It’s amazing how much change a short period of time can bring. Two years ago, Stop Killing Gaming launched a campaign against the gaming industry's practice of shutting down server-dependent online games once they were no longer profitable. At the time, the campaign looked bleak; now, founder Ross Scott and campaign organizer Moritz Katzner have appeared in the European Parliament to formally state their demands - and things are looking to be going extremely well.
Like most parliamentary committee meetings, the entire hearing process was a bit boring, but the discussion content was quite interesting. For example, consultant Daniel Ondrushka said that the "Stop Killing Games" movement is "not unreasonable." They do not require game manufacturers to provide permanent online service support for games, nor do they require the reactivation of old games that have been shut down. They just hope to introduce relevant regulations to prevent such incidents of arbitrarily shutting down games from happening in the future.
"Games developed 20 years ago are still working fine today," Ondrushka said. "And as mentioned before, games developed 3 years ago are no longer playable. This is not a technical problem, it is a design decision and a business decision."
After elaborating on the actual process of game shutdown, Scott, the founder of "Stop Killing Games", also expressed his views from a business perspective. He said that if operation and maintenance planning at the end of the game's life cycle is included in the development budget, the cost impact will be "minimal". He added that some estimates of end-stage operations and maintenance costs by game manufacturers are "fundamentally false" because these estimates also include the cost of features that are no longer needed after switching to offline mode.
At the end of the hearing, MP Anna Cavazzini, chairperson of the European Parliament's Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection, thanked and congratulated the speakers, praising them for "an extremely good job" and saying that she had "heard almost every political group express support for this initiative." MEP Ilhan Cuchuk echoed the sentiment, reiterating that "there is broad support" for the initiative within the relevant committees.
After the hearing, a group of people held a press conference on the Twitch platform, and the atmosphere was obviously very optimistic. When Scott asked Katzner how he thought the hearing went, the latter responded: "It's incredible. I think everyone who watched the live broadcast can find that every member of the European Parliament present has given a positive response. It can even be said that even the attitude of the European Commission is quite positive."
Katzner also said that it must be clear that this hearing "is our first step into the public and into the legislative process," and the committee is still reviewing relevant materials submitted by the "Stop the Killing Game" organization. But he went on to say that "every single member" who attended the hearing expressed support for the initiative and that in terms of the hearing's core objectives, we had "accomplished our mission".
Scott agreed: "I feel that even if we make all the preparations perfect, the final result will not be much better than now. If we can have a little more preparation time, the process may be smoother, but in terms of the final result, I don't think there will be any difference."
Discussions with other interested parties, moderated by Katzner, continued for a long time, and the overall atmosphere remained positive.
“The road ahead is still long,” Katzner wrote, “but the forward momentum is real.”
This appearance at the European Commission brings to a successful end a strong start to 2026 for Stop Killing the Game. In February this year, the organization announced that it would establish non-governmental organizations in the EU and the United States to "carry out long-term anti-lobbying work" on the issue of game shutdown; in March, the organization also provided official support for the lawsuit filed by the French "Head Consumer Association" against Ubisoft's shutdown of "The Crew".