The growing reliance of video games on internet connectivity, coupled with the steady decline of physical formats, has fueled the rise of the Stop Killing Games movement, which has already brought its demands before European Union authorities.
While the campaign is being fought through proper institutional channels, many observers question itsg industry
According to one policy expert, the movement has achieved a meaningful victory in elevating these debates to the public sphere, but actually achieving legal success is where the real challenge lies.
Stop Killing Games Worries Videogame Companies
In an interview with The Game Business, Dr. Celia Pontin, Director of Policy and Public Affairs at Flux Digital Policy (a consultancy specializing in gaming-related government and public affairs) offered her assessment of the Stop Killing Guns initiative.
She began by acknowledging that European regulators are treating the movement with genuine seriousness, and that it has likewise sparked unease in the industry. While she does not think anything will radically change, it has successfully placed an uncomfortable question on the table:
“The industry is engaging with it seriously and fairly intensely. The Stop Killing Games campaign has been very vocal across multiple jurisdictions, it’s not that this is just an American issue and we don’t hear about it in the UK, or it’s just an EU one, it’s being shared everywhere. It’s hard to escape, and it’s not something that you can really back away from. It’s also gaining momentum in the more general public consciousness, because it speaks to the move towards a digital-only culture, and that’s not just games.”
Pontin then turned to the gap between player aspirations and practical feasibility, emphasizing that the gaming industry does not operate in a legal or commercial vacuum.
The Difference Between What Players Want and What’s Achievable
Dr. Celia Pontin spoke about the actual reach a movement like Stop Killing Games can have, since the gaming industry is not dealing in an unfavorable environment:
“One of the concerns is there’s a mismatch between what people might be calling for and what is possible, not necessarily just technologically, but also when it comes to how existing legislation works, whether that’s consumer protection or IP law, as well as the practical implementation of it.
There is already a framework for dealing with these sorts of things about contracts having to be delivered as laid out in terms of service and things like that, and whether what you have been provided as digital content or service, whether that matches up to your expectations, and to what was promised. There are aspects of those that already exist and actually already provide what’s being asked for,” she said.
Can Stop Killing Games Succeed?
When asked whether Stop Killing Games can ultimately succeed, Pontin expressed skepticism about the movement achieving its stated goals, citing the diversity of the industry which ranges from solo independent developers to multinational corporate giants, each with its own rights, licenses, and commercial interests.
“A lot of this is complicated, particularly when you are trying to apply a solution across a really diverse industry, and diverse in terms of the types of game, not just genres, but whether they’re multiplayer or single player or require lobbies or the server architecture and the technology that lies behind that. Trying to get to a point where you have a solution that works across that, and including the diversity of what people think it means to play a game and be able to access it, that’s a really tall order. We need to make sure that small studios don’t get lost in the mix.
IP law is not straightforward when it comes to video games because instead of being one single item that has one kind of intellectual property right associated with it, it is this bundle and cloud miasma of interconnecting different tiny bits of copyright works.
It’s not just one thing. It is the script and the voiceover and the graphics, sometimes even frame by frame. It’s this big old bundle of different things that are put together, unlike a film or unlike a book. And that means that if you are talking about handing over a game to the fans, that’s not really a very straightforward way of thinking about it. It is genuinely something that adds a lot of complication, because you might not actually, as a company, be legally able to hand that stuff over even if you wanted to, because it might not all be yours.”
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