“While Anthem received a lot of negative reviews, it obviously has a lot of production value behind it,” he says, as well as “buyers who want to play the game regardless.” He has never played the game before. Now, he says, he won’t get to.
Easier said than done. Video games are a more dynamic medium than books or film, one that is predicated on both a player’s autonomy in the game and can be supplemented through updates and downloadable content. Online games can be even trickier. SKG, however, argues that past multiplayer online games have survived without company servers through players privately hosting themselves.
Stop Killing Games launched in 2024. Its first big petition is attempting to drum up support from the UK government, which will debate campaigns in Parliament if 100,000 signatures are gathered. The petition has since gained over 180,000 signatures, a significant achievement that could tip the odds in SKG’s favor, even if Parliament has yet to respond to the petition.
The group also launched a similar petition to persuade the European Commission to introduce consumer protection legislation aimed at preserving games. So far, the effort has gained nearly 1.3 million signatures, but last week, in a direct response to the petition, Video Games Europe, which represents the industry in that region, said “the decision to discontinue online services is multi-faceted, never taken lightly, and must be an option for companies when an online experience is no longer commercially viable.” Moving games to private servers, the organization claimed, could leave players’ data vulnerable and not allow games companies to “combat unsafe community content” or remove illegal content.
“In addition,” Video Games Europe’s statement read, “many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create.”
Video games are more costly than they’ve ever been, both to make and to buy. Players want media they can continue to play for years to come, and live service games are sold on the idea that they’ll continually be updated and supported. Capturing that experience in a bottle will mean reconsidering how far that support goes—and if the video games of today will have the staying power of their predecessors.
“I do commend [Video Games Europe’s] honesty on how they view customers playing old games as an industry problem because they see that as competing with new ones,” Scott says. “We’re obviously opposed to those views and feel customers should enjoy whatever it is they paid for.”
Update: July 9, 2005, 11:10 am EDT: This piece has been updated to clarify Stop Killing Games’ petitioning efforts.
