The second Stop Killing Games petition in the UK crossed over 10,000 signatures, and so the government have responded with a full statement.
As a reminder: this is the initiative started up by YouTuber Ross Scott / of Accursed Farms, resulting from Ubisoft shutting down The Crew and preventing people who purchased it from playing it. The first UK petition had a government response last year, which really just reiterated the current consumer laws.
This second petition also now has a reply from the UK government and it's clear they have zero plans to change anything right now. Here's their reply in full:
The Government recognises concerns raised by video games users regarding the operability of purchased products. As the lead department for video games, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) regularly engages industry representatives and monitors how consumers interact with games. We work with the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) as the lead department for consumer protection more generally.
We are aware of issues relating to the life-span of digital content, including video games, and we appreciate the concerns of players of some games that have been discontinued. We have no plans to amend existing consumer law on digital obsolescence, but we will monitor this issue and consider the relevant work of the Competition and Market Authority (CMA) on consumer rights and consumer detriment.
Video games sellers must comply with existing consumer law – this includes the Consumer Rights Act 2015 (CRA) and Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (CPRs). We have provided details of relevant protections below. However, there is no requirement in UK law for software companies to support older versions of their products. Decision-making is for those companies, taking account of commercial and regulatory factors and complying with existing consumer law. There may be occasions where companies make decisions based on the high running costs of maintaining older servers for games with declining user bases.
The CRA gives consumers important rights when they make a contract with a trader for the supply of digital content, requiring it to be of satisfactory quality, fit for a particular purpose and as described by the seller. It may be difficult and expensive for businesses to maintain support for old software, particularly if it needs to interact with new technologies. However, if software is offered for sale that is not supported by the provider, then this should be made clear, for example on product webpages and physical packaging.
If digital content does not meet these quality rights, the consumer is entitled to a repair or replacement or, if not possible, some money back up to 100% of the cost of the digital content. These rights apply to intangible digital content like a PC game, as well as tangible content like a physical copy of a game. The CRA has a limit of up to six years after a breach of contract during which a consumer can take legal action.
A trader or third party can upgrade and improve the features of digital content so long as it continues to match any description given by the trader and conforms with any pre-contract information provided by the trader, unless varied by express agreement.
In addition, the CRA requires that the terms and conditions applied by a trader to a product they sell must not be unfair and must be prominent and transparent. If not, they may also be challenged and the question of fairness is a matter for the courts. Terms found to be unfair are not binding on the consumer.
The CPRs require information to consumers to be clear and correct and prohibit commercial practices which through false information or misleading omissions cause the average consumer to make a different choice. As such, the regulations prohibit commercial practices which omit or hide information which the average consumer needs to make an informed choice, and prohibits traders from providing material information in an unclear, unintelligible, ambiguous or untimely manner. If consumers are led to believe that a game will remain playable indefinitely for certain systems, despite the end of physical support, the CPRs may require that the game remains technically feasible (for example, available offline) to play under those circumstances.
The CPRs are enforced by Trading Standards and the CMA. If consumers believe that there has been a breach of these regulations, they should report it to the Citizens Advice helpline (or Advice Direct Scotland for those living in Scotland) which is a free service advising on rights and how to take their case forward. The helplines will refer complaints to Trading Standards and CMA where appropriate. Consumers can also pursue private redress through the courts where a trader has provided misleading information on a product.
The CPRs section of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers (DMCC) Act 2024 is expected to come into effect in April 2025. It restates and updates the CPRs into primary legislation, revokes the 2008 regulations and sets out rules around unfair trading. The Act:
● Provides the Secretary of State with the power to add, amend, or remove a description of a commercial practice which are in all circumstances considered unfair
● Provides clarification that someone facilitating supply or promotion of a product is a ‘trader’ and must comply with consumer lawThe use of this power will be kept under review – any amendments proposed are subject to a duty to consult with stakeholders and approval by both Houses of Parliament.
Department for Culture, Media and Sport
Clearly, these types of petitions aren't going to really help anything right now.
For now, your best bet is to be on the lookout for games that force an online connection and look to a different game. What we can perhaps hope for instead though, is to have stores like Steam require developers to clearly state on store pages if there's a forced online requirement, much like they now require for for kernel-level anti-cheat. Valve also made a tweak on Steam to more clearly note you're buying a license last year too, you don't actually own what you buy.
Source: UK Gov, Stop Killing Games
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
dziadulewicz 10 hours ago
These petitions are just too soft of an approach. It's just paper with names, even it had million names. The powers that be might take a glance at that paper and laugh while throwing it straight to trashcan.
psycho_driver 10 hours ago
pleasereadthemanual 10 hours ago
These petitions are just too soft of an approach. It's just paper with names, even it had million names.What is your proposed alternative for amending the laws to protect customers?
With 10k signatures it only requires a govt employee to respond.
One good thing is that this time the response trended towards understanding the issue, although they avoided the concept of preservation of art and only treat it as "product".
BladePupper 9 hours ago
You can always torrent the game you once bought or if there is a title you WOULD buy, but it's not "legally" available.
I would like to specifically clarify what kind of games the petition is responsing to since it is genuinely complicated. These games are ones where you can no longer play the game at all due to a crucial server connection being permanently severed without any way to use it ever again. Removing the game from your library is just insult to injury. Few may have server emulators but generally speaking once these games shut down they are unplayable forever.
Torrents/piracy do not work on these games. For example if half-life 2 required a connection to a server in order to play it and then the server went down permanently and there is no way to crack the game without running that server (or relying on someone else to run that server in the case of some revival efforts) and it is now gone, you can torrent the files but you can't play the game even if say drm like denuvo is removed. Even a backup will not work because of its reliance on that server which is now gone. This is how the crew works, there is a fan effort to make a server emulator, but at this moment even if you pirate the game files you cannot play the game.
One last thing to note is that ubisoft itself said that it would patch other entries in the crew series when the server eventually shuts down so that they can be played offline ie the exact opposite of what they're doing with the crew 1. That just shows this server requirement is not needed at all and only adds more work for them later when they have to later patch the game to remove its reliance on that server.
dziadulewicz 8 hours ago
What is your proposed alternative for amending the laws to protect customers?
Would use demonstrations and right to demonstrate in front of the associated departments there in the UK. Or can you actually gather there anymore to public places in numbers legally to demonstrate?
People have the power but don't use it. Or understand it. Authority religion is everywhere in Europe now, sure.
apocalyptech 2 hours ago
You can always torrent the game you once bought or if there is a title you WOULD buy, but it's not "legally" available. It's common sense that if you pay for a game with your hard earned money, it's just yours.
Kind of the whole point of the Stop Killing Games campaign is that this is not a solution because the games in question stop working without the backend servers running as well. The game which kicked off the campaign, Ubisoft's The Crew, even sold physical copies on DVD, in stores, and those copies are just as dead as anyone who bought it virtually. Access to the game binaries/data isn't the problem here.
These petitions are just too soft of an approach.
The UK petition is just one of many actions that the campaign is taking: https://www.stopkillinggames.com/countries -- They've also been working directly with lawyers and governmental representatives in other countries, and more or less trying to find any chink in the armor that they can. Unless I'm misremembering, Ross didn't think that action in the UK was especially likely to succeed anyway, given the legal precedents over there (though it was more likely than anything in the U.S., of course).
Would use demonstrations and right to demonstrate in front of the associated departments there in the UK. Or can you actually gather there anymore to public places in numbers legally to demonstrate?
As someone who's spent a lot of time protesting and demonstrating in numbers, I think the implication that issues like this would somehow be magically solved by gathering in public places to be laughable. By all means protest and demonstrate as the situation warrants, of course, and doing so can be quite cathartic on a personal, emotional level. But I personally take a pretty dim view as to the ultimate effectiveness. And, honestly, with everything else going on in the world these days, I personally couldn't fathom the mindset which would lead one to try and go protest this cause in person. I agree it's an important cause that I believe in, and I'd love to see games stop getting killed too, but there are currently some rather bigger fishes to fry out there.
Caldathras 2 hours ago
Reply button has disappeared from here for some reason and i can't remember how to point a quote out concerning a specific userThis is no longer automated for us due to changes caused by UK government regulation. It is the same for quotes as it is for replies. We have to do it manually, such as I've done above.
Regrettably, the only way to flag for notification is through the Like button now.
Caldathras 2 hours ago
Would use demonstrations and right to demonstrate in front of the associated departments there in the UK.It seems that protests and demonstrations rarely work these days. Politicians and bureaucrats tend to just ignore them.
I remember a leader of a political party here in Canada actually calling referendums undemocratic. Boggles the mind ...
As @psycho_driver comments, the best way to send a message is to vote with your money.
Last edited by Caldathras on 4 Feb 2025 at 7:30 pm UTC
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