Stop Killing Games: If you're from the UK/Europe, SIGN TODAY!!! One Month Left!

[Corrupted Unicorn]

What is this about?
Stop Killing Games is an initiative started by Ross Scott, creator of the Machinima Freeman's Mind and videoessayist on assorted videogames, but especially  dead games , games that cannot be played anymore, and games that are at risk of it: especially, games sold as a service, dependant on private-owned servers.

The objective of the petition is, according to its own website:

"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.

According to Stop Killing Games, a game shutting down after you paid for it is a violation of consumer's rights, and a practice that must be stopped: not just for the sake of preservation and archival of digital media, but also because these anti-consumer practices can be extended to other areas: software already has problems about it, but imagine if corporations could pull these things with more essential necessities such as medicine 

Does this mean that all games-as-a-service should run out of their creators' money 'till the end of time?
No, that's not what SKG is about!
The idea is to keep games in a playable state after the company has stopped supporting them. For example, providing you with the necessary tools to create and run your own private server, to play with friends. The idea is for them to not just take your money and run, leaving you with nothing.

What can I do?

• If you have European nationality, visit the initiative's website: https://www.stopkillinggames.com/
  They have a link to where you can sign, as well as step-by-step guides in all languages of the EU on how to do it and further information on the campaign.
• If you're from the United Kingdom, visit the UK's petition to sign it: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/702074/ . If you wanna do more, you can contact your MP (Member in Parliament) to ask them to bring up the Stop Killing Games issue to Parliament. Here's instructions on how to.
• In both cases, tell your friends, your coworkers, your family! Help them sign if they need to. The more signatures we get, the better! Spread awareness of the campaign on your social circles.
• If you're neither from Europe or the UK, but you still want to help the cause, spread the news online! Through social media, your Discord servers, anywhere! Link people to the signatures!
• Important: THIS IS NOT A CHANGE.ORG PETITION. We're communicating directly with the European government here, and you can be liable for fraud if you input fake information or attempt to sign if you aren't a citizen from Europe or the UK. If you make mistakes while signing (like mispelling), you're not liable but your signature could be deemed invalid, so make sure to spellcheck.
• If you already signed and are worried you mispelled something, contact the official spokesperson for the campaign, Daniel Ondruska, via e-mail. His info is on the initiative page.
• Even if we have reached the minimum threshold, keep signing and spreading awareness! We could really use more signatures in case some were fraudulent/invalid. Signatures are hand-checked after the deadline ends, and if they remove the fraudulent/invalid ones and we get less than one million "valid" ones, it'll all be for nothing. So we need more signatures as a safeguard of sorts!

Additional Material/Videos/Links/Graphics

If you make your own graphics, I'll add them here!

https://stopkillinggamestracker.pages.dev/

This page tracks the initiative's progress in real time!

Ugly old topic, just for archiving purposes

https://www.stopkillinggames.com/

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/702074/

Uhhh I'm not very good at explaining what this is, it's essentially an initiative to stop the worst parts of games as a service and most importantly, companies destroying games after they decide to stop supporting them (as happens with the aforementioned games as a service)... by law.

It's been kickstarted by Ross Scott, creator of the machinima Freeman's Mind and the Youtube game review series Ross's Game Dungeon. He's got several videos explaining the topic and how the initiative came to be.

I'll put the shortest one here but I recommend checking his other videos if you have any questions. He'll answer them better than I do.



I'd really like to give this a boost as much as I can, I'm not in social medias other than Neocities But I'd like to spread awareness: ergo, this forum topic, as a start. I was also making a little button thingy for websites but I'm not sure if it's looking good:



If you're the EU, I strongly encourage you to sign the petition (the site has instructions on how to) and to spread the word to fellow gamers and europeans, and european gamers  We can also use this topic to discuss what more can be done. This is one of those things where people need to team up to make things happen 

[close]

[crazyroostereye]

I already have signed it last year.

While everything is unclear, as it is and Initiatve, we have to get the Legel bodys talking about it.

 

So if you Like Games and are in the EU, please Sign

[BlazingCobaltX]

I have signed it, but from what I understand the petition has already passed threshold in my country. There are some specific countries that need to still pass the threshold for this petition to be considered by the EU. I don't remember where I saw this list.

[crazyroostereye]

@BlazingCobaltX
As far as I read it, it already reached the Country Threshold (which is 7), it only needs to meet the people Threshold now. So whatever EU Country you are from, we need you Signature.

Threshold: To be successful, a European citizens' initiative has to reach one million statements of support as well as minimum thresholds in at least 7 countries.

From right bellow the Map on the EU initiatives Page.

[BlazingCobaltX]

@BlazingCobaltX
As far as I read it, it already reached the Country Threshold (which is 7), it only needs to meet the people Threshold now. So whatever EU Country you are from, we need you Signature.
From right bellow the Map on the EU initiatives Page.

Ohh I see. Frankly this is the first time such an initiative has been brought to my attention and it exposed to me how little I know of the EU legislative process. Then again it's probably rare that an initiative even gets enough traction in the first place.

[crazyroostereye]

Ohh I see. Frankly this is the first time such an initiative has been brought to my attention and it exposed to me how little I know of the EU legislative process. Then again it's probably rare that an initiative even gets enough traction in the first place.

For me too, I had to look it up myself, as I vaguely remember such a rule there. These Initiatives as it looks don't get that far most of the Time. But not surprising given the Amount of Signatures from so many Places you have to get.

[Corrupted Unicorn]

Lil update: turns out I had a blinkie laying around too!



Feel free to share around.

I hate good causes like these go down. At least, I think I did my part. I wonder if I should post fliers around my town to spread awareness, tho, I've never done something like that before 

[Corrupted Unicorn]

Bringing this topic back from the underworld that is any forum page that is not the first page, because we have one month left and 60% of signatures!

Still quite a lot to go but the pace has been picked up again!  Tell your friends and communities!  Don't let any European buddy ignore there's a campaign for better consumer rights in the game industry!

Here's a link to track Stop Killing Games' progress!

[GlitchyZorua]

Just a few things i wanna say about this.


1. Its not a Petition, its an initiative, the UK calls their initiatives, "petitions" (and the EU calls them "initiatives"), i guess you can keep it that ways, but prefer it "initiatives" 

2. Speaking of UK, there is a "petition" for the campaign, whiiiich is already full, but still not a bad idea to sign it, just in case a bunch of people decides to somehow remove their signature. You can visit that "petition" here: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/702074/

Lil update: turns out I had a blinkie laying around too!




Feel free to share around.

I hate good causes like these go down. At least, I think I did my part. I wonder if I should post fliers around my town to spread awareness, tho, I've never done something like that before 

3. Would it be possible to make a banner for this? for the melonland banner club? that would be cool.

Thats all. Keep supporting the initiative! 

[Corrupted Unicorn]

Hello Glitchy, I'm glad you decided to visit this topic! You're the first once since the petition hit one million!

I appreciate your interest in semantics, although for me, "petition" is a word that drives people more to action than "initiative". "Petition" for me implies there's something the recipient can do. "Initiative" is like, something others are doing, but not necessarily you, the recipient. We can always split the halves and call it a "petitiative" 

I'm glad you brought up the UK one! I don't know why that's not on my main post, maybe it fell through.

But I think this is a great time to redo my main topic, trying to explain things better. 

I was very worried the petitiative would fall through: it looked very dire a week ago, less than halfway done. I feel like I witnessed a grade A miracle here.

However, the battle is not over until the fat lady sings time to sign is over and done for good. I've read concerns about signatures being botted, fake or otherwise invalid: the signatures will be manually verified after signing time is over, and if after that it's less than 1mil, might as well be all for nothing.

So the current objective is to get a margin of error. If we get 1.2mil signatures and 200.000 of them are declared invalid, we still have 1mil. But of course, the more, the merrier! It'll also show the involvement of the people on this topic 

We still have this month left!

If you're from Europe or the UK, sign the petition! Talk to your friends, your family, your coworkers about it!
If you're not but you still want to help, raise awareness of it online! Through social media and your online buddies!

Defend your consumer rights! Own what you pay for! Stop killing games!