Publishers Are Killing Our Games — 1 Million+ Gamers Unite to Stop Them

[00:00] Michael
Have you ever bought a video game only to have it become completely unplayable just later down the line? Well, you’re not alone. This is a growing problem. But there is a campaign that is trying to stop it. We’re going to talk about that because there’s some really good news about it. Traditionally, video games were sold as physical products like a book or a movie. You bought the game and it was yours to play for as much as you wanted to, provided that your machine that you built it on, like a console or a PC or whatever you played it on, as long as that kept running, you would be able to play it forever, theoretically. But increasingly, games require an Internet connection to function, even for single player games. This means that the publisher, not the player, has control over whether or not the game is even playable.

[00:41]
And last year, Ubisoft shut down the service for the game called The Crew. So even if you bought the game, can’t play it anymore. In fact, some people have reported that it’s being removed from their library entirely as in they’re not even allowed to see it in their library. So The Crew had millions of players. It wasn’t that old of a game either. Sadly, this isn’t the first time this has happened, and it likely won’t be the last because this has become a growing trend, especially among AAA titles. Thankfully, we have someone trying to do something about it. Ross Scott from the Accursed Farms YouTube channel has a campaign called Stop Killing Games, and this is to push governments to take action. This campaign argues that shutting down games like The Crew is unfair to consumers and hurts the preservation of video games as a whole.

[01:27]
This initiative started efforts in multiple regions around the world with the EU and the UK efforts probably being the most important. Now that you know what Stop Killing Games is, I have some awesome news. The Stop Killing Games petition has scorched past the one million signatures that it needed to get attention from the European Commission. And it’s actually in a very quick recovery. But the organizer, Ross Scott, says that the headline number might not be real. So the final sprint is still on. Just a couple of weeks ago, it looked very bleak for the project, but recently it had a resurgence due to some new information coming out about the initiative. Really, it was an accidently fueled by another YouTuber who kind of caused some drama in the whole situation.

[02:11]
The quick overview of that drama was that the streamer, PirateSoftware, was accused of spreading misinformation about the initiative. And as a last ditch effort, Ross decided to just address the claims made by PirateSoftware in a video. And from there, it spiked signups by tens of thousands. There’s a lot of people making videos about this drama. So if you’d like to know more about that stuff, you can go check out those videos. But the gist of the drama is that Pirate Software misinterpreted what the initiative was about and was pretty aggressive about his opinion. And when the details were clarified, well, the drama escalated. Overall, this might have helped the initiative to get where they wanted to go. But I’m sure they would have probably preferred to avoid any drama.

[02:54]
Alright. So what does hitting one million signatures do? Well, it obligates the European Commission to respond. But there’s a potential issue because some of the signatures might be fake or they might be voided. For example, typos void signatures automatically. They want to get to a 40 percent safety buffer to offset the issue. And reports say that EU officials routinely strike 10 percent to 20 percent of entries during the verification process of these kinds of campaigns. So the team is targeting one point four million to hopefully avoid any of those kinds of invalidations. The deadline to get a signature is coming up very soon. So if you wanted to count the count locks on July 31st.

[03:36]
Another issue is that Ross said that the surge of spoofed and botted names has has him in a kind of a fog of sorts. He also clarifies that something is very important is that it’s not a change.org petition. If you do this and you sign it and it’s not real, it’s actually a crime. So it appears the EU also takes this very seriously and fake entries risk being handed to Europol, Interpol or the FBI once the audit starts. So if you are not in the EU, do not sign the initiative. Once the campaign ends, the legit signatures will remain valid. But the illusion of success could actually stall momentum. So again, if you haven’t signed and want to and are in a country that is valid to sign it, then do that because we shouldn’t we shouldn’t assume that hitting the first threshold will be enough because it might not be.

[04:29]
Also, there are some tech hiccups for some people in Italy and also in Belgium reporting that digital ID logins were failing. So the alternative is to use manual PDF form or just try later. Apparently both countries are aware of the issue and are addressing it. So you could just try later or you could do the manual way. And if you want to do the manual way, there’s a step by step instructions guide on the campaign website. Also across the pond, as they say, the UK petition blew past the 100,000 threshold, but similar concerns exist for that campaign, too. So extra names are always welcome or padding. Also, it looks like someone is making a rogue cryptocurrency for this like a stop killing games cryptocurrency that’s not a real one.

[05:13]
It’s not official. And it’s clearly just trying to make a quick buck on the momentum. So be sure to avoid that. But anyway, if you’re an EU citizen, sign your name at stopkillinggames.com if you agree with the initiative. I think this is really good because the idea that a company can just basically perpetually rent something and then take it away at any point because they call it buying. They’re saying that you’re buying it, but all of a sudden they can just pull it away at any time for basically no reason. Some game companies like I’m pretty sure Blizzard was one of them that had a note in their terms of service that says they can remove access from you for no reason at all.

[05:53]
And that’s that’s a bit sketch. So either tell me I’m not buying it, I’m renting it or let me actually have it when I buy it. It’s also important to note that they’re not saying that this initiative is not saying that you have to have the games working exactly as they were for the entire period, like forever, because that’s not really practical, because if it’s an online service game, then they really they would have to have the servers exist forever. And that’s just not that’s not practical at all. So it’s just a minimum functional state is what they’re looking for. And I think that’s totally reasonable. So if you are in the EU and you want to sign it, be sure to do so before July 31st. If you’re in the UK, you can add your name to the parliament petition.

[06:33]
And if you aren’t in the EU or the UK, don’t sign because that could be bad. I just don’t. With that said, for those in relevant countries, links below. Let’s keep games we paid for, playable.