Recently, the movement "Stop Killing Games" (SKG) has risen as a movement to enact legislation to prevent intional "killing off" of games. Even more recently, the lobbying group Video Games Europe (VGE) released this blog post regarding their stance on the movement, voicing that they are not in support of it and giving reasons.
The internet (reddit, twitter probably, and other social media), found the blog post, and suddenly, people have been accusing vairous companies listed on this page for being against the movement. What's really going on? I want to provide a perspective on the entire situation- what SKG and VGE is, what both sides are trying to say, and whether membership by the companies means they agree with the statement by VGE. I will also voice my own opinion on the matter, from a perspective of a player and multiplayer developer.
Stop Killing Games
"Stop Killing Games is a consumer movement started to challenge the legality of publishers destroying video games they have sold to customers" (https://www.stopkillinggames.com/). The movement's actions have been focused on legal action in various countries to support the movement.
Their current focus is on a European Citizens' Initiative action, which allows the movement to introduce a law for the EU if they receive the necessary signatures. At this point the signatures have reached more than one million. However, this isn't the only thing the movement has tried- they've submitted various complaints about termination of The Crew, a game developed by Ubisoft which was made completely inaccessible to players. In some nations, the movement is continuing with pending decisions, but in others dead ends have been reached. While it's clear that millions of individuals and no doubt developers support the movement, it's unclear from their website if any companies have specifically voiced support in the movement.
What does it mean to kill games? What are they asking for specifically? The website lists a FAQ stating their intentions. They state that publishers and development companies are making games dependent on servers which need to be maintained, in order to function, and the act of shutting down these servers results in killing a game. They are not asking for infinite support for games, but instead developing an "end-of-life" plan so games can continue to function. They list examples of games that have had an end-of-life plan; and while they mention The Crew as an example of games that have been killed off, I'll mention a few more examples I know of:
- Overwatch, by Blizzard Entertainment, was shut down and made unplayable as the company released formally Overwatch 2, despite prior statements saying otherwise.
- Hawken, a game whose IP is current in ruins under 505 Games, was a fun multiplayer mech shooter. Officially, the game has been unplayable on PC since the servers were shut down, but recently there has been a group called Hawakening working on maintaining multiplayer through reverse engineering and data mined server files.
- Tribes Ascend, from Hi-Rez, softly discontinued development as they shifted to work on SMITE; then controversially brought back a revitalizing update, only for the game to die out a few months after. Since then, the game has been made inaccessible. HiRez additionally used to have other games including an MMO, which are no longer listed and likely unplayable now.
Video Games Europe
VGE is a larger organization, nearly 25 years old. They are a business relationship focused lobbying group for the European Union. Their website describes their mission, emphasizing requesting the EU to adopt some of their various policies. Currently, they've listed some policies covering the following:
- status and competitions of games- keeping the video game market recognizable and competitive.
- emphasizing the PEGI European game rating standard- if you're in the US you've seen the ESRB rating standard. The PEGI standard functions similar but in Europe, giving a clear indication to rate games based on their content and intended age targets. VGE wants to promote the use of this standard, and they offer their own guidance to parents and players to understand the standard better and help protect kids.
- Education investment and strategies- similar to the STEM/STEAM movement, and going back to uplifting the status and competition of the games market in Europe. They want to promote new talent and skill to be put towards video games in Europe.
- IP innovation and protection- the group looks to advocate towards policies to help companies protect intellectual property, which could tie into their stance on the SGK movement.
Who makes up this group? The group consists of various board members and a team functioning as a company, who represent the group itself. The group also has a membership with numerous companies. The board consists of individuals who work in numerous companies, so it's not one single company representing VGE. The website describes membership as a business relationship. Does this mean VGE speaks on behalf of these companies? I don't see anywhere on the website where it says that. It also doesn't mean the companies can't agree with their stance either- it's up to what each company says or does, which dictates its opinion on the movement.
The Blog Post
Let's summarize the blog post (VGE has since released a longer document highlighting their opinion on the matter, covering the same points here):
- they wish for the action of developing an end-of-life plan to be an option and not a requirement for companies
- They want the industry to give players a fair notice on changes to their games
- They state that private servers are not always a viable option, due to complications with liability and legal requirements such as data protection
- They recognize that many titles are online only, which they believe actions to prevent killing games would be "prohibitively expensive"
- They welcome further discussion
Now, I'll look at the info provided by SKG in consideration with the blog post items:
- SKG wishes to challenge the legality of destroying video games sold to customers- the action of preventing games from being intentionally unplayable.
- SKG explicitly states they aren't advocating for infinite support for games, but rather an endgame plan to allow games to continue to be played. I believe that VGE's statement on making it optional and clear to players is actually in line with the SKG movement- an emphasis here is clear communication to players, and often video games are shut off without prior notice to players. While not ideal, at least communicating when a game would cease support would be an endgame plan.
- SKG emphasizes that if a company plans to support gameplay after development support, allowing releasing private servers or designing games to work singleplayer would be viable, and not a security risk. While they claim good intention with these statements, I believe they are topics with more complications than what would seem upfront (no thanks to decades of poor and developing practices in industry).
- SKG believes that online only titles can be made to function offline or after support has ended, if planned for such during development. They also claim that the significant cost to companies is unlikely, in particular for companies already practicing killing games.
- I think the key statement that the "online mob" has been missing, when enraging about VGE's statement, is that they welcome further discussion. SKG and VGE both offer emails to allow each other to reach out and begin discussion.
In the future I'd be open to discussing these points in depth, perhaps interviewing industry experts in these studios with their experience on development practices and how it pertains to SKG's ideas. People seeing the blog post or online reactions, I've seen them describe it as VGE being "not happy" or perhaps strongly against. Looking at what they actually said, I think that's overexaggerating- if anything, they come out concerned, and given their focus on what I discussed previously, I think this response is expected, and not hostile.
The Companies Of VGE
So what about those membership companies? Well, I say, VGE doesn't speak for their members; their members may support VGE for various reasons- maybe they do disagree with SKG, maybe they joined for advocating for IP or education or PEGI instead. Plus, it's been less than a week since the blog post, so I doubt overnight every single company associated with VGE are all in agreement with the stance on SKG.
Additionally, many companies simply make zero sense being against SKG. Let's look at a few- many of the companies shown are organizations similar to VGE but for their respective nations, such as Dutch Video Games Industry, Video Games Poland Association, and Swiss Interactive Entertainment Association. These groups likely join to advocate for policies in support of developers within their own nations, and as a part of VGE they can help push support for things that benefit them. They also likely help promote smaller studios, such as showcasing games at GDC, and having the support of other AAA developers in Europe can help with that.
I can list numerous examples of studios helping save games and bringing them back from a dead state, which many studios or their parents are under VGE. I think a more in-depth analysis in the AAA space on this matter would fit better, rather than including that content here.
Some studios in VGE may be against SKG, some for, or some neutral, others maybe neutral but taking actions aligning with the movement. But the point I want to make is that the one blog post doesn't necessarily reflect the opinion of these companies on the SKG movement. If anything, unless the company states on their own their opinion, or takes action against the movement, they likely remain neutral on the matter.
My Thoughts
Misinformation will contaminate the SKG movement, turning it into a mob hunt against disliked companies, and distracting from the focus of stopping games from being killed. I think it's important for the movement to voice the truth, and engage in open discussion with VGE, not to try to disprove them, but instead to improve the goals of the movement.
I believe it is in the best interest of the mission statement of VGE to eventually support the movement, and work towards improving the intentions of the movement. I believe there are larger considerations to consider and debate on about the movement, and about what a dead game actually means- is a multiplayer game truly preserved if it doesn't have the playerbase to support its gameplay? However I believe these are topics for future posts and discussions, too long to include here.
I am in support of SKG, but I do believe there are considerations on the development side which make the movement more complicated at a large scale. I would like to see these practices put into effect into large and small studios, to see what the outcome is and revise the proposal.
Therefore, as CEO of my small development company Quantonium, I am committing my company to the mission of Stop Killing Games, in an effort to help improve the mission and offer ways to preserve games after development, through direct development. We are developing currently The Laser Games, which I have planned from day one of Quantonium to fully support singleplayer, offline gameplay, without requiring the Steam platform (which we use for the multiplayer backend). As development progresses, I will seek to be transparent on our development process to make this goal a reality, including communicating potential hardships and challenges, and labor hours and costs to ensure the game remains enjoyable long after development. Quantonium's goal is striving for excellence in games and software, and by embracing the ideas of the Stop Killing Games movement, this is one step towards our never ending goal.
Finally- SKG goes beyond games. It reaches out to software in particular, and technology in general. It falls under a lot of issues with planned obsolesce, IP and patent protection, even piracy and reverse engineering. One justification for killing off a game by a company would be to remove legal liability from illegal player actions affecting the game's status; other reasons would be to prevent reverse engineering, which can potentially leak proprietary code. Regardless, this and the fight for right to repair and against planned obsolesce, is about one thing: access to something you bought, or downloaded. Games are owned by the company and publisher(s) for them; buying or downloading a game most of the time gives you a copy of the files necessary to play the game. Players want to continue playing games, developers want to continue offering players their games. There are systems and decisions in place which are actively preventing this, without sufficient reason, which the Stop Killing Games movement is working to eliminate.
Just, don't take everything you see on the internet for granted. Ask questions, search for the truth. Not every big greedy corporation goes against the movement.
Conclusion
Thank you for reading! Sources for content on SKG and VGE come from their respective websites, and additional content is either linked or recalled from past experiences, which should be verifiable with an internet search. Want to discuss with other readers? Check out https://quantonium.net/discord, the Quantonium discord.
Who am I? I'm Andy Herbert, currently finishing my master's at the University of Utah, and founder/CEO of Quantonium LLC. I have been considering continuing to PhD research, where I hope to study multiplayer games, specifically what makes a competitive multiplayer game function and be fun, so the topic of killing multiplayer games is very relevant to my areas of interest, as a player and developer. I hope to have provided a relatively unbiased view of both sides so far, but nevertheless I still pull from personal experience, and you may experience something else- let's discuss this complex topic at my company's discord, link above.
