This campaign is not asking to take away IP from devs or publishers, they would still retain it. Legally speaking, a game sold for a single payment and without clear stipulation of an end of service would be considered a Good under EU law. Tjis means you're purchasing a perpetual license to your specific copy of the game, but not to the IP or copyright. Ross, the creator of the SKG campaign, [goes into extreme detail on this very topic](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tUAX0gnZ3Nw) of goods vs services, and how the game industry is committing fraud by destroying a customer's ability to access the content their perpetual license allows.

> If it passed in its current form, my fear is that it would effectively be an extra tax and burden just for choosing to make games instead of some other type of media, and I’m concerned investors would see it that way too, and move their financial support to these surer bets, ultimately harming individual game developers and lessening game releases. But for most games, how would it be an extra burden? As an armchair developer, most games might do a DRM check online, which would have to get removed or emulated or something. For multiplayer shooters, I don't know if dev hosted servers are somehow a lot easier to do, compared to dedicated servers of yore, even if they're just internal, and would get a public release when the game is EOL. Games that would have a harder time are probably MMOs or Live Service games. I don't know how those would get sold/made, if you can never shut down the game. Maybe those types of games would basically have to be rented or something, so it's explicitly clear you're not getting a perpetual license.

Because movies and series don't need it as much. Because piracy is a thing. You can watch any series that was pulled from air even if there's no DVD because you can download it. Even if you download some games, you can't play them because they're online only. See the crew as a prime example, as others have said.

> If it passed in its current form It doesn't really have a "current" form. An EU citizens initiative can really only outline what the goal is, and if passed, force the EU comission to investigate the problem to determine what an actual law could look like. It would mostly harm always online live service models. This stuff only gets complicated if a game has micro-transaction, and therefore has to have a bunch of systems to handle payment and accounts. If your game just does server-client multiplayer, like older games, there's barely any complexity to handle. Even moreso if your game isn't online at all. Basically every title on GOG would already comply with any law this might lead to. It's really not that demanding. The big publishers who nickle and dime their players are the only ones who would have a hard time. And that's a good thing.

It sounds like you're asking genuinely. Ross' interest is in games, hence that's the area he started it in. He's already stretched to his limit co-ordinating this limited campaign. He also advised to keep the scope limited so that the opposition to it will be mostly from games companies (Nintendo, Sony, Ubisoft, EA etc.) Than from movie companies (Paramount, Disney, Warner Bros. etc.) who will be also pushing as hard, using a lot of lobby money and a whole web of arguments from different fronts, that will be more difficult to deconstruct and rebut. For other audio and visual content, there are often "analog loopholes" that can preserve media even if in a slightly degraded form no matter how many layers of DRM you put. Games do not have a standard method to do that, so access is unilaterally and permanently taken away without a way for it to have been preserved.

Nothing about the initiative says anything about “requiring devs to develop a form of their game’s source that would be publicly available”. Where did you see that?

The equivalent for other media would be that if I buy a digital copy of a film or something, I should always be able to access it in the same resolution and whatnot that I purchased it. That's outside the scope of this campaign, but this campaign would certainly pave the way for it.

> The Stop Killing Games’ end goal is that governments will implement legislation to ensure the following: \ > Games sold must be left in a functional state \ > Games sold must require no further connection to the publisher or affiliated parties to function \ > The above also applies to games that have sold microtransactions to customers \ > The above cannot be superseded by end user license agreements It's asking for games to remain functional, not for source to become available. Even the Video Games Europe reply linked in the article mentions that the main problem, for them, is ["keeping servers online indefinitely"](https://www.videogameseurope.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/VGE-Position-Discontinuation-of-Support-to-Online-Games-04072025.pdf): > It appears to be a combination of a requirement to provide online services for as long as a consumer wants them^[It's not that, you fucking douchebags], regardless of price paid, and/or a requirement to provide a very specific form of end-of-life plan where the game is altered to enable private servers to operate^[This is the easy solution and perfectly doable, no matter what bullshit they try to use as an excuse. Don't want to keep your own servers anymore? Release the files needed to run private servers, update files so any game can connect to any private server, done.]. We do not believe these are proportionate demands.

Why do people trying to advocate against the movement push the narrative that source code is being asked for or that it is the only solution to make games work after it is sunset? Just put in an offline mode like was done for Redfall. https://www.ign.com/articles/redfalls-final-update-is-live-bringing-with-it-offline-mode-dlss-3-and-more Knockout City provided tools for gamers to run their own private servers after it shutdown https://www.knockoutcity.com/private-server-edition Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League has servers still running but put in an update to provide offline mode https://dcgamessupport.wbgames.com/hc/en-us/articles/36119520746515-Suicide-Squad-Kill-the-Justice-League-Offline-Mode-FAQ And fans have picked up the slack in Hitman with the peacock project when the companies lock certain things to online. > To reimplement the server side part of Hitman to run locally. So that if/when the official servers go down, anyone can still play the game. They've also made it easier/better to mod the game in various ways. > > This includes leaderboards, contracts, game progression and unlocks, bonus/event missions, as well as being able to play elusive targets with scoring. All things that are unavailable when you play offline https://old.reddit.com/r/HiTMAN/comments/12o76t3/what_is_the_purpose_of_peacock_project_mod/ So that's what I'm guessing the movement wants. Just to leave the game in a playable state as opposed to inaccessible when servers go down. And source code wasn't provided for these solutions.

Seeing multiple people pushing source code to misrepresent the movement makes me start to think they are bad faith actors.