4 million to account for invalidation.
July 20, 2025: The campaign hit 1.4 million.
July 31, 2025: The petition closed with 1,448,270 total signatures.
Initial validation estimates suggested 97% were legitimate—far higher than anyone expected.
Nicolae Ștefănuță, Vice President of the European Parliament, signed the petition and posted on Instagram:
"I stand with the people who started this citizen initiative. I signed and will continue to help them. A game, once sold, belongs to the customer."
That's an EU Vice President publicly backing a consumer campaign against an industry worth billions. That doesn't happen often.
The Industry Fights Back
On July 5, 2025, Video Games Europe—a lobbying group representing major publishers including Ubisoft, EA, Activision Blizzard, and others—released a statement opposing Stop Killing Games.
Their argument:
"The decision to discontinue online services is multi-faceted, never taken lightly and must be an option for companies when an online experience is no longer commercially viable. Players are given fair notice of the prospective changes in accordance with consumer laws."
They warned that if the petition became law, it would:
- Create "significant engineering problems" for developers
- Undermine companies' ability to develop new games
- "Erode intellectual property rights"
- Be "prohibitively expensive"
Sergio Ferrera, an IP lawyer writing for GamesIndustry.biz, argued the petition "runs the risk of doing more damage than good" because converting server-dependent games to work offline involves "difficulty" with licensed content and proprietary middleware.
My problem with that argument: it assumes publishers build games without considering what happens when they shut down.
If you're making a game that requires your servers with no plan for what happens when they go offline, you've made a business decision—not hit an unavoidable technical problem.
Fan communities have proven this repeatedly. After Ubisoft killed The Crew, a fan project called The Crew Unlimited got it running again. EA shut down Battlefield 2142 servers in 2014; fans run them now. City of Heroes, Tabula Rasa, Star Wars Galaxies—all killed by publishers, all revived by communities.
The technical capability exists. The industry just doesn't want to provide it.
The Coalition of Cowards: Who's Actually Fighting This
Time to name names. The industry wants you to think this is just "business concerns." It's coordinated opposition funded by companies worth billions.
Video Games Europe isn't some neutral industry group. It's a lobbying organization bankrolled by:
- Ubisoft (the company that started this mess by killing The Crew)
- Electronic Arts (killed Anthem after two years, shut down dozens of games)
- Activision Blizzard (deleted the original Overwatch to force everyone onto Overwatch 2)
- Take-Two Interactive (parent company of Rockstar, which will absolutely kill GTA Online servers someday)
- Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft (all of whom have killed online games)
These companies pulled in a combined $50+ billion in revenue in 2024. They spend more on executive bonuses than it would cost to preserve every game they've ever killed. And they have the audacity to claim that providing offline modes is "prohibitively expensive."
Ubisoft alone made €2.3 billion in fiscal 2024. Their CEO took home €1.66 million. Preserving The Crew offline would cost maybe $500,000 in development time—that's 0.02% of their annual revenue. They spend more than that on coffee for their Paris headquarters.
That's a lie. A calculated, cynical lie designed to protect profit margins while pretending to care about technical feasibility.
What actually happened: Video Games Europe coordinated with individual publishers to submit near-identical talking points to the UK Parliament. Multiple MPs received letters with the exact same phrasing about "intellectual property concerns" and "engineering difficulties."
Grassroots industry concern? No. This is coordinated astroturfing—the kind of manufactured opposition you'd expect from tobacco companies in the 1990s, not an entertainment industry in 2025.
And the lawyers—oh, the lawyers came out swinging.
Sergio Ferrera, writing for GamesIndustry.biz (a site that depends on industry advertising for revenue), argued that Stop Killing Games would "undermine IP rights" and create "impossible technical challenges."
He specifically claimed that licensed content (like cars in racing games) makes offline modes impossible because licenses expire.
That's a lie by omission—the worst kind, because it sounds technical and credible to people who don't know better.
Licenses expiring is a problem publishers created by signing short-term deals instead of perpetual ones. Developers at Psyonix (Rocket League) have talked about negotiating perpetual music licenses specifically to avoid this issue. It's possible. Publishers just don't want to pay for it.
The kicker: when The Crew got shut down, fans patched out the licensed cars and got it working anyway. The "impossible technical challenge" took a modding community about six months to solve working in their spare time.
Publishers claim it's technically impossible. Modders prove it's technically trivial. The only thing stopping official preservation is corporate greed dressed up as engineering complexity.
So either:
- The world's largest publishers with billion-dollar budgets are less capable than unpaid fans working in their spare time, or
- They're deliberately misrepresenting the difficulty to protect a predatory business model
Spoiler: it's #2. They're not incompetent. They're dishonest.
The ESA (Entertainment Software Association) in the US hasn't officially commented on Stop Killing Games—too cowardly to take a public stance—but they've spent decades lobbying against consumer rights behind closed doors where journalists can't quote them. They fought right-to-repair laws. They oppose game preservation. They backed the DMCA provisions that make circumventing DRM illegal—even for games with dead servers.
When California passed its digital ownership disclosure law, the ESA didn't say a word publicly. But behind the scenes? They lobbied against it. We know because California lawmakers mentioned "industry pushback" when the bill was being debated.
What none of these companies will admit:
They're not scared of the engineering challenges. They're terrified of losing control—and more importantly, of players realizing how little publishers actually provide once a game launches.
If players can run private servers, publishers can't:
- Shut down old games to force purchases of sequels
- Control microtransaction economies
- Harvest player data
- Sunset games to reduce server costs while keeping the money from sales
Stop Killing Games threatens a business model built on planned obsolescence. And every company opposing it is protecting that model—while pretending they're worried about "technical feasibility."
My message to Ubisoft, EA, Activision, and every other publisher fighting this:
You made $50 billion last year. Ubisoft's CEO alone took home €1.66 million. You can afford to let people keep playing the games they bought.
And if you genuinely can't figure out how to provide offline modes or server tools—something unpaid modders accomplish in their spare time—then either your engineers are incompetent (they're not), or you're being deliberately deceptive about the complexity (you are).
Stop insulting our intelligence.
November 3, 2025: UK Parliament Debates It
The UK debate was... mixed.
On one side, MPs like Pam Cox (Colchester) argued forcefully:
"The Stop Killing Games movement highlights the growing frustration among players who see their purchases vanish. It is clear that digital ownership must be respected, and that publishers should look to provide routes for players to retain or repair games even if the official service support for products ends."
Henry Tufnell (Mid and South Pembrokeshire) cited The Crew, Anthem, Babylon's Fall, and LawBreakers as examples:
"Although I respect the Government's position, I cannot help but observe that what is happening in this space could be perceived as a breach of consumer protection under unfair trading regulations."
Ben Goldsborough (South Norfolk), a self-described lifelong gamer, gave an impassioned speech about how gaming is personal—"a memory, an identity and a community"—and argued the £7.6 billion UK gaming industry deserves stronger consumer protections.
On the other side: Stephanie Peacock, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, delivered the government's response.
The short version: No.
The longer version:
"Online video games are often dynamic, interactive services—not static products—and maintaining online services requires substantial investment over years or even decades. Games are more complex than ever before to develop and maintain, with the largest exceeding the budget of a modern Hollywood blockbuster."
In other words: "We've decided corporate profits matter more than consumer rights, and we're hiding behind complexity to avoid saying that out loud."
The UK government reiterated it has "no plans to amend consumer law on digital obsolescence."
Push Square's headline summed it up: "The UK Government Shoots Down 'Stop Killing Games' Campaign in Official Debate."
One commenter on VGC nailed it:
"Enforcing a Britcard and regulations that no one asked for, and not advocating for something people explicitly want. Useless government."
The UK debate didn't result in legislation. But it did something important: it forced politicians to go on record.
Now we know exactly which MPs support player rights and which ones prioritize publisher profits.
Where Things Stand in 2026
As of early January 2026, the status:
EU Petition:
- 1,448,270 signatures submitted
- 689,035 verified so far (as of October 30, 2025, per PC Gamer)
- Only 3% invalidated—way better than expected
- Verification process takes 3 months (wraps up by January 2026)
- Once verified, organizers personally deliver it to the European Commission
- Commission has 6 months to respond after submission
What happens next (EU):
- Commission representatives meet with Scott and the organizing team
- European Parliament holds public hearings
- Commission issues formal response—either proposing legislation or explaining why they won't
- If they propose legislation, it goes through the full EU lawmaking process
UK Status:
- Debate happened, government said no
- Campaign is essentially dead in the UK unless public pressure forces a reversal
Other Developments:
- California passed a law (effective January 1, 2025) requiring clear disclosure that digital purchases are licenses, not ownership
- Steam added disclaimers: "A purchase of a digital product grants a license for the product on Steam."
- GOG posted a banner: "GOG's offline game installers cannot be taken away."
- Ubisoft announced The Crew 2 and Motorfest would get offline modes (damage control)
The Complications Nobody Talks About
There's a transparency complaint filed against the EU petition in July 2025, accusing the campaign of failing to "provide clear, accurate and comprehensive information on the sources of funding for the initiative exceeding €500 per sponsor."
Scott addressed this, saying the campaign is funded by small donations and has no corporate backing. But the complaint exists, and it could complicate things.
There's also a cryptocurrency scam using the Stop Killing Games name. Scott publicly warned people it has nothing to do with the campaign. But scammers attaching themselves to the movement creates perception problems.
And there's the question of what legislation would actually look like.
The campaign is deliberately vague about specifics because it's a petition, not a draft law. That's smart politically—it lets lawmakers figure out implementation. But it also gives critics ammunition to claim it's "unrealistic" or "unworkable."
Why Publishers Are Actually Scared
If Stop Killing Games becomes law in the EU, publishers face three bad options:
Option 1: Provide offline modes or private server tools
- Costs money to develop
- Reduces control over the game
- Players might prefer fan servers over official ones
Option 2: Stop selling games in the EU
- Lose access to a 450 million person market
- Politically impossible for major publishers
Option 3: Change how they design games globally
- If EU law requires offline functionality, easier to build it everywhere than maintain separate versions
- This is what happened with GDPR—EU privacy rules became de facto global standards
Option 3 is what terrifies them.
If Stop Killing Games forces publishers to design games with end-of-life plans from the start, it changes the entire live-service model. You can't build a game around planned obsolescence if the law requires you to make it work after you abandon it.
That's why Video Games Europe is lobbying against it. That's why IP lawyers are writing op-eds warning of "unintended consequences."
The gaming industry has spent 15 years training players to accept that "buying" digital games means renting a license that can be revoked. Stop Killing Games challenges that entire framework.
And if it succeeds in Europe, other regions might follow.
The Voices You Don't Hear
Most coverage focuses on Ross Scott and big YouTubers. But there are thousands of regular players whose stories don't make headlines.
Someone on the UK Parliament Hansard transcript talked about playing Victoria II, Cities: Skylines, and Oddworld—games that still work because they're not server-dependent.
Another MP mentioned constituents who wrote letters about losing access to games their kids grew up playing.
These aren't just "gamers mad about video games." These are people who paid money for something and watched it get taken away.
What bugs me: when Netflix removes a show, people get upset but understand it's a subscription service. When Spotify loses an album, same thing.
But when you buy a $60 physical disc for The Crew, stick it in your console, and get an error message saying the game is permanently unplayable... that's different. That feels like theft.
Ubisoft's Director of Subscriptions, Philippe Tremblay, said in 2024 that gamers need to "get comfortable" with not owning their games—a statement so nakedly contemptuous of customers that it became a rallying cry for the entire preservation movement.
And that quote—more than anything else—crystallizes why Stop Killing Games resonates.
People don't want to "get comfortable" with losing things they bought. They want the things they bought to keep working.
My Take: This Could Go Either Way
I'm cautiously optimistic, but I'm not naive.
The EU has a track record of pushing back against tech companies. GDPR forced global privacy changes. The Digital Markets Act is breaking up app store monopolies. The EU doesn't roll over for corporate lobbying the way the US and UK do.
But "could result in legislation" and "will result in legislation" are very different.
The gaming industry has convinced a generation of players that buying a game means renting a license that can be revoked at will. Stop Killing Games is the first time that scam has faced organized resistance at the regulatory level.
The Commission might respond with: "We appreciate the concern, but existing consumer protection laws are adequate." That's what the UK did.
Or they might propose watered-down rules that technically address the petition but don't actually change anything. "Publishers must disclose that games may be disabled" isn't the same as "publishers must provide a way to keep playing."
The best-case scenario? The EU passes real legislation requiring end-of-life plans for online-dependent games sold in Europe. That becomes the global standard because it's easier to build it everywhere than maintain separate versions.
The worst-case? The petition gets acknowledged, nothing changes, and publishers keep killing games whenever it's convenient.
What happens depends on two things:
1. Sustained pressure. If the gaming community stays loud through 2026, lawmakers will feel pressure to act. If everyone forgets about it after the initial excitement, it dies.
2. Whether the Commission sees this as consumer rights or industry regulation. If they frame it as protecting consumers, Stop Killing Games wins. If they frame it as burdening developers, publishers win.
What You Can Do in 2026
The petition is closed, so you can't sign anymore. But the fight isn't over.
Follow the campaign: stopkillinggames.com will post updates as verification completes and the Commission responds.
Contact your MEPs (if you're in the EU) and tell them you support Stop Killing Games. Politicians respond to constituent pressure.
Spread the word. The more people know about this, the harder it is for the Commission to ignore it.
Support preservation efforts. GOG's Preservation Program, fan server projects, and archival initiatives all contribute to keeping games alive.
Vote with your wallet. Support games and developers that respect ownership. Avoid always-online DRM when alternatives exist.
The Bottom Line
Stop Killing Games is the most successful consumer rights campaign in gaming history by signature count alone. 1.4 million people across Europe demanded that publishers stop destroying games they've sold.
Whether it results in actual change depends on what happens in the next six months.
The European Commission will have to respond by mid-2026. They could propose legislation. They could decline to act. They could punt it to member states.
But they have to respond. And that's already more than most gaming campaigns achieve.
For now, we wait. And we watch.
Because if Stop Killing Games succeeds, it changes everything. And if it fails, we'll know exactly how little power players have when publishers decide to take away the games we bought.
Sources: Stop Killing Games official website, European Citizens' Initiative database, Wikipedia (Stop Killing Games), UK Parliament Hansard transcripts (November 3, 2025), Video Games Europe statements, Video Games Europe membership roster, company financial reports (Ubisoft FY2024, EA FY2024, Activision Blizzard/Microsoft Gaming FY2024), GamesIndustry.biz op-eds, California AB 2426 legislative history, ESA policy positions on DMCA and right-to-repair, Euronews, PC Gamer, VGC, Push Square, Windows Central, Dexerto, GosuGamers, Rock Paper Shotgun, GamingOnLinux, Eneba, Parliament Politics Magazine, YouTube channels (Ross Scott/Accursed Farms, Cr1TiKaL, PirateSoftware, PewDiePie, jacksepticeye, Asmongold, xQc), Louis Rossmann statements, Insider Gaming, 80.lv, ScreenHub, The Game Post, Spilled, Northeastern University interviews