{"id":319838,"date":"2025-08-05T12:52:20","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T12:52:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/319838\/"},"modified":"2025-08-05T12:52:20","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T12:52:20","slug":"the-brief-geek-petition-risks-turning-europe-into-the-havana-of-the-game-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/319838\/","title":{"rendered":"The Brief \u2013 Geek petition risks turning Europe into the Havana of the game world"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nEuropean holidaymakers visiting Havana love to photograph its streets. Charming scenes depict the city\u2019s faded old-timers; the pastel vintage cars are a tourist favourite and transport the viewer back to a bygone era.<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n

\nBehind the pretty picture is a tale of economic isolation that Europe would be wise to heed \u2013 not only in the physical world but in the virtual world, too, as a successful EU petition<\/a> by gamers upset at companies for \u201ckilling\u201d their favourite games could end up with the EU being pulled from the entire global market.\n<\/p>\n

\nIn 2014, Ubisoft released the popular racing game called \u201cThe Crew\u201d \u2013 an online game that by May 2017 had 12 million players worldwide. In 2024 the game\u2019s servers were shut down, much to the consternation of its loyal remaining fans who sought to keep it alive. Ubisoft ignored them.\n<\/p>\n

\nTheir outrage led to the \u201cStop Killing Games\u201d movement<\/a> \u2013 a petition signed by over one million European citizens, earning it a place on the agenda in a consultation for the upcoming EU Digital Fairness Act. The onus is now on the European Parliament and Commission to decide how to proceed.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\nBut despite the group\u2019s good intentions, their call for legislation to prevent companies from \u201ckilling\u201d video games risks creating a bureaucratic monster that will damage developers and consumers alike.\n<\/p>\n

\nMost modern games regularly check in with the developer online to combat piracy \u2013 this function should be stopped from \u201cdisabling\u201d games, the petition argues. Then, firms should provide \u201creasonable means\u201d to keep the games running.\n<\/p>\n

\nIn practice, this could mean forcing firms to eventually surrender their intellectual property \u2013 from characters to settings, including their branding \u2013 to the public domain or keep it running forever.\n<\/p>\n

\nMuch like with regular bureaucracy, firms would have to devote (limited) resources to assessing the new requirements and how to comply with them \u2013 ad infinitum for any future product sold in the EU.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\nEuropeans would suffer from such arduous rules that are sure to turn away many of the small and medium-sized firms that make up most of the industry, worth some \u20ac200 billion worldwide.\n<\/p>\n

\nWhile industry titans like Ubisoft, with a turnover of over \u20ac2 billion, can order their legal department to ensure compliance with annoying EU rules, many firms would simply block sales to Europe.\n<\/p>\n

\nTo see what this might look like, we don\u2019t need to go as far as Cuba; Belgium issued a restrictive ruling on in-app gambling in 2018 that has already had a disruptive effect for gamers.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\nWhen Umamusume, a Japanese mobile game inspired by horse racing, rocked the Western gaming world<\/a>, confused Belgian residents<\/a> found they were barred from downloading or playing it.\n<\/p>\n

\nInstead of complying with local rules to be able to sell in Belgium, firms just abandoned the market \u2013 a rational choice when assessing the cost-reward calculation.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\nIf the EU demands a wholesale surrender of intellectual property for the benefit of gamers, firms might instead decide to abandon or restrict their sales in the EU. One industry insider called this a \u201cvery real risk\u201d.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe truth is that Europe\u2019s games market may not be worth the effort \u2013 just three EU countries appear in the ten biggest markets<\/a> and all of Europe together still only ranks third<\/a> after the US, which is the biggest, and China, which is the fastest-growing.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\nAll too often, European bureaucrats overestimate their heft \u2013 the era of the so-called Brussels effect when EU rules could shape the world is long gone, if it ever existed at all. Rather than a gamers\u2019 Eldorado, Europe could become the Havana of the game world.\n<\/p>\n

Roundup
\nNATO Arctic patrols \u2013<\/strong> The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and Germany took part in manoeuvres<\/a> off Norway\u2019s northern coast\u00a0as part of a broader deployment to patrol the High North. The operation also aims to secure sea lanes and monitor undersea activity.<\/p>\n

\nIf aviation was fully taxed… \u2013 <\/strong>Currently, only intra-European flights are covered by the EU emissions trading system. If this were extended to all aviation, total revenues could reach a staggering \u20ac1.1 trillion<\/a>, according to a new study by Carbon Market Watch.\n<\/p>\n

\nSAFE bids exceed \u20ac150 billion \u2013<\/strong> Loan requests from 18 countries under the European Commission’s SAFE defence programme exceed the \u20ac150 billion available<\/a>. Last Wednesday, loan interest totalled \u20ac127 billion, but this figure reflects only the lower end of countries’ requests as capitals have to submit both a minimum and maximum bid.\n<\/p>\n

Across Europe
\nUkraine buys into Spanish poultry and pork \u2013<\/strong> Major Ukrainian poultry firm MHP has sealed a deal<\/a> to acquire a 92% stake in Uvesa, one of Spain\u2019s leading poultry and pork producers, consolidating control of Europe’s chicken market. The deal expands the presence of Kyiv-based MHP inside the EU.<\/p>\n

\nIrregular flights raise EU alarm \u2013<\/strong> The flights from Minsk to Benghazi have raised concerns<\/a> that Russia is helping to drive a new wave of irregular migration to southern Europe. Brussels fears Moscow may be weaponise migration to sow division within the EU \u2013 a tactic it has used before.\n<\/p>\n

\nSweden under pressure to admit wounded Palestinians \u2013<\/strong>\u00a0Despite an EU-wide slow reaction, 14 EU countries, including Italy, Romania, and Spain, are currently assisting with medical evacuations from Gaza, according to the EU mechanism<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"European holidaymakers visiting Havana love to photograph its streets. Charming scenes depict the city\u2019s faded old-timers; the pastel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319839,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[2000,299,5187,1699],"class_list":{"0":"post-319838","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-european","11":"tag-european-union"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114976256395658665","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}