Players outraged as expensive games disappear, demand answers
Hundreds of online games vanish every year, leaving players powerless as purchases disappear overnight. Ross Scott’s Stop Killing Games campaign is fighting for digital ownership before it’s too late.
Games by the bucketload are quietly vanishing, with corporate delistings leaving them unplayable – much to the frustration of players.
Take the example of The Crew, a beloved racing game that had just shy of a decade on the market. Ubisoft decommissioned it in March 2024 due to “server infrastructure and licensing issues.”
Other notable mentions include the hero shooter Battleborn 2K, taken down in 2021, and City of Heroes in 2012, due to “realignment of company focus and publishing support,” according to publisher NCSoft.
When the reasons sound so painfully corporate, the pushback is certain to gain momentum.
Players push back hard
The Stop Killing Games moment, which was launched and gained traction in 2024, is a bristly initiative that advocates for preserving online games and digital ownership.
They’re essentially throwing down the gauntlet, saying if you buy a game, you should get to keep playing it – a stance rooted in preserving online games and digital ownership.
The catch? Plenty of these titles are online-only, so when the servers shut down, your purchase just evaporates – even though you probably thought you were buying something permanent.
Physical games like the original Super Mario or GTA Vice City become collector’s items as decades go by, but when an online game dies, it becomes unplayable code.
Band of coders
#StopKillingGames is far from being just a hashtag – it’s a committed coalition of players and preservationists who campaign for more protection of their beloved games.
Game developers often band together to try to resuscitate games that have been killed off.
When browsing the Reddit forum r/StopKillingGames, there are boundless examples of games that have been pulled from the market.
One user recently posted about a dead indie game named Ace of Spades, dubbed “Minecraft with guns,” which was pulled in 2020.
The post shares the frustration that “at the time of delisting they disabled the ability to host a game at all. Not even with bots. The most you can do is run around an empty map.”
Jagex killed Ace of Spades
Nevertheless, the post points to a devoted group that is "rebuilding the game from scratch,” epitomizing the spirit of resuscitation.
Games gain EU attention
The EU has now formally acknowledged the campaign, carrying out regular reviews to decide what actually counts as digital ownership.
With over 1.4 million signatures – and still climbing – the petition has the kind of momentum that can push niche shutdowns (like Echo VR or Babylon’s Fall) into the international spotlight.
If movies can be preserved by The Criterion Collection, or out-of-print books kept alive by the Internet Archive, gaming purists argue there’s no reason the same shouldn’t happen for titles like Fable Legends.
The problem with digital ownership, however, is that the “buy” button often means renting access until a corporate decision pulls the plug.
Video Games Europe, an industry lobby group, argues that indefinite server operation is “commercially impossible” and “diverts resources from new projects.”
Cited reasons include server hardware costs and cloud hosting fees, but with players willing to maintain operations through fan-kept servers, shutting down titles isn’t necessarily the best option.
