"Stop Killing Games" Campaign

Submission 18,063

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Overview

The "Stop Killing Games" Campaign refers to a series of government petitions aimed towards preventing publishers from revoking the ability to play video games that have already been purchased in full by their players. The campaign was launched on April 2nd, 2024, by Ross Scott, the creator of the Freeman's Mind machinima series.

Background

On July 8th, 2018, Ross Scott uploaded a video to the Accursed Farms YouTube^[1] channel covering the video game The Crew as part of his Ross's Game Dungeon series of videos. In this video (seen below), he briefly discusses that the servers for The Crew, a single-player racing game published by Ubisoft that requires a connection to a central server, will eventually have its servers shut down and become inaccessible to players who purchased it, as well as his rationale for being against this practice.

Some people ask me why I care so much about dead games, this is why. I saw this coming. I knew eventually it was going to affect a game I really cared about. And now, it's just a matter of time. I consider it a gaming tragedy to make something with so much effort and content behind it, only to intentionally kill it so no one will ever play it again.

On December 14th, 2023, Ubisoft Ivory Tower^[2] announced that The Crew would be delisted from storefronts and shut down on March 31, 2024, with no refunds for owners who do not already fall under Ubisoft's normal refund policy, citing server costs.

A month later, on January 18th, 2024, Ross uploaded another The Crew video to YouTube^[3] as part of his Dead Game News series (shown below, left) in which he discusses the shutdown of The Crew and starts discussing plans for taking legal action against the practice of decommissioning games in a way that makes them inaccessible for future players using The Crew as his primary case. A follow-up video (shown below, right) was uploaded to YouTube^[4] on February 24th in which Ross presented his findings for what actions can be taken as part of an international campaign.

Developments

On April 2nd, 2024, Ross uploaded a video to the Accursed Farms YouTube^[5] channel in which he officially launched the Stop Killing Games campaign. In this video (seen below, left), Ross summarizes the problem and discusses the plans and goals of Stop Killing Games, including what actions participants in various countries can take.

On the same day, a website^[6] for the campaign was launched containing much of the same information as the video. The next day, Ross uploaded a shorter, 50-second version of the video (seen below, right) to YouTube.^[7]

Online Reactions

In the days following the start of the campaign, several prominent gaming YouTube personalities, such as Shane Luis of the Rerez YouTube^[8] channel and Larry Bundy Jr.,^[9] voiced support for the Stop Killing Games campaign, as have independent development studios such as Running With Scissors,^[10] creators of the Postal series.

On April 4th, 2024, Mutahar Anas uploaded a video about the Stop Killing Games campaign to the SomeOrdinaryGamers YouTube^[11] channel, in which Mutahar discusses the trend of "always online" games and how to support the Stop Killing Games campaign (seen below).