Stop Killing Games is an European Citizens Initiative aiming to keep games playable even after their developers and publishers have stopped supporting it.
Only two days ago Denmark passed its respective threshold (I reported) and just last night the Netherlands joined the club. Both countries did so after two weeks of virtually no movement in their numbers.
To get the initiative onto the EUs agenda so it has the chance to become EU law, it has to both reach 1 million signatures total and minimum thresholds in at least 7 countries. The Netherlands is the 6th country to pass the threshold. So who will be the 7th? Currently it looks like Ireland (69%) followed by Belgium (66%), France (64%) and Austria (62%). But as Poland has shown, things can change quickly.
All that has happened already, happened in only just over one month since the initiative started accepting signatures showing a remarkable momentum. So let's keep the momentum going. If you haven't already signed and are a citizen of the EU (even one abroad) consider signing the initiative.
Even if you are from a country that already reached the threshold you can still sign. Your signature counts to the 1 million goal.
Relevant links:
PS: Hi LTT crew. I'm honoured to be your source when reporting on the initiative. But maybe consider also citing the primary sources. The link "Sign the initiative here" leads directly to the page of the European Commission, which has even more up to date numbers than my screenshot.
Nice going. Maybe EU can beat some sense into digital "ownership".
Or kill it completely. The only reason I've held off signing this is that the wording is so vague that it could work in favor of gaming companies. I'd rather not see that.
It's not supposed to be a finished law at this point. The main take from the initiative is that digital games have a massive issue with anti-consumer practices, and that consumers demand something to be done about it.
How would this exactly backfire in your view?
Multiple ways.
Companies can completely erase the idea of ownership. If everything is subscription-based, they can simply stop the subscription and have no further obligations.
Or Europe just gets completely locked out of functionality, as already happens in some European countries.
Of course good things can come from this, but I've read here several times that this just isn't a good proposition and might just lead to the anti-consumer practices disappearing in a negative way too.
EU is way too large of a market to "lock out." Didn't happen with Apple, for example.
For subscription hell, we're deeper into it than is healthy, but I don't expect it to take over because of this. Steam, which is the biggest, most profitable platform out there doesn't even offer a subscription and shouldn't be hurt by this. For competitors, trying to suddenly force everyone into a subscription would lose a lot of business.
Edit: Anyway, doing nothing about it is a guaranteed bad outcome.