At the end of February, the Stop Killing Games campaign landed in Brussels. Members of the European Parliament met with people determined to protect the ability to play video games in a period marked by nonstop end-of-life announcements—ranging from Anthem to Highguard. Meetings with MPs, along with a press conference, took place as the online movement stepped into one of the most uncertain arenas around: parliamentary life.
So, how did things play out? How open were legislators to the pressures facing the video game industry, and what comes next? To find out, Eurogamer spoke with Josh “Strife” Hayes, a YouTuber and streamer who has built his platform on covering both older and newer games—and who has now become a supporter of the Stop Killing Games initiative. He attended the press conference mentioned earlier and returned to England after his European trip.
Hayes credits a large part of the initiative’s momentum to Ross Scott, who runs the YouTube channel Accursed Farms. Scott, as Hayes puts it, “picked up the banner” and helped the movement spread widely across the internet. By releasing a string of videos dedicated to the cause, Scott and his group boosted the profile of Stop Killing Games. After Ubisoft shut down The Crew, Scott and allies behind Stop Killing Games collected millions of signatures, bringing the problem into the attention of European policymakers.
“Through Ross’ efforts to keep games playable via consumer-focused legislation, I started to look at the wider gaming ecosystem and realized that we’re losing a huge number of artistic and cultural items made by talented people. Through my involvement with MMORPGs, I’ve run into many MMOs that are now no longer accessible,” Hayes said.
The aim of Stop Killing Games is straightforward: introduce an end-of-life framework for upcoming game releases so that, when servers are turned off, players can still experience the games they bought. This wouldn’t mean full operation in the way the games were originally designed to work, and it also wouldn’t be retroactive for many earlier titles. Instead, the proposal argues for a new approach going forward.
At first, the idea ran into a lot of confusion, largely because of old assumptions. “Politicians are meant to represent their constituents and their best interests,” Hayes explains. “Politics is still, for the most part, dominated by older people, and very few of them in politics truly understand video game culture the way people who are actively involved in it do.”
“We’re losing a significant number of artistic and cultural artifacts created by skilled individuals.”
“That’s why we have such a charged title: Stop Killing Games. It’s a statement, using the word ‘killing’ in a pretty direct way, and ‘games’ is used to stand in for all games. Still, politicians often fail to make the distinction between Tetris and Portal, or between Minecraft and League of Legends. I doubt any of them have played The Stanley Parable, because they wouldn’t get the references. From their perspective, it sounds like we’re asking why games are dying in the first place—what’s actually causing it? Why can’t they be played? Isn’t it just like putting a cartridge into a Nintendo? We had to clarify that, in reality, that kind of era is already over.”
But as Hayes describes it, once people had time to reflect—and after an update on how modern game consumerism works—the real message behind Stop Killing Games started to come into focus. “We told politicians that this is a broader consumer advocacy matter, because these games are being removed through a one-sided agreement that lets companies do it whenever they want. At that point, politicians understood it wasn’t only about some kid who wants to play his Nintendo—it’s about European consumers and customers worldwide being denied access to products they already paid for. Or, it’s about services that were marketed as goods and that were supposed to fit within the legal rules for services. When they realized this effectively gives companies too much leverage and mistreats consumers, they began to take it seriously.”
After he returned to England, Hayes said he felt encouraged, though he also had several notable reservations. He believes, after all, that the European Union has “excellent consumer advocacy organizations and solid consumer protection.” The main point is that once Stop Killing Games was presented as a consumer-rights issue, it developed into a distinct political opening—it won support across party lines.
“The Commission and Parliament operate like checks and balances on each other. A range of political games can unfold between them, particularly if one side backs something that the other side rejects for reasons rooted in principle—or due to power dynamics,” Hayes says. “What we found, though, is that this isn’t just a bipartisan problem. It’s broader than that. It leans less on dramatic political posturing and more on MPs from multiple parties coming together to tackle an issue that affects every voter, regardless of ideology. I think they’ll be able to deliver meaningful change.”
“I don’t need to play Highguard to not want it to die.”
Even so, the ongoing Stop Killing Games effort still faces hurdles it must clear. First, it requires introducing a different viewpoint into the video game industry, which is also the main source of information lawmakers may be drawing from.
As Hayes puts it: “The gaming industry is enormous, but these politicians aren’t necessarily interacting with games in their everyday lives. Much of their understanding comes directly from the industry itself, which obviously wants to protect its own business interests. We’re pushing for the future we want to build, but it’s been difficult to convince politicians that we aren’t treating the gaming industry as an enemy. This isn’t an adversarial situation. It’s a shared responsibility among players, developers, and publishers to make sure art stays available for good. Politicians view it as though there are groups in conflict. That’s the framework they use to interpret what’s happening. We had to emphasize that everyone stands together against indifference, loss, and the erosion of art.”
In a way that may be hard to accept, recent developments have strongly reinforced the initiative’s core argument. Take Highguard, scheduled to close later this week, despite already having more than two million players in the first month after launch. In Hayes’ opinion, no game should be cut off and made unplayable overnight.
“I haven’t played Highguard. I don’t need to have experienced it to want it to last. There’s someone out there who values Highguard. It has worth—in its music, its story, its environmental design… The idea that a developer can pour so much time into a project, only for it to become someone’s cherished game, and then for that player to be told it will simply vanish forever is heartbreaking. It genuinely feels awful.”
Looking ahead, Stop Killing Games has to keep building momentum toward its goals. Arguably, this is its toughest test. In a time when attention fatigue and slipping motivation are common, experience has shown that urgency can fade in many places—from video game preservation campaigns to real-world emergencies. When dedicated advocates online are intense one month and then lose interest the next, how can Stop Killing Games stay engaged during the months and years of navigating politics? In the end, the movement’s biggest “opponent” may be exactly what sustains it.
“The biggest cultural advantage Stop Killing Games has for staying relevant is that games keep disappearing,” Hayes concludes. “What we’re trying to stop is still happening. Every time it occurs, a player loses their favorite game for good. Someone is robbed of a piece of art they care about, and sooner or later someone else tells them, ‘I wish we could stop killing games.’”