Today is the day to stop killing games!

We would like to share the amazing news that the European Citizen initiative created by the Stop killing games community has reached the required threshold of 1 million signatures across Europe! And you can still add your signature until the end of the month!

At the European Pirate Party, defending digital rights is at the heart of our mission. We believe that when people purchase a videogame, they should be guaranteed the right to use it – not left at the mercy of arbitrary shutdowns by publishers. Consumers should not be treated as renters of entertainment they’ve paid for. That’s why we decided to endorse the  Initiative after it launched.

As we noted before, this campaign calls for clear legal obligations: once a game is sold, it must remain in a playable state, even if the publisher steps away. No one should wake up to find their purchased game disabled by a remote switch. We find this unacceptable. We’re encouraged by the grassroots energy behind this effort. From independent developers to influential streamers like Ross Scott, who spearheaded the push, to public figures like PewDiePie, who has previously expressed support for Pirate Party values – this is a powerful coalition of gamers, creators, and digital freedom advocates.

While it seemed unclear for months if the initiative would gather enough signatures before the deadline, it suddenly gathered a huge wave of support in the last week, and today it reached the target of 1 million signatures!  At this point it is clear that the European Union will have to address the initiative, and the more signatures we get above the required threshold the bigger the chance that they will decide to actually address the problem with games being killed by the publishers. You can easily see the current numbers of signatures with this tracker.

Let’s further ensure that the voices of European gamers and citizens are heard loud and clear in Brussels! Let’s protect digital ownership! Let’s defend access! Let’s stop the silent destruction of the digital heritage!

Sign the European citizens inititative here: https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home

If you are a UK  citizen there’s a separate petition there: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/702074/

If you want to join the Stop killing games community for the end stretch of the campaign, they have a lovely discord server that you can check out.