The folks behind the Stop Killing Games campaign aiming to push lawmakers into taking action to stop publishers shutting down the servers of online games in a fashion that leaves them unplayable have hosted a livestream from the EU Parliament building itself following their latest meeting with the European Commission. The group say that meeting went “fine”, and used the stream to emphasise the bipartisan support their cause has amassed among MEPs so far.
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“The meeting went fine,” Stop Killing Games organiser Moritz Katzner said towards the end of the hour-long stream, “They’ve been open pretty much the same back when we met with them [in October] on the Digital Fairness Act. Half of them being completely in support, the other half saying, ‘No, on law we don’t think your position is correct.’ So, we’ll have to see. I’m going to be honest, the commission has factually no interest to bring us in and we’re anticipating that, because guess what – the European Union is made up of far more than just the European Commission.”
Eventually, the group hope the action they’re proposing be made law to combat game shutdowns will be debated in a trilogue meeting, which brings together representatives from the European Commission, EU Council, and the European Parliament for one big chat.
Katzner emphasised that the campaign has support from members of the European parliament belonging to groups at various points on the left/right political spectrum. On the left, he mentioned German MEP Tiemo Wölken of the European Parliament’s Socialists and Democrats (S&D) political group, to which 135 MEPs out of the 720 currently serving belong. On the right, he mentioned Polish MEP Piotr Müller of the European Conservatives and Reformists group, to which 79 MEPs currently belong. Finally, there’s some support from the Greens/European Free Alliance group, which currently has 53 MEPs. Those are three of the eight political groups which MEPs can belong to, with these being alliances of like-minded politicians who retain the final say on how they individually vote on issues.
One of the MEPs supporting the campaign, Greens/European Free Alliance member Markéta Gregorová – a politician from the centre/centre-left Czech Pirate Party – appeared on the livestream. She began by referencing the effect campaigns like Stop Killing Games have had on recent EU debates over proposed laws which would allow the scanning of private messages by authorities in an attempt to detect online child abuse contentin 2021 it, something digital rights campaigners argue would constitute an invasion of privacy.
“In 2021, it seemed like in the parliament everybody just voted for [chat control] because it’s protection of children, right? But then massively people like you send out emails and messages to MEPs here, to everyone, and suddenly everybody switched both in the governments and in the parliament,” she said. “So really if you send an email [in support of Stop Killing Games] and feel [you might not have done enough]…it really matters, because if they receive enough of it, they consider it important enough for then me and of course others who are a little bit more knowledgeable about the topic to persuade them about the data, about the arguments – otherwise they just go with the flow of their group.”
As for the progress of Stop Killing Games’ EU proposals, she continued as follows:
Now, we are of course at the beginning. So there will be a lot of harassment towards the commission that we will need to do. But also another positive/optimistic point, we don’t necessarily need [to propose] new legislation [and] wait for the commission. There is the upcoming Digital Fairness Act. You probably heard about it, the commission already presented it to us and now we will be able in the parliament to give out amendments, Maybe change it a lot, maybe implement some of these things that would also ensure that in terms of gaming and protection of your games [and] your data, what you bought is not being stolen away from you by the companies that just don’t want to continue keeping the servers up or something. I will definitely focus on such amendments and please write to your representatives so that they focus on this.
While the campaign’s proposals work their way through the European political process, Stop Killing Games’ organisers recently announced plans to start up NGOs dedicated to promoting the issue in Europe and the US.
