Gamer movement demands consumer rights for discontinued online games

The Stop Killing Games initiative, launched by YouTube personality Ross Scott, aims to force publishers to maintain live service for games after they have finished with updates or moved onto other products in preference to the older titles.

“The crux of this initiative is the tension between intellectual property (IP) law — which grants publishers ongoing control over their games — and consumers’ reasonable expectations of ownership after purchase,” said Jane Bourke, intellectual property and consumer protection expert with Pinsent Masons.

Bourke added: “This raises important questions about whether ‘ownership’ of digital goods genuinely confers the right to use them indefinitely, or whether publishers can unilaterally revoke access. The allegation that publishers are designing games for planned obsolescence could run afoul of the EU’s directive on unfair terms in consumer contracts.”

“If access is revoked despite a consumer’s investment, this may constitute an unfair commercial practice, especially if no clear expiration or service period was communicated at purchase,” she said.

The campaign was born after the discontinuation of Ubisoft’s ‘The Crew’, an online racing game launched in 2014 which was eventually closed by the publisher at the end of 2023.  In May this year the campaign claimed research had found that as many as 70% of online-only games were already discontinued or facing the axe.

The initiative has received increasing support, including from European Parliament vice-president Nicolae Ștefănută – who backed a Citizen’s Initiative petition that has generated close to 1.5 million signatures – and Minecraft creator Marcus Persson. Their main goal is for publishers to hand over the IP for online games no longer being updated to the wider gaming community, allowing the players who have invested time and money in those games to continue playing past the point the publisher stops providing support.

This would involve publishers handing over the source code to the gaming community and allowing the access to developer platforms so that the community can continue to create content for the game, free of connection to the original publisher, their capital, resources, and business practices.

However, industry body Video Games Europe said the initiative’s aims would curtail developer choice and make games development “prohibitively expensive”.

This goal could be the cause for further conflict between the campaigners and the companies they are targeting, according to Bourke.

She said: “While the initiative calls for publishers to release source code and development tools, this contradicts with contractual, copyright, and possibly trade secret protections. Without clear legislative guidance, compelling publishers to relinquish such rights – even for defunct products – would face significant resistance in court and from industry lobbyists.”

Another avenue Scott has explored is petitioning the European Commission to widen the scope of the long-anticipated Digital Fairness Act. The Act’s primary goals are to tackle problematic practices in the online space, such as misleading marketing by influencers and the addictive design of digital products. Scott proposes that the scope of the legislation be widened to encompass the initiative’s goals due to the similarities that exist between the initiative and the Act. On 17 July, the Commission launched a public consultation on the Digital Fairness Act, which will close on 24 October.

Tadeusz Gielas, London-based competition law and consumer protection expert at Pinsent Masons, said: “The UK petition associated with the Stop Killing Games campaign received almost 190,000 signatures within six months, indicating significant engagement within the gaming community on this issue, and promoted a UK government response”.

The UK government, in its response published in February, said: “there is no requirement in UK law for software companies to support older versions of their products. Decision-making is for those companies, taking account of commercial and regulatory factors and complying with existing consumer law”. However, it added: “If consumers are led to believe that a game will remain playable indefinitely for certain systems, despite the end of physical support, the CPRs [Consumer Protection Regulations] may require that the game remains technically feasible (for example, available offline) to play under those circumstances”.

Gielas said: “The landmark DMCC Act has revoked and restated the CPRs, and from 6 April 2025 a new unfair commercial practices regime can be directly enforced by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority using new legal powers modelled on competition law. Traders may now face fines up to 10% of their global annual turnover for non-compliance with consumer protection rules, which are increasingly relevant to online selling practices and digital content. To mitigate their compliance risk, business should ensure that they do not mislead UK consumers in their sales and promotions practices, including with respect to the planned obsolescence of video games.”