Game Giants Push Back on Stop Killing Games Initiative

The EU industry body representing major video game publishers, Video Games Europe, stated that the Stop Killing Games initiative’s proposals could make game development significantly more expensive if implemented.

The statement was issued on July 7, 2025, four days after the consumer movement gathered over a million signatures under its European Citizens’ Initiative, which challenges the legality of publishers selling video games as goods with no stated expiration date, yet designed to become completely unplayable once publisher support ends.

As of the time of writing, the European Citizens’ Initiative by Stop Killing Games has gained 1,233,674 signatures, qualifying it for EU verification and possibly a public hearing or full debate in Parliament.

“Many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create,” says statement on Stop Killing Games by Video Games Europe.

As of time of writing the lobbying entity Video Games Europe unites such giants of the game industry as:

• Microsoft whose game division generated about $15 billion in revenue during the 2024 fiscal year,
• Activision Blizzard, which was acquired for $75 billion in 2023 by Microsoft,
• The parent company of Bethesda Softworks, ZeniMax, which was acquired by Microsoft for $8.1 billion in 2021,
• Bandai Namco with a market capitalization of approximately $20 billion,
• Embracer with a market capitalization of about $2 billion,
• Epic Games and its $32 billion of market capitalization,
• Owned by Saudi Arabia’s Savvy Gaming Group ESL FACEIT Group with a market capitalization of approximately $1.5 billion,
• Level Infinite, which is part of Tencent Games’ approximately $170 billion market capitalization,
• Netflix with a market capitalization of approximately $552 billion,
• Niantic, which was recently acquired for $3.5 billion by Scopely,
• Nintendo with market capitalization of about $106 billion,
• Electronic Arts, a company with market capitalization about $39 billion, whose CEO recently received a pay raise despite layoffs and canceled titles, and now earns 260 times more than its average employee,
• Riot Games which market capitalization is approximately $8 billion,
• Roblox with market capitalization about $69 billion,
• Sega with approximately $5 billion market capitalization,
• Sony whose Game & Network Services division, comprising PlayStation hardware, software, and related services, is estimated to be worth around $31 billion in annual revenue,
• Enix with market capitalization of approximately $8 billion,
• Supercell with about $10 billion of market capitalization,
• Take-Two Interactive which market capitalization is approximately $43 billion,
• Ubisoft with a market capitalization over $1 billion,
• Warner Bros. Games with market capitalization of approximately $5 billion.

Stop Killing Games was started by YouTuber Ross Scott and gained traction after Ubisoft shut down the servers for The Crew in March 2024. Due to the game’s always-online design, the shutdown killed access to both multiplayer and single-player content. Adding fuel to the fire, Ubisoft also began revoking licenses from player libraries, eliminating any chance of community-run revivals.