Stop Killing Games volunteer Moritz Katzner has shared an update on the popular European Union Citizens’ Initiative to its official subreddit. The EU has successfully verified 1,294,188 of Stop Killing Games’ 1,448,270 signatures, easily clearing the one million minimum count it needed to move forward in the process.
Under an infographic breaking down the votes by EU country, Katzner explained that the team had initially planned a big rollout of the news further down the line, close to Stop Killing Games’ next meeting with the EU Commission. According to Katzner, this smaller announcement was made because “We didn’t want to present our case unprepared, unintentionally leak information to lobby groups, or worst of all burn out our team.”
Stop Killing Games: Final Count of Verified Signatures of the European Citizens Initiative from r/StopKillingGames
Katzner also requested that people show patience for the volunteer team running Stop Killing Games. “You’re not talking to some abstract institution like the EU, you’re talking to real people,” he said. “Yes, even the mods are real! In fact, you’re talking to someone who’s about to play Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 in about 30 minutes just to decompress after a stressful week.”
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In the comments, user MikeyIfYouWanna calculated that about 89% of the submitted signatures were legitimate. Katzner agreed, estimating that Stop Killing Games has one of the top three lowest failed signature rates among EU Citizens’ Initiatives.
“We’re sitting at around 10%, while the best-performing initiatives tend to fall in the 10–15% range, which puts us firmly in the upper bracket,” Katzner wrote. “Some initiatives see failure rates as high as 20–25% and still manage to get over the line, but it’s worth noting that the overall sample size is quite small, only 11 initiatives.”
Stop Killing Games began in response to game publishers ending support for live service or otherwise network-reliant games, cutting off access for players who paid for them. The primary demand is not that publishers support games in perpetuity, but that they have end of life contingencies in place, allowing for continued access for players—fan servers are a good example.
The petition has seen some industry pushback—hence Katzner’s allusion to lobbyists—but it has proven incredibly popular with gamers worldwide. EU Citizens’ Initiatives allow citizens to directly propose a new law or regulation to be considered by the European Commission. Prior successful initiatives include one to phase out caged farming in EU countries, and another to enshrine access to clean water as a human right.
Here’s the list of countries and their verified signatures shared by Katzner:
- Austria – 20,714
- Belgium – 31,846
- Bulgaria – 14,238
- Croatia – 14,403
- Cyprus – 1,997
- Czech Republic – 25,935
- Denmark – 36,010
- Estonia – 9,296
- Finland – 54,538
- France – 145,289
- Germany – 233,180
- Greece – 19,618
- Hungary – 25,595
- Ireland – 36,073
- Italy – 77,030
- Latvia – 7,526
- Lithuania – 14,461
- Luxembourg – 2,465
- Malta – 2,007
- Netherlands – 90,413
- Poland – 143,826
- Portugal – 31,585
- Romania – 38,221
- Slovakia – 18,628
- Slovenia – 6,520
- Spain – 121,616
- Sweden – 71,158
