EU Commission Sets June 16 Response Date for Stop Killing Games Initiative

The "Stop Killing Games" European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) has officially been given a formal response date and a European Parliament plenary debate slot.

The European Commission confirmed that it will issue its official response to the initiative on June 16, 2026. This announcement came during a structured dialogue between European Commissioner Michael McGrath and the European Parliament's IMCO Committee on May 7, 2026.

McGrath was careful to temper expectations, noting that it is still "too early" to say what the Commission's final position will be, and that any response will need to be considered collectively by the College of Commissioners.

The campaign, officially titled "Stop Destroying Video Games," has been making its way through the EU's formal legislative machinery after collecting over 1.29 million verified signatures across EU member states. That number comfortably exceeded the one million threshold required to trigger official parliamentary scrutiny. The ECI was formally submitted in early 2026, giving the European Commission until July 27, 2026, to examine it and respond.

McGrath also confirmed that he had previously met with the campaign's organizers back in February, alongside Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen, where the organizers were able to present their case directly to the Commission.

The campaign is pushing for regulations that would stop publishers from remotely disabling games players have purchased, effectively making them unplayable. It was originally launched in April 2024 by Ross Scott, following Ubisoft's shutdown of the servers for the online racing game The Crew.

Scott attended the recent April 16 joint public hearing with the IMCO and JURI committees in person and was joined by fellow organizers, including Moritz-Maximilian Katzner, General Director of Stop Killing Games, Professor Alberto Hidalgo Cerezo, Marcin Barczyk, and Daniel Ondruska, as well as legal experts who laid out the case for new regulation directly to parliamentarians.

IMCO Chair Anna Cavazzini also confirmed that Parliament is expected to hold a plenary discussion on the initiative on May 21.

Progress is being made on several fronts outside the EU. Two supporting NGOs were set up in the United States and the EU in February, with a third recently launched in the United Kingdom.

Since the UK left the EU after Brexit in 2020, Stop Killing Games ran a separate petition there, which blew past its 100,000-signature goal, hitting over 189,000. This success prompted a parliamentary debate in the UK in November 2025. While lawmakers recognized the importance of respecting digital ownership, the government ultimately chose not to pursue any changes to the current laws.

Across the Atlantic, Stop Killing Games threw its support behind a California bill known as AB 1921, the Protect Our Games Act. The bill aims to push publishers toward greater transparency regarding long-term support plans and what players can expect when a game's servers eventually go offline. The bill has already gone through a significant review process and is expected to come up for debate in the near future.

Organizers also threw their support behind the French consumer group UFC-Que Choisir, which has taken Ubisoft to court last month over shutting down The Crew. The group claims Ubisoft "misled" players into thinking they had unlimited access to the game, when in fact that access relied entirely on servers the company could shut down at any time.