One of the most important initiatives for gamers is “Stop Killing Games,” which aims to ensure that games remain playable forever. At first, it seemed to be fading away, but now enough signatures have been collected to be relevant – unfortunately, there might be a problem.
What is Stop Killing Games? The mentioned initiative, founded by YouTuber Ross Scott, addresses the short lifespan of games. The trigger for the initiative was the shutdown of the servers for The Crew – Ubisoft therefore offered no support to fans who had already spent money.
For Ross Scott, this was an unfair practice toward consumers, and that’s why he wanted “Stop Killing Games” to empower gamers to fight for their games. Petitions were launched in various parts of the world to collect signatures. The goal is to get developers to stop treating their games like licenses that they can do whatever they want with.
If developers no longer want to support their game, this initiative should ensure that fans have the right to set up private servers so that the respective communities can remain active in their favorite games.
The minimum number of participating supporters is 1 million signatures, and that goal was recently reached with the help of other YouTubers and streamers. One might think that’s a great success, but there could be a problem.
Signatures must be verified
What’s the deal with the signatures? In a petition, errors can occur that distort the actual result. As Ross Scott explains in a short video on YouTube (Source: YouTube), reaching the milestone of 1 million signatures is great, but one shouldn’t get too excited.
He compares these errors to players who don’t know what they’re doing in their games – like those who like to run into walls and hit them. According to him, these errors are not counted in the initiative and are therefore considered invalid.
Therefore, Ross believes that more valid signatures need to be collected to compensate for those who, as the YouTuber said: “cannot write their own name correctly.”
In total, at least 10 % more signatures need to be collected. 20 % would be better, and with 40 % more signatures, one would be almost on the safe side. That is the first problem, but there is another one – fake signatures.
Why are fake signatures bad? They not only distort the result, but they could also have consequences. As Ross mentioned, this is not a “Change.org” petition, which is viewed with less respect – this is a governmental process that is taken seriously.
These fakes can cause problems, and if something like this gets uncovered, investigations by Euro-, Interpol, and the FBI (depending on the location of the forgers) could take place to identify the culprits.
It is unclear whether there would be penalties, but Ross cannot completely rule it out – especially not if the initiative has received many fakes. The YouTuber advises against such actions.
How many signatures are now real? Ross cannot answer that exactly, as the fakes blur the results. However, he estimates there are 600,000 to 700,000 official and valid signatures. It remains to be seen whether the petition will eventually go through or fail to meet the necessary minimum due to the fakes. More about the petition and the surrounding drama can be found here: Twitch streamer must be held accountable for wanting to destroy games – goes even further
