The Stop Killing Games campaign gains the Vice President of the European Parliament, Nicolae Ștefănuță’s support.
The Stop Killing Games campaign and petition continue to gradually increase momentum. The Stop Killing Games campaign gains the Vice President of the European Parliament, Nicolae Ștefănuță’s support. Ștefănuță posted on his Instagram showing his support for the campaign by posting that he signed the petition himself. As of writing, the petition has accumulated over 1.35 million signatures—well above the 1-million target.
The Stop Killing Games campaign is a consumer movement started to challenge the legality of publishers destroying video games they have sold to customers. This has been a growing concern from the video game consumers’ standpoint, as games are either delisted or lose developer support—essentially rendering the game obsolete. This was seen with The Crew, where Ubisoft removed the game from all stores and took it offline in March 2024. GOG took it upon themself to prevent this issue when Blizzard asked them to delist Warcraft 1 and 2.
Ștefănuță’s Instagram story post on Stop Killing Games stated, “I stand with the people who started this citizen initiative. I signed and will continue to help them. A game, once sold, belongs to the customer, not the company.” The official Stop Killing Games Bluesky also screenshotted and posted Ștefănuță’s post. But is this enough traction to push for the EU government to become involved?
Despite the Stop Killing Games campaign achieving its goal and going viral among content creators and media outlets, Video Games Europe offered a statement on the campaign. The EU industry organization represents the likes of Ubisoft, Take-Two Interactive, Warner Bros., Activision Blizzard, Microsoft, and Nintendo:
“We appreciate the passion of our community; however, the decision to discontinue online services is multi-faceted, never taken lightly and must be an option for companies when an online experience is no longer commercially viable. We understand that it can be disappointing for players but, when it does happen, the industry ensures that players are given fair notice of the prospective changes in compliance with local consumer protection laws,” Video Games Europe said in response to the Stop Killing Games campaign.
“Private servers are not always a viable alternative option for players as the protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist and would leave rights holders liable. In addition, many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create,” Video Games Europe’s statement continued.
Ștefănuță’s support comes after Stop Killing Games’ official EU petition surpassed 1 million signatures earlier this month, meaning it can now be submitted to the EU for verification and then, potentially, either progress to a public hearing or full debate session at the European Parliament. However, organizer Ross Scott is still encouraging more signatures ahead of the EU’s deadline to ensure its signature count remains above the essential 1 million threshold once mistakes or deliberate spoofing are eliminated.
Stop Killing Games has a separate official UK petition, which has surpassed over 150,000 signatures, meaning it must now be considered for debate in parliament. The official government page states, “Parliament considers all petitions that get more than 100,000 signatures for a debate.” Back in February 2025, the UK government issued an initial statement that it had “no plans to amend UK consumer law on disabling video games.” Ultimately, the government bodies need as much physical support from their citizens to consider investigating the issue.
