Stop Killing Games campaign: Saving the future of game ownership

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Recently, Sony announced that by January 2028, it will stop producing physical copies of games and switch to purely digital releases. Meanwhile, leaks reported by Windows Central claim that Xbox’s next console, Project Helix, will be built without a disc drive. This would make Project Helix a fully digital console with no option to play physical games at all.

The online reaction to this news has not been pretty, as physical games play an important role in game preservation and consumer rights.

For example, consumers cannot sell a used digital copy of a game or lend it to a friend. This prevents other consumers from buying a cheaper used copy. However, if a game is ever pulled from online stores or if the online store itself is shut down, there may suddenly be no way to experience that game unless you buy a console with the game already downloaded.

This has happened before with Silent Hill P.T., or Playable Teaser. It was a Silent Hill game demo made by Hideo Kojima with Guillermo del Toro and was praised by fans and critics alike. However, after its cancellation, Konami removed it from the PlayStation Store and made it impossible to reinstall. This caused consoles with P.T. already downloaded to shoot up in price.

Not to mention, Sony also announced that it would close the PlayStation Store on PS3 and PS Vita. While users will still be able to download previously purchased content for the foreseeable future, the move shows how fragile digital access can be once stores and servers begin shutting down.

Sony will also reportedly delete 551 movies and TV shows from StudioCanal that consumers had already paid for from their PlayStation libraries on September 1 due to a licensing agreement coming to an end. If this can happen with movies, who is to say it cannot happen with games?

“You’ll own nothing and be happy” is a phrase that is becoming more relevant in our ever-increasing digital world. It seems every tech company’s goal is to have all of us under an eternal subscription service instead of allowing one-time permanent purchases.

Gamers have tried to fight back. The Stop Killing Games campaign is a collection of gamers, consumer advocates, and legislators fighting to ensure that games requiring servers to function still have a way to be played once those servers inevitably shut down. It was founded after The Crew, a mainly single-player racing game, was shut down once Ubisoft closed its servers, even though it required a constant internet connection to function.

Stop Killing Games argues that this should be illegal, as a product you paid for should not self-destruct.

However, despite massive online support, the campaign has faced setbacks. In California, a bill that would have required publishers to make sure their games remained playable even after servers shut down failed to advance further.

In a hearing over the bill, Assembly Member Chris Ward was questioned by the committee on how possible it would be to keep games running on private servers if official support ended. He answered that games like Call of Duty and Minecraft already utilize community servers.

However, Jennifer Gibbons, vice president of the Entertainment Software Association, objected, saying those servers were illegal since they were not officially sanctioned. She even compared them to the black market.

This claim, at least with Minecraft, is absurd, as the game has multiple pages on its website encouraging players to browse third-party servers or make one of their own.

“You’ll own nothing and be happy” is a phrase that is seemingly becoming more relevant in our ever-increasing digital world, and it certainly applies to the situation now. If this is the future companies are promising us, then it is a bleak one.