“Stop Killing Games” is a consumer movement started to challenge the legality of publishers destroying video games they have sold to customers. An increasing number of video games are sold effectively as goods - with no stated expiration date - but designed to be completely unplayable as soon as support from the publisher ends. This practice is a form of planned obsolescence and is not only detrimental to customers, but makes preservation effectively impossible. Furthermore, the legality of this practice is largely untested in many countries.
I believe in the mission of Stop Killing Games, and there is a petition to have the EU do something about it. If it can get enough signatures, there’s a high chance the EU will pass laws requiring end of life plans for games people buy.
It currently only has about 454,000 of the 1,000,000 petitions required with a deadline of July 31st. Unfortunately, I do not live in the EU. If you are a citizen of an EU country, please sign the petition. Either way, please share the petition with others. I would really like to see the petition succeed.
The Stop Killing Games movement has been spearheaded by Ross, who runs the Accursed Farm YouTube channel. He’s explored many avenues to prevent games from being destroyed. Unfortunately, this petition is the last possible and best chance that we can do as the general public (short of a completely new campaign).
If you are interested in learning more, Ross recently did a video to clear up some misunderstandings about the campaign that have been perpetuated by a particular content creator with more exposure as well as explain the reasons for why this is the last chance to do anything for the movement:
Thanks for sharing this! I was initially briefly introduced to the initiative via the push back from that ‘particular content creator’, and with that most of what I knew was misinformation. It’s unfortunate that the movement hasn’t been doing well because of all the misunderstandings, but after this video, I’ve seen at least one other larger content creator make a video in support, so hopefully there’s still a chance.
It’s kinda sad that now Ross has finally embraced the “drama” and responded directly to the misinformation the movement is now being picked up by a bunch of larger content creators…
Maybe I am just brainwashed, but I think it is okay to buy a thing that will not exist forever as long as you know that beforehand? And as far as online-required games are concerned, it feels like it’s always been a given?
If I buy a food, as long as it was good at the time of sale, I know I am on the clock and when time runs out that food better be eaten and gone or it will go bad and I can no longer eat it. If an artist wants to sell me a piece of art that will expire and I will lose access and I agree to it, I think that is okay? I am capable of agreeing to that exchange in good conscience. I can totally see those terms and think them ludicrous and reject it too, that is also fine. As long as you know the terms before making a decision on whether to accept/reject the contract.
I guess my question is, why do people think it is good to enact laws for this case? Is the narrowness of the target being games just because it is legally easier? Can we really properly legally distinguish video games from software as a whole? Maybe when you buy a product in general you should be guarantied some amount of time it’ll be usable and it should be super visible? Maybe it hasn’t been obvious enough? Even if the number is 0, you should know that ahead of time? If the company goes out of business / disappears I guess you’re out of luck no matter what the contract was? I’ve thought about this kind of stuff before but it is tricky to put into words… I do believe in people voting with their wallets, but I guess it’d be tricky to know what to trust for new companies/products.
I am not saying the movement shouldn’t exist or people shouldn’t vote for it or anything of the sort, this is just my personal thoughts and I’d love to hear other perspectives and thoughts. If people vote for it and it goes through, I think that’s super cool, people must feel really strongly about it and I just don’t get it yet! I am also in the US where law-wise software purchases are for licenses and not actual products, so maybe this is also affecting my mental models.
Sorry for the word wall/salad and no hostility/negativity intended. I am open to ideas.
Some of your questions are covered in Ross’s video and in the initiative’s FAQ, but I’ll briefly address this, which I think is a misconception of the movement.
To be clear, the initiative doesn’t make the assertion that games should exist forever:
Q: Aren’t you asking companies to support games forever? Isn’t that unrealistic? A: No, we are not asking that at all. We are in favor of publishers ending support for a game whenever they choose. What we are asking for is that they implement an end-of-life plan to modify or patch the game so that it can run on customer systems with no further support from the company being necessary. We agree that it is unrealistic to expect companies to support games indefinitely and do not advocate for that in any way. […]
As for how the games are sold exactly, the ambiguity is the problem. They’re often advertised like goods that are sold instead of goods that you license or rent. Louis Rossman also covers this a bit in his video about the initiative, where he mentions a few things, such as:
Game stores usually say “purchase” instead of “lease” or “rent”, like on Steam, which misrepresents what you are buying.
The licenses games are sold under can be revoked for any reason at any point in time. Usually, for a lease or a rental of some other product, you have some consumer protections concerning the length of the license or rental that was agreed to at the point of purchase (like you suggested).
I did watch the video and read through the FAQ for sure, guess I didn’t glean as much as I’d hoped!
Ah yeah, I didn’t mean forever forever, that was just poor word choice on my part, sorry. I totally get that the initiative isn’t that, it’s just at the time of game support EOL. In my head it’s just what people want so they can play the games at any time so I said that, but I get that that isn’t the goal for Ross. Though I also know people will do that part themselves if the company provides enough for the game to run after they’re done supporting it haha. Not all of the questions are about the initiave directly, some of it is just around the topic itself, my bad for not making it clear.
Here in California we did recently get AB 2426: Consumer protection: false advertising: digital goods. | Digital Democracy passed to make the wording clearer on purchasing licenses vs goods and this I believe is great. I can absolutely believe that a lot of people don’t understand the difference between a software license and an owned product and such, so hopefully that will help some.
EDIT: Maybe I am too anti-law/anti-restriction, but I want people to have as many freedoms as possible, and on the face of it this feels like a restriction that hurts creativity in some way? Maybe I’m looking at it wrong, but I do want artists/creators to be able to make things that go away, even if they’re paid goods. I just want the consumer to be informed about what the transaction is so they know if they want to participate in it or not. I get why people in general want game preservation, but I don’t know if it’s worth the cost I suppose.
Just speaking personally: I disagree with creations being made artificially scarce. Doing so robs people of the chance to experience that art as they discover it. Once a metaphorical window closes, then that possible experience is gone. In all mediums, art does not inherently devalue with time, quite often it stands up to it. And a big part of the creative process is making that art and putting it out there; letting it be experienced by people.
Video games are also unique in that regard because there is no natural shelf life to the games themselves. The primary limiter is hardware and even that isn’t uniform. Some games never truly lost popularity, others may grow more popular over time, and some don’t see any meaningful attention unless it becomes a viral hit or something like that. And of course things like speed running and modding allow new creativity to be injected back into the games and can make them viable in new ways to even more people.
That makes sense, I think many multiplayer experiences aren’t built to have an end. But I can imagine the possibility of someone making an MMO where the story revolves around the world being perpetually in danger and those dangers get more powerful over time. The game will only exist as long as people are there to sustain it, and once they fail, it is meant to go away. It’s not about scarcity; it’s about impermanence, the sadness of loss, the overbearing weight and finality of death. If that was the vision, then I can’t imagine there being any long-term playable version that wouldn’t compromise it.
My brain seems to always goes to edge cases first. And this kind of art is something I don’t want to go away as an avenue of expression. In a similar vein; if someone wants to make a robot that throws itself into lava, if someone wants to make a canvas that evaporates, if someone wants to make a game that deletes itself. I think these are powerful ideas, and even though they themselves don’t last, their history can.
The games people are thinking of when thinking of the initiative aren’t this; it’s game companies who don’t want people playing their games anymore because it’ll compete with future games / more lucrative games, it’s game companies who don’t want to spend money/time to make them self-hostable, it’s game companies who don’t wanna share any scrap of how the internals work, etc. They don’t care about the vision, they care about $$$.
I just hope we can find some way to distinguish the intent, finding a happy medium to avoid being either be too lenient as to become useless or too restrictive as to become stifling.
Maybe I’m just blind and/or missed something then! I could swear I looked through the petitions and the FAQ and all of that and didn’t see a bit of a mention of this. But if so, that’s great
Right now, most game stores “sell” games, but actually license them instead. And they do so under terms that are incredibly hostile to consumers, saying things like the license can be revoked at any time for any reason or even no reason at all. These kinds of terms are common in the video game industry.
It’s pretty rare for games to be designed specifically to be destroyed. However, I don’t think it’s okay to say “Well, we have to allow this edge case, so it’s okay to keep the status quo of allowing the sale of all games under these incredibly hostile terms”, because I think there’s room to address the main problem while still allowing for this artistic freedom.
Also, I’d like to suggest that if the work of art is designed specifically to destroy itself, then it’s different from someone remotely disabling some work of art for any reason, and the initiative specifically calls out remote disabling:
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.
Though, you’re right that the initiative is not terribly specific. It’s intended to bring affected parties to the table to discuss the exact law. We’ll have to see how it turns out, but I think it will be overall positive.
That makes sense! I do think stopping companies from fleecing people of their money by just randomly shutting down games because their expenses don’t make sense anymore is pretty shitty behavior.
It’s true that I’m not sure I have many good examples of games that had monetary transactions that also had an intent to end. There’s stuff like Peter Molyneux’s Curiosity where the point of it was the collective journey, trolling, and the discovery at the center. The Flock was an idea similar to what I threw out there, the world of the game has a limited population left and as people die in the game that population decreases, when it hits 0 the game is over for everyone forever.
I’m not saying these games are the pinnacle of artistic creativity, but I appreciate what they were going for and I don’t want to discount them as cool avenues of pursuit. I hate limited time events as much as the next person, especially when it’s obvious that it’s a fomo tactic to get people to spend money. But I also see that it’s not always used that way.
Sorry, I don’t mean to talk us in circles. I do hope people get some real positives out of it! I’ll agree that we can worry about the actual laws once they exist in some form instead of worrying about the "what-might-be"s before then based on just the initiative to get some laws going
