Stop Killing Games

Stop Killing Games

Basic information
Founded	2024
Type	Public Campaign
Industry	Videogame Consumer Rights
Official website	https://www.stopkillinggames.com/

Stop Killing Games (SKG) is a campaign intended to spread awareness regarding publishers revoking licenses for consumers and removing game functionality so that they are no longer in a playable state. The campaign was announced on April 2, 2024 by Accursed Farms, better known as Ross W. Scott, an American YouTuber and consumer activist who is best known for his Freeman's Mind series.

Campaign history

On April 2, 2024, Accursed Farms posted the video "The largest campaign ever to stop publishers destroying games". In the video, Ross Scott explains the issue with modern gaming, where video game publishers often take advantage of laws.

Ross W. Scott has a history of advocating for game preservation and decrying what he calls "war on ownership" for over 12 years

UK Parliament petition

On April 16, 2024, a UK Parliament petition titled "Require videogame publishers to keep games they have sold in a working state" began collecting signatures. The petition intended to create laws to prevent publishers from removing the ability to play games after purchase. The UK government answered on May 2, 2024 but the petitions committee requested Government to revise their response . The petition was subsequently closed on May 30, 2024 due to the UK general elections, preventing further signatures. It reached 27,341 signatures and was originally scheduled to close on October 16, 2024.

On January 14, 2025, Lewis Evans created a petition titled "Prohibit publishers irrevocably disabling video games they have already sold" closely following the prematurely closed petition in 2024. It is yet to receive a government response and is due for one on January 30. Ross Scott published a video listing the events of the original petition, the government response and the creation of new petition

On February 3, 2025, The UK Government responded to the Petition, “There are no plans to amend UK consumer law on disabling video games. Those selling games must comply with existing requirements in consumer law, and we will continue to monitor this issue.” As of July 2nd, 2025, the petition reached the goal of 100,000 signatures to be considered for debate in the UK Parliament.

European Citizens' Initiative

On June 19, 2024, "Stop Destroying Videogames" was registered as a European Citizens' Initiative by Daniel Ondruska. A month and a half later, on July 31, 2024, the initiative began collecting signatures. Accursed Farms posted the video "Europeans can save gaming!" later on the same day, encouraging European citizens to sign the initiative.

About a week later, Thor of Pirate Software published a video covering SKG, with the intent to negatively criticize SKG. Ross from Accursed Farms attempted to contact Thor about having false assumptions of the campaign's objectives. Ross cited Pirate Software's video as the primary cause for signatures drying up on the European Citizens' Initiative petition. Ross stated that they did not initially make a response video directed at Thor, because "it might look like drama farming" for the campaign, but when the deadline started drawing near, Ross went through with making a response on June 23, 2025 as a last-ditch effort to save the campaign.

For a European citizens' initiative to be valid, it must obtain at least one million valid signatures and meet the minimum thresholds in at least seven countries. The deadline of the initiative is on July 31, 2025. As of June 25th, 2025, there are over 500,000 signatures and the threshold has passed for over ten countries.

As of July 3, 2025, the European campaign has reached its goal of 1,000,000 signatures.

Industry push back

On July 4, 2025, one day after the campaign reaching 1,000,000 signature Video Games Europe, an industry lobby group, released an statement on Stop Killing Games on their website and published a 5-page position paper against the campaign where it outline perceived problems seen by the industry even though some of those perceived problems were already clarified by the lengthy FAQ section provided by the campaign.

Video Games Europe response is not only unsurprising but also expected since their board is composed by major publishers like EA, Ubisoft, Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony and they see no problem in how the industry works today.

Video game preservation

Main article: Video game preservation

There are also efforts to restore older games, or to allow the community of games to have access to the source code of games themselves. In 2025 there were several developments by major publishers, such as Valve and EA. Valve released the source code of Team Fortress 2 in February. EA released the source code of classic command and conquer titles, also in February 2025.