Stop Killing Games: how you can help stop companies from destroying your games

Have you ever bought a video game, only to have it become unplayable later down the line? Well, you’re not alone. This is a growing problem, but there a new campaign that’s trying to stop it.

Traditionally, video games were sold as physical products, like a book or a movie. You bought the game, and it was yours to play forever. But increasingly, games require an internet connection to function, even for single-player modes. This means that the publisher, not the player, has control over whether or not the game is playable.

Recently, Ubisoft shut down the servers for a game called “The Crew”. So even if you bought the game, you can’t play it anymore. “The Crew” had millions of players, and it wasn’t that old of a game. Sadly, this isn’t the first time this has happened, and it likely won’t be the last because this has become a growing tend especially among AAA titles.

So, what’s being done about it? Ross Scott from the Accursed Farms YouTube channel is launching a new campaign called “Stop Killing Games” top push for governments to take action. This campaign argues that shutting down games like “The Crew” is unfair to consumers and hurts the preservation of video games as a whole. They’ve launched petitions in the UK, Canada, and Australia, with plans for more to come. This biggest effort is in France though as France is the home country of Ubisoft and that’s kind of nice for us as gamers since France is a country with one of the most robust laws for consumer protection so thanks Ubisoft for providing such a great basis for fighting this awful practice of which you participate in.

This is a complex issue. Publishers argue that maintaining servers for old games is expensive. But gamers point out that many of these games could still function offline, and even if they did need servers then they should at least make it possible for gamers to spin up our own servers to play.

Some people are saying that shutting them down is a way to force players to buy newer titles. Now, I think it isnt fair to force a company to support a game in perpetuity because nothing can really have a lifespan of forever but at the very least the gamers should be able to play the games they bought even if it requires local only or setting up their own server. The practice of removing the ability to play a game that someone paid for is not only unethical, it’s lying because that’s not purchasing, that’s called renting. In fact, some might even called it theft because they say the companies are taking people’s money under false pretenses.

I fully support this campaign at StopKillingGames.com but unfortunately, I am based in the USA and I did not purchase “The Crew” game so as explained by Ross in the video which will be linked in the show notes, I won’t be able to do much more than spreading the word so I am doing as much as I can and hopefully people who are in the audience may be able to help. If you “purchased” the game ‘The Crew’ then you could help with this campaign and in some countries you can help even if you didn’t purchase it, though for people in the USA like myself, that does seem to be a requirement.

Anyway, good luck Ross and mad respect for the massive amount of effort this has already taken and will take . . . much appreciated sir.