It is at 361,826 out of 1,000,000 signatures with the remaining trickle after the initial spike nowhere near the pace needed to hit the mark before the 31st of July 2025.
I interpret the state of Ross Scott’s SKG campaign like this:
It’s pretty clear that democratically speaking, we do not object to companies arbitrarily removing access to purchased video games. Only a minority objects to it.
While it will stay up and get more signatures, there will ultimately be no follow-through to this campaign. The reality is that it’s not politically sound, it’s not built on a foundation of a real public desire for change. In other words, voters don’t want it. You might, but most of your family and friends don’t want it.
Percentage wise, I’m sure support is very high. But for a petition like this, I’d be shocked if even 0.01% percent of people have even heard of it.
Personally, I support the petition (obviously) and wish it could have succeeded. But even I think that in the grand scheme of all the problems in the world, this is very far down my wishlist.
It’s pretty clear that democratically speaking, we do not object to companies arbitrarily removing access to purchased video games. Only a minority objects to it.
It’s more like “people don’t know about the issue, or how it affects them, as they’re busier with their everyday lives”. This happens a fair bit.
Additionally, the graph shows that the movement had huge fervour at the start but then lost steam. So:
- Is the movement well organised?
- Are there people actively asking others for new signatures?
- Is the movement able to recruit more people to proselytise it?
- Which areas of the EU have proportionally less signatures? And why?
- What’s the public image of the movement? And what about the cause itself? (People do realise that legislation to not kill games makes it easier to pass legislation to not screw with customer goods after they were bought, right?)
- What caused that peak in the 7th of September, and how to replicate it on purpose?
EDIT: can someone convince PewDiePie to at least talk about the campaign?
From what I remember of the past posts about this I did not sign it because it had some stupidly amateurish phrasing in there that did not make any distinctions between companies doing something actively to sabotage continued use (e.g. DRM), simply not selling it while copyright prevents anyone else from archiving it, simply turning off the servers for some multiplayer title, forcing always online for singleplayer titles and companies not doing something actively to change it to run on new hardware and operating systems. The way it read it was basically demanding companies do the last one forever which is never going to happen.
So you didn’t sign it because you have no idea what it actually says and didn’t look into it at all?
I love democracy
What I read was the actual statement on the EU petition site. If that is not representative of the actual demands of the lawmakers maybe they should have iterated a few more times before posting it there.
Forcing companies to do what forever? The scope of what the petition can ask for is limited, and it’s up to EU parliament to find a solution. The problem statement is that you bought a game that can be remotely disabled. If you agree that that’s a problem, I’d encourage you to sign it.
Forcing companies to update their games for any new OS or hardware forever. Which would be an insane demand, thus, no signature from me. If you want support, spend some effort phrasing it properly before you present it to non-experts in the field.
I agree that that is a problem but unfortunately this petition wasn’t phrased in a way to deal with that problem.
No, that is not something the petition aims to do, stated clearly in their FAQ, and I don’t think I could arrive at that interpretation even without it. From the petition:
Specifically, the initiative seeks to prevent the remote disabling of videogames by the publishers, before providing reasonable means to continue functioning of said videogames without the involvement from the side of the publisher. The initiative does not seek to acquire ownership of said videogames, associated intellectual rights or monetization rights, neither does it expect the publisher to provide resources for the said videogame once they discontinue it while leaving it in a reasonably functional (playable) state.
And in the FAQ on the Stop Killing Games site:
Q: Aren’t you asking companies to support games forever? Isn’t that unrealistic?
A: No, we are not asking that at all. We are in favor of publishers ending support for a game whenever they choose. What we are asking for is that they implement an end-of-life plan to modify or patch the game so that it can run on customer systems with no further support from the company being necessary. We agree it is unrealistic to expect companies to support games indefinitely and do not advocate for that in any way. Additionally, there are already real-world examples of publishers ending support for online-only games in a responsible way, such as:
‘Gran Turismo Sport’ published by Sony
‘Knockout City’ published by Velan Studios
‘Mega Man X DiVE’ published by Capcom
‘Scrolls / Caller’s Bane’ published by Mojang AB
‘Duelyst’ published by Bandai Namco Entertainment
etc.
And that’s fair. If we can’t figure out how to write this regulation properly, people shouldn’t sign it.
Well I can’t do anything because it’s EU only. I did do the France thing in the beginning which any person could do, but this is a situation for those outside of the EU only being able to watch.
That’s a bit doomerist of you. Why leap to the assumption that voters are against it rather than the far simpler explanation that people are unaware of its existence, or don’t feel they understand it well enough to have an opinion?
In which case what’s needed is a much stronger social media effort, preferably headed up by the organisers themselves, or someone else who can make it their entire thing, from where it can hopefully radiate out to other interested parties.
You’re being ridiculous. It’s not a far strech to think that most people would believe that a company shouldn’t be able to take back something you bought from them. This has implications with digital content in general.
The issue is that you’re looking at group that shrinks at every step.
How many people own digital copies of things? How many of them have been through a situation where a company removes their access to that digital copy? How many of them actually noticed? How many of them had that experience with a videogame? How many of them got upset enough that it stuck with them rather than moving on? How many of them even know this movement exists?
If you get the word out, and frame it as the first step in a fight for improved digital ownership rights for all digital media, you increase your base of potential joiners.
The biggest thing is that you need to get the word out even further about it. I’m subscribed to a ton of gaming youtube channels and the only coverage of this that I’ve seen is from Ross and one other channel. Get bigger youtube names in on this.
Reach out to individual indie developers to ask them to sign a charter to support the movement and spread the word. Run a game jam on itch.io to start making it cool to support it and spread the word. For very small devs that are just putting the game files for single player games out there with no drm applied, it’s literally free to throw in behind this and could be free extra marketing for both parties.
Without a counter movement, or some way for people to register that you are against this movement, you have incomplete info and cannot assume that people not supporting this are actively against it.
It would be just as foolish to say that everyone supports it because 361,826 of 361,826 who spoke up said that they support it, right?
Movements like this live and die on awareness.
This has implications with digital content in general
Not even just digital content. This is only half a step removed from right to repair campaigns, and that’s all about physical hardware, ranging from mobile phones to tractors on farms.
Or maybe the vast majority don’t even know this campaign exists
Y’all have to push and campaign for this.
I don’t think so. It’s dead.
Even in the opening pitch, Ross acknowledges that things like this come in waves. The first wave was his call to action. The next ones, if we’re so lucky, will come from other influencers giving it a bump. And honestly, 1M is an absurd benchmark to clear. That’s one signature out of every 450 citizens. They need to know this campaign exists in the first place and care about it.
It’s sad, but I think the only way to preserve video games is through piracy and emulation. The companies do not care, states do not care, and most people do not care until it’s too late (and the games are seen as consumables by most people, which imo explains why they are « happy » to buy the same games again and again).
If California can pass their law about what counts as “buying” a digital good, then I hope we can take that as motivation here in the US to try for similar. I wrote my representative about it (she’s an R, so she didn’t care), and I’ll see who I can write at the state level.
