Stop Killing Games: European Citizen's Initiative seeks 1 million signatures to keep video games alive

As predicted in our previous article on the Stop Killing Games ("SKG") petition earlier this year, the  dissolution of Parliament ahead of the UK general election in July - which in turn scuppered gamers' hopes of accruing enough signatures to trigger Parliament's consideration of the SKG petition - was certainly not the last we would be hearing of the SKG campaign and its videogame preservation mission. 

By way of brief recap, the SKG campaign is dedicated to ending the practice of publishers "destroying" videogames that they have sold to customers. Many modern videogames require users to connect to the internet in order to play, and when support for such videogames ends, for example, due to excessively costly server maintenance, the functionality of these videogames is often deprecated to an extent that many users consider that the games are no longer “playable”. 

The SKG group's latest effort to prevent such practices is to propose a new law by way of a European Citizens' Initiative ("ECI"). The ECI is a mechanism by which European citizens can have greater influence in shaping EU policies, by calling on the European Commission to propose new EU legislation on a relevant issue. However, for any such initiative to be considered by the European Commission, it must be signed by 1 million EU citizens across at least 7 different EU countries. In addition, each country has a minimum threshold that must be met in order for the signatures in that country to be counted as part of the required support (with the threshold corresponding to the number of Members of the European Parliament elected in each Member State, multiplied by the total number of Members of the European Parliament). It is also important to note that achieving the necessary threshold does not automatically mean that the initiative will become law - it will just be put before the European Commission for consideration.

If it obtains the requisite support, the SKG ECI is seeking to oblige the European Commission to consider making it illegal for publishers to remotely disable videogames "before providing reasonable means to continue functioning of said videogames without the involvement from the side of the publisher". Crucially, the initiative makes clear that it is not: (i) seeking to acquire ownership, intellectual property rights or monetisation rights of such videogames; and (ii) expecting any legislation to require the publisher to provide resources for such videogames after they discontinue it (while still leaving it in a state of reasonable functionality / playability). 

The initiative states that it invokes Article 17(1) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, pursuant to which "no one may be deprived of his or her possessions, except in the public interest and in the cases and under the conditions provided for by law, subject to fair compensation being paid in good time for their loss." SKG claim that the practice of discontinuing access to videogames strips European consumers of their property (i.e. the videogames) by removing post-purchase access to their product after an unclear amount of time. 

As of writing this article, the initiative has over 155,000 signatories across 27 European countries. Despite being a considerable distance from the threshold, the initiative has only been online for 6 days and will remain open until 31 July 2025. This is uncharted territory for the videogame industry and, if successful, consideration of SKG's initiative by the European Commission would invariably lead to some enticing legal analysis as regards the balancing of consumer rights and protections with videogame publishers' rights, particularly intellectual property rights. We will be monitoring the signatory count closely throughout the year and look forward to reporting on any further developments.