Your games could disappear overnight. The campaign to prevent this is failing

This is the last chance to support the EU's citizens' initiative, which, for some reason, has slowed down sharply after initial mass support from players.

Jacob Blazewicz

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Your games could disappear overnight. The campaign to prevent this is failing, image source: Accursed Farm.
Your games could disappear overnight. The campaign to prevent this is failing Source: Accursed Farm.

The fight against "killing" video games may fail even before the closure of the citizens' initiative, which didn't even gain half of the required support in the European Union.

In theory, there is over a month left until the end of the campaign, but let's be honest: a miracle is needed to collect the required number of signatures. In December 2024, the first requirement was met: the minimum support threshold was reached in 7 EU member countries. However, the total number of signatures didn't even exceed 400,000.

Unfortunately, no major progress has been made since then. It failed to get above the minimum threshold of support in subsequent countries (although it was close in some), and to date, only 465,000 signatures of the required one million have been submitted to the petition.

  1. Official website of the citizen initiative "Stop Destroying Videogames"
  2. Official page of the "Stop Killing Games" campaign

Last try without a chance?

In this situation, it's no wonder that the organizers of the action gave up. Hence, the latest video update on the "Stop Killing Games" campaign by Ross Scott (from the "Accursed Farms" channel).

The YouTuber "briefly" summarized the fate of the initiative in a new video, reminding viewers for over an hour about the beginnings of the action and the steps taken by the organizers, as well as those that still remain an open option.

Nevertheless, from the beginning of the video, it is clear that Scott is not an optimist: the two remaining options are linked to the aforementioned EU citizens' initiative and a separate petition in the UK (available until July 14), and in both cases, the issue comes down to the same problem: more votes are needed.

The YouTuber openly admitted that the new material is essentially the "last attempt to wake people up," drawing attention to the problem of "killing" games by publishers. Scott has no illusions about the chances of success for both initiatives.

Pirate saga of disinformation

The YouTuber also didn't fail to address the issue of the "biggest critic of the action": Jason "Pirate Software" Hall (albeit with great reluctance). For context: the streamer, known for controversial statements, posted a video that was viewed over a million times, in which he spoke negatively about the action.

Scott briefly summarized Hall's video: Pirate Software tried to stop the initiative, even though he "didn't understand the campaign" and "made up" information about its goals, and probably "killed" the momentum of the initiative. According to Accursed Farms, after the publication of this material, the number of new signatures drastically decreased.

Even Scott's material explaining the "39" controversial issues didn't help in dispelling the doubts of internet users. Now the YouTuber admitted that his reluctance to "get involved in drama" (directly responding to Hall's video) was a mistake and really hurt the cause (by discouraging big influencers from addressing the issue in their content).

Without getting into details (because over half of Scott's new videol is dedicated to this issue), the YouTuber pointed out more serious misrepresentations by Hall, including linking SKG's actions only to single-player games (and turning multiplayer titles into them), demanding endless support from publishers for games, and "unclear" action assumptions.

Ignoring the unflattering comments about Hall, some players are still trying to draw the attention of journalists and well-known influencers to the campaign. In the hope that, despite everything, we will reach the players who haven't supported the campaign so far. Nevertheless, let's be real: it would take a miracle to gather more votes by July 31st than in almost 11 months of the initiative.

The Crew

December 2, 2014

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Jacob Blazewicz

Author: Jacob Blazewicz

Graduated with a master's degree in Polish Studies from the University of Warsaw with a thesis dedicated to this very subject. Started his adventure with gamepressure.com in 2015, writing in the Newsroom and later also in the film and technology sections (also contributed to the Encyclopedia). Interested in video games (and not only video games) for years. He began with platform games and, to this day, remains a big fan of them (including Metroidvania). Also shows interest in card games (including paper), fighting games, soulslikes, and basically everything about games as such. Marvels at pixelated characters from games dating back to the time of the Game Boy (if not older).