Stop Killing Games petition hits EU threshold; publishers still hold the IP

Gamers petition the EU to stop publishers from deleting paid products

The BBC piece profiles the Stop Killing Games movement — a consumer-rights campaign demanding that game publishers, before shutting down an online game's servers, release either server software for community hosting or an offline patch that lets players continue using what they purchased. The movement collected enough signatures to trigger EU consideration and has parallel momentum in California, where the state assembly passed a Protect Our Games Act in May 2026.

What is at stake and why it is hard

The business model under fire is straightforward: a publisher sells a game for $40–$70, operates it for years, then closes the servers and the product ceases to function. Purchasers are left with a non-functional license. The movement argues this violates a basic consumer expectation embedded in the word purchase.

Publishers' structural defense: players bought a license, not a product; the license terms reserve the right to terminate server access; and the source code is proprietary IP they have no obligation to release. The movement has to break both arguments simultaneously.

The California bill apparently requires publishers to provide a functional offline state before shutdown. The EU petition, if accepted, would require the Commission to draft legislation — a slower but potentially broader instrument.

What the thread said — four reversals

In the thread, 136 comments spread across economics, law, and the scope problem.

Reversal 1 — publishers cannot have it both ways, but legally they can. The cleanest articulation of the structural absurdity:

"Companies are hypocrites about this. On the one hand they say 'we need to shut this down because we're losing money on it.' On the other hand, asking them to release aspects of the game to self-host the infrastructure: 'but that's our IP and it's valuable to us.' You shouldn't be able to have it both ways. Sitting pretty on unprofitable IP in the hopes that it might someday make you money again is a net loss to society." — a commenter on publisher IP hypocrisy

Reversal 2 — the DMCA is the actual enemy, not publisher greed. A hobbyist programmer with 25,000+ karma argued the framing of the debate is wrong: the problem is not that publishers will not release code but that the DMCA's anti-reverse-engineering provisions make it illegal for communities to solve the problem themselves:

"All this could be instantly fixed by repealing the DMCA's anti-reverse engineering provisions. Simply allow people to solve the problem, and the problem will literally take care of itself. Adversarial interoperability should be enshrined into law. If they won't support the thing, then we will. They just have to stop getting in our way." — a hobbyist programmer and open-source contributor

Reversal 3 — a developer points out the indie studio kill risk. A commenter who runs an indie game studio flagged that any legislation requiring offline-capable releases would asymmetrically devastate small studios compared to large publishers:

"Making devs make offline versions in the cases where its trivial is going to bite indie game studios." — an indie gamedev

This is the hardest problem for the movement: a rule calibrated to punish Ubisoft or EA would apply equally to a two-person studio with no offline architecture.

Reversal 4 — scope creep as strength, not weakness. The highest-karma commenter argued the movement's framing is too narrow — the real principle covers smart devices, ebooks, and any DRM-encumbered product:

"It should not be allowed for a developer or device manufacturer to kill or nerf any product remotely, once it was bought and paid for… if your software or device absolutely requires a server that costs money to maintain, then your business plan should take that into account." — a developer and long-time HN commenter

The rule that emerges

Copyright law, as a commenter noted citing the Copyright Alliance's own documentation, imposes no obligation on creators to make works available — only to prevent others from copying them. A game publisher can lock 15 years of online-game history in a drawer and enforce that lock with DMCA takedowns against community preservation efforts. The SKG movement is trying to create a new obligation — a duty to either maintain or release — inside a legal framework built entirely around the right to exclude. That is a harder fight than the petition numbers suggest.