The EU Commission officially passed on proposing any new laws concerning video game end-of-life protections as requested by the Stop Killing Games initiative. Even so, it seems they cannot really do anything to stop the movement due to its strong support in the EU Parliament, and it has itself outlined a few points that could cause trouble for publishers.
As announced by the EU Commission, the SKG movement requested it propose new regulations that would prevent publishers from cutting off support to video games once they reach their “end-of-life” stage, i.e., force them to patch their games to make them playable offline after servers are shut down.
However, “at this stage it cannot propose a legal obligation to keep video games playable after they stop being provided commercially,” the Commission said, chiefly due to “existing intellectual property laws “that give “rights holders,” meaning publishers, “exclusive rights over their creations.”
The EU Commission also added that the existing legal framework of the European Union already provides protections for consumers that could relate to the initiative’s request, chiefly that publishers have to declare the duration of a contract, as well as its terms of termination, before a game is “signed up” for. From what I understand, the EU Commission implies EULAs need to tell you upfront when a game is to go down, i.e., when the contract you agreed to will expire.
Most video game publishers, if not all of them nowadays, don’t do this. I mean, if they did, would anyone really be purchasing their games anyway? Knowing that you’re giving upward of over $100 for some editions for limited-time access to a game would certainly put off a lot of people, and to my knowledge no EULA ever clearly states how long a game will be online for.
Despite the Commission siding with the industry at the moment, one of the initiative’s key speakers, Ross Scott, said a few days ago that “the commission’s decision doesn’t really matter.”
“Don’t be discouraged by what the commission decides on the 16th. It is no longer the deciding factor,” Scott said. The Commission was relied upon to propose a new law, but since there’s no chance of that now, the initiative expects its strong support in parliament to help it get into the Digital Fairness Act. The EU Parliament, as Scott explains, cannot propose new legislation. unlike the Commission. but can nevertheless amend existing proposals, which should be enough.
So despite this development, it appears the initiative’s requests will make it into legislation eventually, all the while the Commission is discussing and investigating, i.e., ignoring the issue more or less entirely.
