Video Games Europe is a lobby made up of several of the world’s biggest publishers to try and advocate for European game devs. However, their response to the Stop Killing Games initiative isn’t exactly supportive of what EU gamers are advocating for.
Stop Killing Games hit 1 million signatures despite doubts that the petition would get enough signatures to get the notice of European legislators. In the wake of this milestone, Video Games Europe felt the need to respond as the largest video game lobby in EU.
And, while the statement opens with the lobby’s board claiming that they “appreciate the passion of our community” in regards to wanting to keep games around, they shut down the ideals of this initiative in every other part of the statement.
They claim that, if Stop Killing Games’ demands were to be made law, that game development would become “prohibitively expensive”.
Video Games Europe fights back against Stop Killing Games
In the wake of games like Anthem being shut down and never accessible again, people who want games to be able to exist in perpetuity continue to advocate for games being developed with sustainability in mind.
Stop Killing Games wants to make it mandatory for devs to either create ways for a game to exist offline or to offer up a version of the game that fans can maintain after its life cycle ends. However, Video Games Europe is completely against the idea.
“The decision to discontinue online services is multi-faceted, never taken lightly and must be an option for companies when an online experience is no longer commercially viable. We understand that it can be disappointing for players but, when it does happen, the industry ensures that players are given fair notice of the prospective changes in compliance with local consumer protection laws,” the statement reads.
EA is permanently shutting down Anthem, making it unplayable forever
“Private servers are not always a viable alternative option for players as the protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist and would leave rights holders liable. In addition, 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.”
This view aligns heavily with that of Pirate Software, someone who has publicly decried the Stop Killing Games movement and sided with the view of publishers and developers who don’t want to take on the extra expense.
However, it’s worth mentioning that Video Games Europe’s lobby is stacked with people representing some of the biggest publishers in the industry like Ubisoft, Warner Bros. Games, Activision, EA, Microsoft, Square Enix and more.
Studios under every single one of these publishers’ umbrellas have shut down servers for a game, with the product being permanently unavailable even if players paid full-price for it. In most cases, users aren’t offered refunds for their in-game purchases or the purchase of the game itself.
Video Games Europe have made it clear that they’ll be working against the ideas outlined in Stop Killing Games’ mission statement.
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