One of the big industry-wide narratives that emerged from the wreckage of 2024 was player-initiated efforts to center game preservation – indeed, even to make the broader public and political spheres care about it too. That’s what the Stop Killing Games effort was all about, after all. Unfortunately, that organization’s latest petition in one country has now been addressed, and not in a way activists will like.
Stop Killing Games’ Ross “Accursed Farms” Scott was supporting a petition in the UK to urge parliament to “update consumer law to prohibit publishers from disabling video games (and related game assets / features) they have already sold without recourse for customers to retain or repair them.”
With just under 13,000 signatures already lodged, the government has now responded to the petition, basically recognizing “issues relating to the life-span of digital content, including video games” but saying it has “no plans to maned existing consumer law on digital obsolescence.” It then goes on to discuss laws relating to selling unsupported software and refunds, which has little to with the actual petition. It’s kinda like if you said, “I don’t think Ubisoft should be able to rescind my ability to play The Crew offline after I paid for it just because they would prefer I buy a new game,” and the government responded by telling you that if you buy an old unsupported iPhone without proper warning, you are entitled to a refund.
The parliamentary body also reminds petitioners that “there is no requirement in UK law for software companies to support older versions of their products,” which of course is not at all what anyone was asking for; Stop Killing Games was asking the government to stop breaking functioning games retroactively, not demanding eternal support. It’s actually a little insulting, honestly.
“[W]e will monitor this issue and consider the relevant work of the Competition and Market Authority (CMA) on consumer rights and consumer detriment,” the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport says.
Gamers obviously won’t be appeased. “UK government has answered the petition and dodges even more this time,” Ross Scott tweeted in response. “It doesn’t address the problem asked, like repairability, no duration given, etc., and instead gives copy-paste tangential answers. Keep signing anyway, force Parliament to own this.”
If you’re in Europe but not in the UK, there’s a separate petition for you with over 400,000 signatures so far.
