EU publisher group addresses Stop Killing Games movement in early double down: killing online games "must be an option," and this proposal would make them "prohibitively expensive to create"

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Video Games Europe's board include executives from EA, Microsoft, and Warner Bros.

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(Image credit: Firewalk Studios)

The EU Stop Killing Games initiative recently surpassed its goal of one million signatures, so it seems like everyone in Europe is ready to defend fragile online games to the death… except for those doing the killing.

In response to the Stop Killing Games movement's growing avalanche of support, Video Games Europe – a lobbying group whose board includes executives and legal representation from publishers like Warner Bros. and Microsoft – was dismissive in a new statement. Published both as a blurb on its website and as a full position paper, the statement dismisses Stop Killing Games as "disproportionate."

To the group's point, the Stop Killing Games petition page can, at points, read more like a manifesto than a policy proposal; "An increasing number of video games are sold effectively as goods – with no stated expiration date – but designed to be completely unplayable as soon as support from the publisher ends," it says. "This practice is a form of planned obsolescence."

Ashley Bardhan
Ashley Bardhan
Senior Writer

Ashley is a Senior Writer at GamesRadar+. She's been a staff writer at Kotaku and Inverse, too, and she's written freelance pieces about horror and women in games for sites like Rolling Stone, Vulture, IGN, and Polygon. When she's not covering gaming news, she's usually working on expanding her doll collection while watching Saw movies one through 11.

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