Stop Killing Games final verified vote count for the EU petition is just under 1.3 million

The 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.