Stop Killing Games: EU and UK petitions reach signatory milestones

The Stop Killing Games (SKG) EU petition has surpassed the requisite signatory threshold for it to be considered by the European Commission - a crucial milestone in its efforts to propose a new law by way of a European Citizens’ Initiative. To briefly recap, the purpose of the SKG initiative is to end the practice of publishers deprecating videogames that they have sold to customers. As many modern videogames are designed to rely on servers that the publisher controls in order for the game to remain functional, when publishers make the decision to shut down the game’s servers, it renders the game unplayable. The SKG petition therefore seeks to prevent such remote disabling of videogames and calls to require publishers that sell or licence videogames to consumers in the European Union (or related features and assets for the videogames they operate) to leave said videogames in a playable state. The initiative does not seek to acquire any ownership of such videogames, associated IP rights or monetisation rights, nor does it expect publishers to provide resources for such videogames once they discontinue them while leaving them in a reasonably functional state. 

When we last reported on the EU petition in our article last year, it had garnered over 155,000 signatories; however, as of writing this article, it has now exceeded 1.4 million signatures across 27 European countries. Now that the EU petition has been signed by more than 1 million EU citizens (and from at least 7 different EU countries that have each met the respective minimum thresholds), the statements of support must be grouped and sent for verification to the responsible authorities in each EU country (it is worth noting that the organisers of the EU petition set the now achieved goal of 1.4 million signatures to cater for any statements of support that might be invalidated by such responsible authorities during this verification process). Provided that the EU initiative passes this verification process, the examination phase will commence, consisting of: (i) within 1 month of submission of the initiative, the European Commission and the representatives of the EU initiative meeting to explain the issues raised in more detail; (ii) within 3 months of submission of the EU initiative, the representatives of the EU initiative having the opportunity to present at a public hearing at the European Parliament (with the European Parliament having the option to hold a debate in a plenary session that could lead to it adopting a resolution related to the issue); and (iii) within 6 months of submission of the EU initiative, the European Commission spelling out what action (if any) it will propose in response to the EU initiative (along with any reasons for taking (or not taking) action). In the event the European Commission considers legislation as a suitable response to the EU initiative, it will initiate preparing a formal proposal that, once adopted by the European Commission, will be submitted to the European Parliament and the European Council, which will need to adopt it for it to become law.

Following this milestone, Video Games Europe (VGE) (a trade association that represents the interests of Europe’s (and the world’s) leading game publishers and developers) released a statement on 4 July 2025 pushing back against the SKG initiative, expressing that 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”. In addition, VGE’s statement highlights that the SKG initiative’s “proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create”, and that private servers are not always a viable option as “the protections… put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist and would leave rights holders liable”. Despite this, VGE denotes that it is open to discussing its position “with policy makers and those who have led the European Citizens’ Initiative in the coming months”. However, on 13 July 2025, Nicolae Ștefănuță (a Vice President of the European Parliament) publicly voiced his support for the SKG initiative in a social media post in which he confirmed that he signed the EU petition and will continue to stand with the individuals that started the initiative. 

As we also reported in our first article on the SKG initiative, a similar UK petition had previously surpassed the 10,000 signatories threshold that triggered a response from the UK government, in which it confirmed that there were no plans to amend UK consumer law on disabling videogames and that “those selling games must comply with existing requirements in consumer law”. However, the UK petition has now passed the 100,000 signatories threshold (with nearly 190,000 signatories as of writing this article) which triggers UK Parliament’s consideration of the petition for debate.

With both the UK and EU petitions now surpassing key thresholds, the SKG initiative has entered a pivotal phase. As the verification and examination processes unfold, we will continue to monitor developments closely and provide updates on any legislative or regulatory outcomes that may impact digital consumer rights, game publishers, and the broader gaming industry at large.