The Stop Killing Games initiative follows criticism of French publisher Ubisoft, which recently shut down servers for 2014 online racing game The Crew, rendering the game unplayable for its 12 million registered players.

The initiative, which needs a million signatures from seven EU member states by July 2025, says it “seeks to prevent the remote disabling of videogames by the publishers, before providing reasonable means to continue functioning of said videogames without the involvement from the side of the publisher”.

Aleksej Vjalicin, spokesperson for the Stop Killing Games initiative, told Euronews: “This service doesn’t have an expiration date that you would know of, so you can get robbed so to speak at any time if they decide to shut it down. We don’t see that as being a fair practice.”

YouTuber Ross Scott suggested the EU could lead the way internationally, saying: “Once it’s a requirement that companies have to let you keep the games they sold to you in a major market like that, I think it spreads, whether it’s law elsewhere or not.”