‘Stop Killing Games’ EU Petition Surpasses 1 Million Signatures, Seeks More To Offset Invalid Submissions

Cars race through Saint Louis in The Crew (2014), Ubisoft
Cars race through Saint Louis in The Crew (2014), Ubisoft

Despite the bumpy road, the Stop Killing Games EU petition has surpassed 1 million signatures. Even so, the campaign’s founder Ross Scott warns more will be needed to counteract any invalid signatures that could bring it below the threshold.

It's all fun and games racing around a theme park in The Crew (2014), Ubisoft
It’s all fun and games racing around a theme park in The Crew (2014), Ubisoft

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For those unfamiliar, servers for 2014’s The Crew went offline in April 2024, rendering the game unplayable. Though hardly a rare case, it inspired Ross Scott (‘Accursed Farms’ on YouTube) and the ‘Stop Killing Games’ campaign.

Because publishers can disable servers with no way for players to utilize their own, or design them to cease functioning entirely, the initiative’s goal was to convince world governments to ban making games inoperable. This included consumer rights cases in the EU and US over The Crew, and petitions to the UK government.

Nothing could go wrong driving at speed on snow at night in The Crew (2014), Ubisoft
Nothing could go wrong driving at speed on snow at night in The Crew (2014), Ubisoft

Of note was the campaign’s European Citizens’ Initiative — requiring at least 1 million signatures by July 31st 2025 to be discussed in their parliament. It also requires meeting the various minimum thresholds of at least seven EU countries for their votes to be counted.

Initially, preserving games became a talking point. Ubisoft even announced offline modes for The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest.

By September 2024, the Initiative had just over 350,000 valid signatures. Efforts were hindered by a pair of videos by YouTuber Pirate Software (Jason “Thor” Hall) in August of that year. He cast doubt on any chance of the campaign succeeding, having meaningful impact, and claiming Scott’s goals (conflating that publishers needed to support their games indefinitely) were impossible.

Pirate Software attempts to summarize the campaign via MSPaint in Stop Killing Games - 2, YouTube
Stop Killing Games – 2 via Pirate Software, YouTube

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By June 24th of this year, the Initiative still needed another 500,000 signatures.

Scott argued — in his video titled ‘The end of Stop Killing Games‘ — that Pirate Software had gotten many key points wrong, pointing out, “This video came out right as we were building momentum, and except for one boost in Germany, the signatures started drying up like clockwork.”

He felt at the time any video he did to debunk Pirate Software’s video initially would be mistaken for “drama-farming.” Now months later, Scott’s tone was also notably dour, noting that he was still getting comments and emails that had the wrong idea thanks to Pirate Software. “Well, now I have nothing to lose. If we don’t get the signatures, none of this matters, anyway.”

Ross Scott grows frustrated over his campaign struggling in The end of Stop Killing Games, YouTube
The end of Stop Killing Games via Accursed Farms, YouTube

“I kept hoping after launch, somebody with more reach and better ad campaigning, could just point people to the destination and get it done,” Scott bemoaned, adding that big streamers could make or break the entire campaign.

“I tried my absolute damnedest riding off the publicity of The Crew shutdown, and I barely got halfway. It took a chunk out of my life with almost nothing to show for it. No way am I going to spearhead something like this again. I saw this as my only shot, I took it to the best of my ability, that wasn’t good enough.”

That could have been where the story ended, except an old adage coming true. No publicity is bad publicity.

MoistCr1TiKaL annoyed over what Pirate Software got wrong in Stop Killing Games, YouTube
Stop Killing Games via penguinz0, YouTube

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MoistCr1TiKaL, a YouTuber with 17 million subscribers, voiced his support for the campaign after learning of Scott’s video on Stop Killing Games about to fail. His video, released on June 24th, has garnered over 3.4 million views at this time of publishing. In it, the YouTuber denounced the general state of the games industry, Pirate Software’s video, and clarified what the campaign was about.

Two days later, Cr1TiKaL would address this again — or rather, Pirate Software’s reaction to being blamed for the campaign failing — getting another 3.9 million views.

Amongold — a YouTuber and streamer with over 6 million subscribers and followers across multiple platforms — found Cr1TiKaL’s initial video. Apart from his original stream, Asmongold’s video on YouTube gained 2.1 million views, and also championed the campaign.

Amongold, reacting to Scott Ross, via MoistCr1TiKaL in He won't stop killing games.., YouTube
He won’t stop killing games.. via Asmongold TV, YouTube

The narrative of a campaign to protect consumer’s rights being “foiled” at the last hurdle by a YouTuber with an axe to grind made the story viral.

Jacksepticeye — 31 million subscribers, with 852,000 on his clip channel — was yet another creator who covered Stop Killing Games, with his video earning 1 million views, prompted after he felt his community post didn’t get enough attention (concerned the YouTube algorithm had done something). SomeOrdinaryGamers (3.85 million subscribers) covered it three times over (totaling over 1.6 million views).

Asmongold yet-again covered the various YouTubers who had reacted to the campaign in recent days, and his post on July 2nd calling for the campaign’s support was retweeted by Elon Musk. Out of his 221.8 million followers on X, the tweet generated 2.3 million views.

Asmongold and Elon Musk on X
Archive link Asmongold and Elon Musk on X

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Insider Gaming reported that the Stop Killing Games EU Initiative reached 800,000 signatures on July 2nd, gaining 2,000 signatures in the 10 minutes of the article being written. On July 3rd, the Initiative finally reached 1 million signatures. At this time of writing, it has over 1.2 million signatures.

While overjoyed, Scott warned the campaign wasn’t out of the woods yet. “The European Citizens’ Initiative has crossed 1 million signatures. Except it hasn’t.”

“This is going to kill morale, but there are two things going on here,” Scott explains. “The first we knew was coming: every time somebody makes a mistake when they sign the Initiative, their signature gets invalidated. So that means we need more signatures to make up for everybody’s mistakes.”

Scott goes onto to recommended how much more would be needed to compensate for potential invalidation. “I’ve heard 10% minimum, 20% is better, 40% should be really safe.” At this time of writing, the official Stop Killing Games website recommends, “To cover for invalid signatures, we may need at least 1.4 million signatures to secure this petition.”

The second issue comes from intentionally invalid signatures. “I’ve received several reports of people claiming to spoof signatures on the Initiative site. First off, I want to say that this is not a Change.org petition,” Scott derides, “this is a government process. Spoofing signatures on it is a crime. Please do not do this.”

The Stop Destroying Videogames initiative as of July 4th on the European Commission website
The Stop Destroying Videogames initiative as of July 4th on the European Commission website

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Potential Interpol action against the false signatories aside, Scott admitted those signatures obscured how many were “genuine.” He speculated at least 600,000 to 700,000 would be legitimate, and that the spoofed ones could be anything from a handful from individuals, to hundreds of thousands from a “sophisticated botnet.”

Scott was also concerned about the number of signatures occurring at what should have been night time in most European nations.

“I have to give credit where it’s due, I was looking forward to reaching a safe margin and putting this behind me, but now I guess I have to keep this up until July 31st, because there’s no such thing as a safe margin!” Scott warned. “I will be so happy for this campaign to end.”

The European Citizens' Initiative milestones on July 4th on Stop Killing Games
The European Citizens’ Initiative milestones on July 4th on Stop Killing Games

Despite this, Scott does reveal after MoistCr1TiKaL’s video, there was “about a 5% increase in signatures proportional to his views” around June 24th and 25th.

Apologizing that there wasn’t cause for celebration just yet, Scott went on to discuss how some users from Italy and Belgium had issues signing the petition, and a crypto-currency based on the campaign was a scam, and a second UK petition reaching its goal aiming for a better response.

Scott also condemned anyone who was harassing Pirate Software over the campaign. “Whatever damage Thor did to the campaign has been neutralized. So whatever happens is not on him anymore.”

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