The Stop Killing Games movement inspired by Ubisoft's shruggy shutdown of 2014 racer The Crew has hit a few potholes since its 2024 inception, including a bunch of European publishers' loud opposition toward it, and the EU itself ruling against its plea for better consumer protection against live-service game death. Proponents should also prepare for their humble campaign taking a full-on trip off a cliff, suggests Flux Digital Policy video games policy expert Dr. Ceila Pontin, since what it wants might be a legal impossibility.
Pontin posits during a recent interview with The Game Business, "Are consumer rights being violated? Well, they already exist to be violated." She says things like terms of service already provide "a framework" for how publishers and consumers should respond to scenarios of sudden live-service death, and it's unlikely that Stop Killing Games campaigners will be able to squeeze anything else out of the many legal, technological, and video game industry standards working against them.
