Stop Killing Games Campaign Update: EU & US Lobbying [2026]

How does the European Citizens’ Initiative fit into this?

If you have been following the news, you know the EU is the main battleground right now. The "Stop Destroying Videogames" European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) has been a massive success, smashing its goals with approximately 1.3 million verified signatures. That is a number Brussels cannot ignore.

This initiative is scheduled for review by the EU Commission in late February 2026. The new EU-based NGO, led by Director General Moritz Katzner, will likely focus on ensuring this petition translates into binding law. If successful, this regulation would force a fundamental restructuring of the "Games as a Service" (GaaS) model. Publishers selling games in the EU would be legally required to provide an "end-of-life" plan—like an offline mode or private server support—so that the product remains functional even after the company pulls the plug.

What is the industry’s argument against keeping games alive?

The industry is not taking this lying down. Trade bodies like the European Games Developer Federation (EGDF) and Video Games Europe have been vocal in their opposition. Their primary argument is technical and financial: they claim that live service games rely on complex central servers that are too costly to maintain indefinitely.

In a statement from July 2025, Video Games Europe warned that strict preservation mandates "would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create." Essentially, they argue that if they have to budget for a permanent offline mode during development, they might just stop making certain types of massive online games altogether.

However, advocates counter that this is a solved problem. The request isn’t for publishers to host servers forever, but to provide the software tools so the community can host them themselves—something that was standard practice in PC gaming for decades.

Can lawsuits in the US actually change digital ownership?

While the EU is taking the legislative route, the US fight is happening in the courtroom. The campaign was originally triggered by Ubisoft’s March 2024 shutdown of The Crew, which rendered the driving game unplayable for everyone who bought it. That sparked a class-action lawsuit which the campaign is currently supporting.

Things are heating up legally. In February 2025, Ubisoft filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing players had fair notice of the license terms. But the legal ground is shifting. California’s new digital goods law (AB 2426), which took effect in January 2025, now forces storefronts to explicitly state that consumers are buying a "license" rather than the game itself. The US-based NGO plans to lobby for even clearer digital ownership laws, aiming to close the gap between physical property rights and digital goods.

Between the Lines

This move to formalize the "Stop Killing Games" movement into NGOs is a signal that the fight for digital rights is maturing. The winners here will ultimately be consumers and future historians, who may finally secure the right to preserve cultural heritage that would otherwise be deleted to boost quarterly earnings. The losers are publishers reliant on a business model of planned obsolescence, where destroying an old game is a tactic to force migration to a sequel. If the EU mandates these changes, the global nature of software development means the US market will likely benefit by default—publishers won’t build a "preservable" version for Europe and a "broken" one for America.