Recently, the EU consumer rights movement "Stop Killing the Game" announced that its legislative proposal has entered the critical verification stage. Currently, 15 EU member states have completed legal signature verification, and a total of 689,000 signatures have passed review, accounting for 47.6% of the total 1.448 million submitted. This move means that this legislative initiative aimed at curbing game manufacturers from arbitrarily terminating services will soon officially enter the EU legislative process.
According to the latest progress report released by the organization on social media, although the two major EU member states of Germany and France have not yet completed verification, the existing data has made the organizers "confident that the legal threshold has been reached." In accordance with EU regulations, citizens' initiatives can qualify for European Commission hearings and European Parliament plenary debates after collecting one million signatures and passing verification. It is worth noting that the current signature verification failure rate is always controlled at around 3%.
During the three-month validation period, initiative organizers have launched a legislative outpost and conducted intensive consultations with members of the European Parliament, national government agencies and the European Commission. At the same time, it is actively building an academic support network. Its statement emphasizes: "Support from politics and industry is important, but we need to respond to technical questions with professionalism." The organization has previously admitted that it is dealing with "misinformation and industry lobbying pressure" on multiple fronts.
This battle to defend consumer rights is triggering an in-depth game in the industrial chain. In July this year, the European Electronic Games, an industry organization whose members include Ubisoft, Activision Blizzard, Microsoft, Nintendo and other giants, publicly opposed the proposal, warning that relevant regulations would cause game development costs to "increase to prohibitive levels." The organizers of the initiative pointed out tit for tat that the object of their struggle is "a small number of manufacturers that hold classic games hostage" and called on developers to jointly build a "sustainable game heritage protection mechanism."
According to the plan, the organization will continue to promote the linkage between politics, business and academia and present solutions through parliamentary hearings, public events and other forms. The sponsors of the initiative call on EU citizens to convey their demands to local governments, consumer protection organizations and game studios, and invite more developers to "stand in front of the parliamentary podium and prove to the world that viable alternatives exist."