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PayPalThe team running the Stop Killing Games movement have given a status update on the Stop Destroying Videogames EU petition vote count, and it's good news for everyone involved.
Shared in a post on Reddit the final verified vote count is 1,294,188 out of an original total of 1,448,270. This puts it well above the required 1 million point for the EU to get moving on it. In the post they shared an image breakdown of votes per country, showing Germany coming in first with 233,180 votes and a strong showing in second from France with 145,289 votes.
The full post text:
Hello,
Another announcement. Things are moving quite fast right now, and we’ve decided to share the final count with you ahead of schedule. Originally, this wasn’t possible due to certain background limitations, and our plan was to wait until shortly before our next meeting with the EU Commission.
At that point, we intended to reveal everything through a video, alongside a redesigned website, a restructured Discord, and several other updates that—ironically—I still can’t talk about just yet. We didn’t want to present our case unprepared, unintentionally leak information to lobby groups, or worst of all burn out our team.
Most of you already understand this, but it still needs to be said: please be patient with the team. We do this because we believe in it, and because we believe what we’re doing is right. None of us are paid for this. We all have jobs, families, and responsibilities, and for some, the past weeks have been rough. Keep that in mind. You’re not talking to some abstract institution like the EU, you’re talking to real people. Yes even the mods are real! In fact, you’re talking to someone who’s about to play Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 in about 30 minutes just to decompress after a stressful week.
Tomorrow, we’ll also be sharing this information on our newly rebuilt or, in some cases, entirely new-media channels. Ross has kindly agreed to lend his voice and face to help with that rollout.
The handover is planned for mid to late February.
Cheers
Moritz Katzner for SKG
See more on the Stop Killing Games website.
Just recently we had EA shut down Anthem, so that was another game that people paid for they can no longer play. Amazon are also shutting down New World: Aeternum fully too and tinyBuild also recently announced Pandemic Express - Zombie Escape is shuttering, and I expect they won't be the last this year. Too many games get lost because developers have no way for players to continue when they entirely rely on proprietary servers.
This is something the managing director of GOG touched on recently when speaking to Eurogamer but they're another that seems to once again be slightly missing the point. It's not a request to have developers and publishers be forced to support games forever - it's about giving players who spent money on these games to simply have a way to continue playing them.
Hopefully something will come out of all of this but it's often complicated due to the way games are designed. Ideally, a game that has a forced online connection should have some sort of fallback plan to have dedicated servers release for players on shut down. We already have tons of games that have dedicated servers for players, it has been a thing for a long time. Features like micro-transactions and DLC definitely make it more complicated, as they would need to update their games to rip them out or make them all free. It all takes extra time. I'm not a game developer though, so what do I know? But something would be good to see in future.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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soulsource a day ago
Nowadays online multiplayer games with dedicated servers and in-game store are usually designed around a cloud platform. Not because it couldn't be done otherwise, but because it's cheaper to develop around a ready-made cloud API than developing the server-side software yourself. Those cloud-APIs tend to end up everywhere in the game though, simply because once one has them as a dependency, it's just too convenient to use them whenever they are suitable.For instance, if you have an in-game-store run by a cloud platform, it is just natural to also have the player inventory managed by the cloud platform, because then the server can just modify the inventory when the player uses the store. When the publisher stops paying for the cloud platform though, the players' inventory management becomes unavailable, and has to be coded again, from scratch. The same is true for all other features handled by the cloud provider (matchmaking, score-tracking, etc.).
Implementing all those things so the game works without the cloud provider is probably doable within a couple of man-weeks, but it's not nothing, and publishers need an incentive to pay for it.
(That's why I, as a gamedev, support Stop Killing Games - it offers us developers leverage that we can use to convince publishers to pay for features like an offline-mode or direct-IP support.)
mr-victory a day ago
Quoting: mr-victory@soulsource how much difference is there between a cloud platform and, say, a Linux PC? Besides the scale of the cloud. Is it possible to reuse the software designed for a cloud and run it on a conventional x86_64 Linux device with perhaps minimal changes to the game client so it can locate the custom server? Same for Arm64 Linux, I don't know which one is more popular on cloudNot much of a difference in principle.
And if we are talking solo-play only (which would be the minimal requirement the initiative aims for), no "scale" is needed really.
Only a "mock"-server of sorts that allows a single individual to play somehow.
Such mock-servers (at least in a limited capacity) are already a reality in all major MMOs, as they are a necessity of development (you wouldn't want every single dev to have to connect to some online instance for testing their latest change).
Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 26 Jan 2026 at 2:32 pm UTC
I absolutely hate the idea of buying racing games anymore because I know they will inevitably be delisted. Why should I spend $60 to $120 on a game to have "all the bells and whistles" when the developer plans to stop selling it before the decade is even out?
I find it very difficult to justify rewarding this type of anti-consumer behavior. I would much rather a game use indefinite licensing deals, or even feature fictional cars and original music, than for "limited licensing" to be used as a justification for killing a product. Ultimately, licensing is just a secondary excuse for the primary driver: greed.
Quoting: CreepioI still play Dirt 3. It runs perfectly on the Steam Deck and provides loads of fun even to this day. I cannot say the same for many modern racing titles. I waited years for Forza Horizon 4 to reach a reasonable price, but by the time I was ready to buy it, it had already been pulled from the store. What is the point of waiting for a game to be affordable only for it to be killed at the six-year mark?It's absolutely not the same. FH4 still works well as of today, including online features such as pvp races and eliminator game mode. The only exception is that they killed the festival playlists, effectively making some of the achievements impossible to unlock, which is a bummer. Anyway, delisting a game from the store because the licences expired is absolutely not the same as making the game not launch after the servers are shut down.
soulsource 2 hours ago
@soulsource how much difference is there between a cloud platform and, say, a Linux PC? Besides the scale of the cloud. Is it possible to reuse the software designed for a cloud and run it on a conventional x86_64 Linux device with perhaps minimal changes to the game client so it can locate the custom server? Same for Arm64 Linux, I don't know which one is more popular on cloudThe big difference is the software. Which is owned by the cloud platform providers and not available to the game developers. Of course it can be mocked (as TheShEEEP pointed out), but that's work too, that needs to be paid for.
I, as a player, would rather prefer that games will never be designed around an ingame store anymore.As a gamedev: I wished so too. However, often the options a publisher gives are "live support title with in-game store", or "the project won't happen". Since it isn't easy to find game project funding at the moment, the second option might very well mean having to fire people, or even closing the studio, so it's about as much a choice as the Patrician's offer of "freedom" in Going Postal.
Mountain Man 2 hours ago
Frankly, I think this is never going to happen.
soulsource 2 hours ago
Quoting: Mountain ManHow broad do we expect this law to be?The original introduction video to the campaign talked about this. They also mentioned that in an ideal world, all of what you mentioned would be regulated in a way that allows people to keep accessing the content they bought a license for. However, the initiators were aware that it would never happen if it was that broad, so they picked games as a smaller target. That's not perfect, but it's a start.
Mountain Man 1 hour ago
Quoting: soulsourceI think that will ultimately kill any chance of this becoming a reality, especially since most lawmakers consider video games to be nothing more than childish amusement. Game developers could also make a good case that they are being unfairly singled out when even by this groups own admission, there are many other consumer products that depend on network services.Quoting: Mountain ManHow broad do we expect this law to be?The original introduction video to the campaign talked about this. They also mentioned that in an ideal world, all of what you mentioned would be regulated in a way that allows people to keep accessing the content they bought a license for. However, the initiators were aware that it would never happen if it was that broad, so they picked games as a smaller target. That's not perfect, but it's a start.
Last edited by Mountain Man on 27 Jan 2026 at 3:42 pm UTC
Quoting: Mountain ManYou really can't demand that software developers not take advantage of cost saving technologies like cloud servers.Sure you can. Just like the Chinese were able to demand that milk producers not take advantage of cost saving technologies like watering it way down and thickening it with malamine. We demand that people not take advantage of cost savings all the time, if taking advantage of them would cause some disadvantage to their customers or the common good. We demand that factories spend money on scrubber thingies in their smokestacks so we don't get acid rain; that's why there is still maple syrup.
Quoting: Mountain ManYou really can't demand that software developers not take advantage of cost saving technologies like cloud servers.Of course you could.
But that isn't the goal - as I already wrote, those mock servers are already a reality in almost any project.
It would be work to make these more user-palatable, but not much. Paling in comparison to the dough raked in by online games that were even just a bit successful.
It is also by far not the only way to go about this, nor the cheapest.
You are drinking the publisher cool-aid already and they haven't even really started firing their propaganda - weird, dude!
You could absolutely - and reasonably! - demand that an end-of-life plan must be made before an MMO/Online-focused game is released, and that end-of-life plan MUST include a way to play in a "reasonable, minimal way" (eg. say offline only, or self-hosted, etc) past end-of-life.
Or you can't release/sell it in the EU.
Simple, really.
If those few weeks of work and minimal amount of resource cost would keep a game from being developed, then developing that game was never a viable business decision anyway.
Publishers really have no leg to stand on here.
You also can't forget: When you ignore the suits, the vast majority of developers is in favor of this.
Understandably so, as nobody wants to see years of their work just ceasing to exist.
Mountain Man 22 minutes ago
Quoting: Purple Library GuyWatering down milk and adding thickeners without disclosing this to the consumer is fraudulent, so of course it's illegal. That's not at all the same as a developer using existing cloud services rather than expending the resources to create their own online infrastructure. As long as they disclose the fact upfront that future functionality is not guaranteed, then there is no fraud. And I think that's ultimately where this is going, that any product that depends on servers will be required to carry a prominent disclaimer that necessary online services could be discontinued at any time without warning.Quoting: Mountain ManYou really can't demand that software developers not take advantage of cost saving technologies like cloud servers.Sure you can. Just like the Chinese were able to demand that milk producers not take advantage of cost saving technologies like watering it way down and thickening it with malamine. We demand that people not take advantage of cost savings all the time, if taking advantage of them would cause some disadvantage to their customers or the common good. We demand that factories spend money on scrubber thingies in their smokestacks so we don't get acid rain; that's why there is still maple syrup.
Last edited by Mountain Man on 27 Jan 2026 at 4:36 pm UTC
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