By Nelson Schneider - 07/13/25 at 03:12 PM CT
Rights abuses by IP and copyright holders have been a recurring subject on this blog, largely because they are so flagrant and egregious in contemporary Industrial Gaming, and neither the Democrats nor Republicans that control the United States government and write all of the laws seem to want to do anything about it. Considering the last major piece of legislation Americans got was the horrendous Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which was copied largely intact across foreign governments ranging from the U.K. to Japan, it felt like we as consumers were at the mercy of Corporate Persons who seemed determined to NEVER let us enjoy Intellectual Property on our own terms.
Since the formation of the European Union, however, the European Commission has been on the bleeding edge of pushing for individual rights. Sometimes these pushes veer into nonsensical and Woke directions, but most of the time, European regulations force multi-national corporations to stop doing objectively detrimental things. European Commission rules are why Westerners in the Old World get to eat healthy processed food, free of petroleum-based dyes, while Americans get to enjoy lethal levels of high-fructose corn syrup in everything at the grocery store.
One of the most exciting European developments that I never would have heard of if not for coverage by Europe-based Gaming News YouTube channel, Bellular News, is the “Stop Killing Games” movement, which arose in direct response to Ubisoft “killing” their 2014 Racing title, “The Crew,” by discontinuing its Live Service features, and building the game in such a way that none of the single-player content would function without Live Service connectivity. Right now, the movement is running petitions in several EU countries, as well as a blanket all-Europe petition, which has gathered a staggering amount of signatures, approaching a half-million, on the European Citizens’ Initiative.
We can only hope that the Stop Killing Games petition is successful in changing European Commission regulations in Gamers’ favor, requiring any Live Service games purchased within the region to have fully-functional offline modes that will continue to function in perpetuity, without phoning home to any publisher-run mandatory servers.
If Europe can successfully force this issue in the West, it will lead to one of two outcomes. Either Corporate Gaming Publishers will simply region-block Europeans from buying any of their games with built-in expiration dates, or Stop Killing Games will create a ripple effect throughout the greater global Industrial Gaming Economy, where publishers will simply return to building their games for timelessness and longevity again, since that’s easier and more cost effective than cutting half a billion people out of the core of your market or creating a “good” version of every game to sell in Europe and a time-bomb version to sell in the rest of the world.
Let’s hope the European Commission can hold some feet to the fire and take the first steps towards a complete overhaul of copyright and digital property rights that’s actually fair for everyone.
