If you haven't heard, Stop Killing Games is a movement to challenge the legality of publishers and studios for destroying games when they reach end-of-life. This usually happens with "Live Service" games, where the servers are shut down and the game becomes unplayable.
This recently happened with The Crew, which was shut down last year. It was 10 years old and loved by many, many players, and now it is unplayable by anyone. This means people who spent money on the disk back in 2014 can no longer play the game.
An interesting thing to note, though, is that The Crew, while it was an always-online game, included a hidden Offline mode, supposedly for testing by the developers.
What Stop Killing Games asks for is simple: When a studio or publisher is building a game, they should have an end-of-life plan in mind during development. This plan would ensure the game is left in a reasonable, playable state upon sunset. This is broad for a reason, as the specifics will be discussed if new laws are passed. The state games could be left in various forms, from enabling offline functionality to releasing server binaries or tooling that allows players to get the game running again themselves.
One of the main issues with the way the games industry is going is that games cannot be preserved. Games are a form of art. Art that people have created, be it by a single person or hundreds and they deserve to be preserved.
The petitions are currently at their needed signatures; however, the more signatures, the better. It helps show how many people believe in this movement and want change.
If you're in the EU or UK, please go here and sign to support game preservation:
- EU: https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home
- UK: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/702074/
- Stop Killing Games: https://www.stopkillinggames.com/