For the people that don't know stop killing games is an initiative that is aiming to get laws in place to stop the sudden and total removal of games that people bought.

If this is a bit vague think of "the crew" for example a racing game with a single player focused story that was on a always online server. When the game company decided they didn't want to host it anymore they shut down the servers and thus made anyone that bought the game unable to play it anymore, even though the heqvy single player focus meant it should've been possible to play it offline.

There are many cases of this all over the industry where games that are bought and payed for suddenly disappear forever without any accountability.

The stop killing games initiative wants to force companies to give the community the tools to keep games running after official support ends. This wouldn't impact the studio's beyond providing the tools, and would greatly benefit the players who can continue to play it.

Now where this gets interesting for r/belgium is that apparently a lobby group in belgium VGFB that is using all the standard scare tactics of lobby groups to influence any political progress that would be possible.

Now I don't know what exactly we as a community could do but personally I find the behaviour of these types of groups despicable and seeing the clientele they represent this one seems no different(just about all of them have a washlist of worker abuse cases and anti consumer behaviour) and wanted to put a spotlight on these roaches working in the dark and using our names to do it

by ThaGr1m

11 comments

  1. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I work in the gaming industry and I signed stop killing games as soon as I could. I had no idea VGFB was lobbying against it. I’m going to reach out to the author.

  3. The new trends to make money are remasters, re-releases, and purchasing isn’t owning. Obviously, with all these factors, no game company could possibly like the idea of being obligated to leave games in a playable state ; why get a new one when the old one works fine? Maybe people will realize that the remaster is just bloom? Worse, they might replay the game instead of purchasing a new one?

    All companies that care about money before gaming will logically be against it. And then, there’ll even be decoys, to claim it isn’t just big companies. Like I suspect this weird group is.

  4. This is partially misinformation, they are members of a european gaming industry cooperation, it is the cooperation that lobbies against it, not directly the companies themselves/ even if a few of those companies were against the lobbying; the cooperation would still lobby against. So this is not definitive proof that all of them are evil (most of them are, and are most likely using this organization to hide behind if things go south)

    Just wanted to add the detail

    Edit: ok nvm Belgian firm is actively against, [https://vgfb.be/statement-stop-killing-games/](https://vgfb.be/statement-stop-killing-games/)

  6. Gaming companies with big money investments are being steered by investors. The investors have been talked into thinking that “live service” games are the future.

    This is a model of perpetual income. In theory, purely in theory, if you get a game off the ground with a decent amount of people playing it, you can get a release cycle going and people spending money on it predictably.

    It’s an investors’ wet dream: eternally recurring income. Predictable money in their pocket.

    The issue with live services is that most of them are pretty shit. There’s only a handful of really good ones.

    Also, it really wouldn’t take a lot for the market to get saturated. If a person’s going to dedicate to playing something, that leaves little time for other such games.

    Increasingly, these games ask for daily logins, daily quests, in other words: loyalty and spending time on them only.

    Imagine doing multiple of those, and even giving them money for the privilege of taking as much of your time as they can.

    The alternative is to build a single-player experience and hope you get enough sales to make a decent profit.

    The weird thing is: they’ll try to argue that that is more uncertain. As if sticking daily login quests in your boring live service will guarantee more income.

    It’s all just money. Follow the money.

  7. What a shocker, national associations and prominent publishers with studios in the EU are in an industry group together like literally every industry ever.
    Larian studios is chilling though :))

  10. So they handily made a statement on their website with the contact info of the author. I encourage everyone to write a nicely worded email why you as a player cannot understand the position they are taking and urge them to reconsider.

    [https://vgfb.be/statement-stop-killing-games/](https://vgfb.be/statement-stop-killing-games/)

    It’s hardly surprising that they’re taking this position though, just click on the “members” page and see brands like nintendo, EA, Take-two, Microsoft/Xbox, Sony and even Chinese giant Tencent.

  11. “If buying isn’t ownership, then piracy it isn’t theft.” – Minecraft’s Notch.

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