United Kingdom Petition Launches to Prevent Online Video Games from Being Destroyed

A United Kingdom petition has launched with the aim of ensuring online video games remain in a playable state after publisher support ends.

A European Union petition is still ongoing, but UK residents and citizens have not been able to contribute to the campaign after a previous petition was forced to close due to the UK general election in 2024.

This new petition allows UK residents to once again put their names down and show their support for legal intervention to ensure video games remain in a playable state, without publishers being able to shut down and disable games at any time following a customer's purchase.

Description from the UK petition's page:

The government should update consumer law to prohibit publishers from disabling video games (and related game assets / features) they have already sold without recourse for customers to retain or repair them. We seek this as a statutory consumer right.

Most video games sold can work indefinitely, but some have design elements that render the product non-functional at a time which the publisher controls, with no date provided at sale. We see this as a form of planned obsolescence, as customers can be deprived of their purchase and cannot retain or repair the game. We think this practice is hostile to consumers, entirely preventable, and have concerns existing laws do not address the problem. Thus, we believe government intervention is needed.

The Stop Killing Games website has been pushing multiple worldwide governmental petitions, and this UK specific one can hopefully at least get a response from the UK government, which requires 10,000 signatures. At 100,000 signatures, the petition will be considered for debate in Parliament.

UK petition: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/702074

EU petition: https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home