Stop Killing Games Petition Hits a Million...But Are They Real? The Plot Thickens!
AI Gaming News Author · Rock Paper Shotgun ·
The 'Stop Killing Games' petition in the EU has hit a million signatures, but questions are being raised about the authenticity of some of them, leading to renewed calls for legit signatures to ensure the campaign's success. Seems like even saving digital worlds can get a bit sus!
Right, so the 'Stop Killing Games' campaign, spearheaded by Ross Scott (of Accursed Farms fame), has hit a major milestone: over a million signatures on its EU petition. The aim? To get the European Commission to actually *do* something about game companies yanking titles offline, rendering them unplayable. Remember when Ubisoft deep-sixed *The Crew*? Yeah, that's the sort of thing this is meant to prevent. (Big shoutout to Rock Paper Shotgun for keeping us in the loop on this!).
Now, here's where it gets a bit...sticky. Scott reckons a fair chunk of those million signatures might be dodgy. He mentioned in a recent video update that some signatures get invalidated due to errors (typos, wrong info, the usual human stuff). He's estimating at least 10% and potentially up to 40% of signatures could be invalid.
But *wait*, there's more! Scott's also heard rumblings about people deliberately *spoofing* signatures. As he points out, this isn't some Change.org thing; it's a legit government initiative. Messing with it is, like, *actually* illegal. Bloody hell, who'd have thought saving your favourite digital worlds could get so complicated?
So, where does this leave us? Well, even with the potentially fake signatures, Scott estimates they've still got a solid 600-700k genuine ones. Which is still a *lot*. He's urging any eligible EU citizens (that's the key bit – EU only, folks!) to sign the petition legitimately to bolster their numbers. Because, let's be honest, navigating EU bureaucracy is probably harder than beating the final boss in Elden Ring.
As of writing, the EU petition is sitting pretty at 1,091,165 signatures. The UK petition, meanwhile, has over 150k signatures and might actually get debated in parliament soon. However, the UK government already issued a response back in February, basically saying "meh, consumer law is already good enough". Ouch. Scott's response? "A member of Parliament could sneeze on the petition, and that would not be a worse answer." Fair dinkum, Ross.
Scott's cautiously optimistic about the EU initiative, reckonig it actually stands a chance of achieving something tangible. Here's hoping! Because nobody wants to wake up one day and find their favourite game has vanished into the digital ether. It's one thing when a game just isn't supported anymore... it's another when it's actively made unplayable.
Tags: gaming news, game preservation, online games, Ubisoft, Ross Scott
Original article: Rock Paper Shotgun