Every EU Lawmaker Backed Stop Killing Games at Hearing

Unanimous support from politicians is rare in any context. It's almost unheard of when the subject is video games. Yet during a 45-minute public hearing before three European Parliament committees on April 16th, every single MEP who spoke expressed support for the Stop Killing Games initiative, the campaign to prevent publishers from permanently disabling games players have paid for.

Stop Killing Games founder Ross Scott and organiser Moritz Katzner presented their case to the IMCO, JURI, and PETI committees after the petition surpassed 1 million European citizen signatures earlier this year. Scott laid out the core argument plainly: "When we say a game has been destroyed, what we mean is a publisher has permanently disabled all copies of it that have been sold so no one can ever play them again." He cited a statistic showing that out of 400 titles studied, 93.5 percent were rendered unplayable when publisher support ended. Concord and The Crew were both named as examples.

Committee vice chair Nils Ušakovs called the issue "a real concern for millions and probably hundreds of millions of European citizens." MEP Anna Cavazzini, chair of the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection, told the speakers she'd "heard a lot of support from basically all the political groups." European Commission director Giuseppe Abbamonte said he'd examine whether existing copyright regulations adequately cover the area and report findings by July. During a post-hearing press conference on Twitch, Katzner called the result "absolutely incredible" and said that for this stage of the process, it was "mission achieved."

I've been following this campaign since it looked like a long shot, and the fact that it got a hearing at all was a win. Getting zero pushback from lawmakers during that hearing is something else entirely. This doesn't mean legislation is imminent; the European Commission still has to formally respond by July, and MEPs may form a non-binding resolution to push things further. But Scott's framing of the issue as a consumer rights problem rather than a niche gaming grievance clearly landed. Publishers who disable games people paid for are operating, as Scott put it, "similar to scams." It's hard to argue with that in a room full of consumer protection lawmakers, and apparently nobody tried.