So, the games industry kind of just told 1.25 million of you to get lost. Now, that’s because as the EU petition crossed that threshold, Video Games Europe issued their response to stop destroying games. And it’s quite fun. Now, you may not know who this group are, but you probably know who the ESA are. That’s the US Games Industry body. They’ve been involved in all sorts of fun things like uh crushing game preservation efforts. Anyway, video games Europe is essentially the EU version of that. And their message is fairly simple. that if this all succeeds and goes through, that online games would become prohibitively expensive to develop, that developers might abandon Europe entirely, and that it would force the likes of private servers, which could be sketchy, which could steal your data and lead to scams. And if that sounds familiar to you, I wouldn’t really be surprised. I mean, this is basically the same playbook that gets wheeled out every time there’s some sort of like consumer body that’s demanding some change. It’s essentially worst case scenarios, fear tactics, corporate panic, all that fun stuff. Now, if you today. We can’t just go purely fullon us versus them. For harmony, what we need is balance. Balance between players, devs, and publishers. If any one gets too powerful, then the others of course suffer. And we get evidence of this all the time within games. For just one example of that imbalance, take a look at what Microsoft recently did. They essentially pulled a whole bunch of their contracts with third-party game developers, right? And from what we understand, purely this is because of them making strategic changes. Now, there was no clause in those contracts to protect those developers, meaning that some are now at risk of closure. My point essentially being the power imbalance is so bad that even a big contract like that does not have protections for a no fault termination for a development studio. That’s one example of the imbalance. And for many people, the whole point of Stop Killing Games is essentially that same imbalance again. Devs get screwed, consumers get screwed, and in so many cases, the ESA and Video Games Europe at their worst are just pushing for more power to the larger interests, to the larger publishers, the ones that I think everyone would argue do have too much power relative to everyone else right now. I don’t want these publishers to go bust, but I do want balance. And that’s why I’m keen to see this movement through, to see where it goes. And it’s why today’s video exists. Because now that there’s been so much buzz, it’s actually time to talk about what happens next. Because the real fight hasn’t even started. Let’s hit the two things that video games Europe dropped, which basically are a statement and a policy paper. They kind of cover the same thing. And what they basically do, right, is restate current law. Essentially, that being that games are licenses. You don’t own them. It’s just a license. And that even does include a physical copy of a game. Now, they say that’s both why they can patch games, update them, do all that good stuff, and also why services can be ended under current consumer law, because it’s just a license to access a service, not a thing that you own. Now, their core argument about why changing that would be really bad is essentially cost. Basically, they’re saying that compliance with the sorts of rules that I guess a maximalist interpretation of stop killing games uh would want that that would make making online games prohibitively expensive, which would essentially mean less of those get made. They say it would curtail dev choice, right, in terms of genre type of game, and maybe even cause some devs to choose to avoid Europe entirely because they’d essentially have to work out, do we go into Europe and then take all of these other hits in every other market. This is basically saying they may not do that and if you’re in Europe, you won’t get a bunch of games. But of course, they also warn about the private servers. Basically saying that bad actors can exploit them to steal your data and to harm company reps, all of that stuff. So to hyper TLDDR their view, either companies half go bankrupt trying to comply or they just skip out Europe entirely and we just end up with a bunch of scammerrun servers. Spooky stuff. And again, it’s all sorts of things that we’ve heard before of worst case interpretations of what this initiative could demand. And that’s exactly the point of this video. That Video Games Europe is talking this way is no big conspiracy. It really shouldn’t be surprising because they’re a group that exists to prevent worstcase scenarios. That’s why they’re outlining a whole bunch of worst case scenarios. Now, their board has got EA people. It’s got Ubisoft people, but they also do represent every European developer through the various different trade associations that exist. And they do speak to a few wider concerns. Things like the EU meddling and product priorities for eco design or whether esports should even be recognized as a sport, right? All of that stuff where basically they don’t really want the EU to weigh in because change that they can’t control that much is obviously scary. So to them, the status quo is absolutely better. and they’ll probably be more spooked about this because they can just look at how effective the EU have been against Apple and against Google. But of course, with the petition hitting its threshold in the EU, they kind of had to respond. And of course, now in the UK, that petition has also went past its threshold. And that means it’s time to talk about the UK and the EU, what it all means for you. We’ll hit the UK first. So, the UK petition is actually further along than the EU’s one where it’s actually got a government response twice. Now, we had a general election a little while ago that did interrupt the first campaign, but we did get this initial response. It was clear, but definitely unhelpful where it essentially said that existing consumer laws should already protect buyers in a case where it’s unclear if a service can or can’t be revoked. And that essentially meant okay, the law covers it. We don’t need to make new laws. What’s changed though is the signature threshold because now it’s going to be considered for a parliamentary debate. And there’s actually even a countdown on the website of how many days there are until we get a debate date. Now, luckily for you, I’m one of the few people who kind of finds watching Parliament riveting. So, I’ll watch it when the time comes. But here’s an example of how this sort of thing could work, right? Another real world example. This is a farm animal care petition. It was launched in January, passed in April, debated in June, which is really, really quick. Why was it so quick? And can we expect similar for Stop Killing Games? Well, basically in this case, it actually touched existing legislative topics and also Joanna Lumley was involved. If you’re in the States may not know, basically she’s a UK celebrity. She’s got a long history supporting similar things. It’s a topic that cut through to the general public. So obviously, yeah, they were able to talk about it. But here’s the thing. Whenever you hear parliamentary debate, you’re probably thinking about, you know, the green benches, the, you know, the chamber of parliament with all the MPs gathered. No, it’s not that. It was just a single committee meeting. That’s how these things can actually happen where some interested stakeholders attend, a relevant minister shows up, the government’s position then goes on record. But in that case, no new legislation emerged. All that happened was promises of future consideration. That was basically it. It was a little bit of a nothing burger. Now, that is an example of a fast petition that had cultural support. Now, currently, 11 petitions await debate. One of them has been waiting for 115 days. You might be wondering why. That’s basically things like research, maybe a dash of a yes minister to slow it all down, but basically civil servants compiling reports on the petition, the stakeholders, industry context. That all takes time. But further than that, debates can be deflected. As an example, if a related topic comes up first, then the petition can get referred to that record. That could lead to a delay, but I know what will, and that is parliament entering recess through July. And that basically means we won’t hear anything solid until autumn at the earliest, which in a way may be a good thing. You see, the EU has got stricter timelines. And if the EU happens to go faster than their timelines, then we may get more information before the UK stuff goes down. And that could then inform the UK’s approach. Okay, look, I can’t be Margot Robbie in a bathtub, but we do have to explain this. So, just going to have to do it the oldfashioned way. So here is how a European citizens initiative which is what stop destroying games is can actually work. So when signature collection ends the stop killing games movement will have 3 months to send responses to the relevant national authorities. Those bodies then get 3 months to verify the signatures basically confirming totals for all the different regions. Thrilling stuff. Then after that happens stop Killing Games has got 3 months to send everything over to the EU. And then if after all of that it still has over a million verified signatures, well then the real work begins. And adding all that up, it means that in the worst case, it will be 9 months until the EU basically has everything. Though it could be faster than that. Now within 1 month of them having everything, they will then invite organizers to outline concerns. Within 3 months, there’ll be a public hearing. And during the wait, there’ll be loads of research, loads of stakeholder consultation, and all that fun stuff. And from there, there’s a few ways it could go. So, initially it would stay with the commission, but what’s actually possible is a full MEP chamber debate. That’s possible. Perhaps not likely here, but it could happen. Anyway, within 6 months, a formal response arrives, and that response explains any actions, rationale, and it gives a timeline. Though, there is a bit of a backs stop rule where if it’s up to 15 months after the thing passed, then a response is guaranteed. But what’s not guaranteed is change. So, this is where the commission actually has got loads of options. If they’re happy with things as they are, they can simply do nothing and that will be it. The the whole movement kind of fails to achieve its goals. Now, if they do agree that there’s a problem and think that they can fix it by reinterpreting existing law, so essentially giving new guidelines on that law, then they can do that. And we’ve even got a recent example of this working for video games. Remember the whole story in the EU with premium currency displays? That was actually one of these things. And it’s kind of a wild story. It’s essentially a big legal win for all of us. And it’s all thanks to uh a Swedish horseirl game getting really greedy and getting called out for it. So that can happen. Or of course there’s the other option of just proposing new legislation. And that’s where things would get even more complex. Of course, new legislation means new research is needed and that means public consultations, impact assessments, very very fun stuff. And then votes from the EU Parliament and Council. And that is of course when video games Europe would absolutely be stepping up any of their lobbying efforts. But regardless, in both the cases of the UK and the EU, getting a decision will take time. And even after a decision comes, that is not actually the end. Okay. So, one of the big goals of this video is basically explaining to you how this kind of thing actually works so we can all understand it. So, to do that, we took a look at the other EU petitions. And of the 119, 10 of them passed. And examining them, one thing is abundantly clear. These things do not move quickly. So, here’s the working example we’re going to go through. It’s the end the cage age petition. It passed late 2019, but it wasn’t answered until mid2021. Obviously, it’s a different story. You know, games are not exactly uh farmed in cages, but it’s a useful example because the whole stop destroying games petition is the same sort of thing as this, a European citizens initiative. So, the initial response to this actually seemed positive because it outlined plans for a legislative agenda that gave people quite a bit of hope. But of course things would drag it out. You know, research from the European Food Safety Authority, considerations of other legislation related fields, research and stakeholder needs, and all of the many, many, many complex things that I’m sure committees exist to, I don’t know, go and commit over. Anyway, how did this all play out? Well, over the following 3 years, there was a whole web of updates, and there was some good stuff. But here’s the thing. The specific demand of banning the cages did not happen. So because of that, the petition makers are now suing the European Commission essentially for failing to deliver. And it’s not the first time, right? This year whenever final appeals exhausted, courts confirmed that Citizens Initiative petitions like of course stop destroying games that those do not create legally binding requirements to implement change. And that’s why it matters for us. Even though this does go through, it’s not like it creates some sort of legal requirement for a change to be made. What they haven’t done is actually fully deliver on any of the 10. That may seem real bad, real doomer and bad for the thing that I guess we care about now. But I actually don’t think it really is because if you think about this overall situation, it does actually make sense. This is a multinational process with global impact, an insane number of stakeholders, and like hundreds of millions of people. That’s big. And it means that any changes that are done too quickly or are done poorly, you know, vague wording, underregulation, overregulation, those could have a really bad negative impact. So what we essentially have right now is the maximum negative position of video games Europe, which is essentially advocating for no change and the status quo. You then have perhaps a maximalist version of stop killing games, which is us to say way over here. Any movement in the direction of stop killing games would mean progress. And that’s why even though I don’t expect stop killing games will be fully implemented or anything close to that, I still think it’s worth a shot because I think it has a very real chance of progress. So the EU won’t be fast. The UK won’t be fast. But they do know that people care. The question then is whether they can do anything about it. And one of the key things there is in fact going to be you. In a way, stop killing games is in an almost dangerous position right now. Here’s the big point of today. With the petition passed, many people have treated it like somewhat of a finish line, as if somehow change will just happen from somewhere. I don’t know. I’m imagining like drunk Randy in the old South Park episodes just shouting change. So yes, there was celebration. There was a victory, but it’s not the full thing. Immediate change won’t happen. The danger then is that when that change does not immediately happen, people tend to lose interest or they get frustrated and they try to just abandon the system entirely. Now, this video is about giving you the context to understand what’s actually happening. That this will take a long time and that all parties will need to compromise. Yes, stop killing games, but also well, the games industry. What compromises will they be willing to make when forced? That’s a big question. And if you want to actually influence how that will go, guess what you need to do? You need to follow up with your MEPs if you’re a European. If you’re a UK citizen, perhaps contact your MPs because what we see here is actually evidence of your power. If you had no power, video games Europe would not have felt the need to respond. But if you want progress, then what you need to do, what we need to do is fairly simple. It’s to keep the energy up, to give this the fuel that it needs to actually last the journey. Because say two years pass and there’s some important committee where a thing is going to be decided upon. If we’ve all forgotten about it and just not given it energy, it will sort of peter out. And while that committee meeting may happen, all the people there will know, huh, it seems the public have really lost interest. So, if what you’re worried about is video games Europe being the only loud voice in that room, well, think about how you can keep the energy, keep the pressure up over the long term. That’s the lesson of today’s video. If you want to see how this practically applies to an actual video game, watch this one next.