Stop Killing Games campaign forces EU reckoning over publisher server shutdowns

A consumer rights movement called Stop Killing Games, launched by YouTuber Ross Scott in 2024 after Ubisoft pulled the plug on online-only racer The Crew, has escalated from a fan grievance into a regulatory headache for the games industry. The group’s European Citizens’ Initiative gathered nearly 1.3 million signatures, triggered a European Parliament hearing in April, and now awaits a European Commission response due by 27 July. Parallel pressure is building through a French legal action by UFC-Que Choisir against Ubisoft and California’s proposed Protect Our Games Act, which would force publishers to either keep titles playable or refund buyers when online support ends.

The campaign does not demand that companies run servers forever. It asks publishers to ship end-of-life plans — offline patches, private server tools, or similar handovers — so paid copies remain functional after official support ends. Ubisoft’s defence, raised in a since-withdrawn California class action, is that purchases convey a licence rather than perpetual ownership, and Video Games Europe warns that mandated continuity could materially raise development costs for live-service titles.

The dispute exposes a structural tension in the shift to live-service design: games are sold as products but operated as communities tethered to publisher infrastructure. As NYU Stern’s Joost van Dreunen notes, every live-service launch carries the seeds of its own shutdown, and as audiences fragment around dominant franchises like Fortnite, the gap between what players believe they bought and what they legally hold is becoming a live policy question on both sides of the Atlantic.