If you’re in gaming circles on social media, chances are you’ll have heard of Stop Killing Games. It’s an initiative led by YouTuber Accursed Farms that aims to challenge video game publishers in an attempt to stop them from making games completely unplayable once support has ended, with Ubisoft’s The Crew being a prime example.

Stop Killing Games has set up multiple petitions in various countries over its duration, though the big one is the European Citizens’ Initiative, which aims to take the problem all the way up to the European Union. It’s a movement which has faced a lot of challenges in the past, including its alleged misrepresentation by popular streamer Pirate Software, but support has grown over the past few days.

Stop Killing Games Petition Reaches One Million Signatures, But Still Needs Support

Thanks to a surge of momentum heading into the petition’s final month, Stop Killing Games reached its coveted one million signature milestone earlier today, a great achievement which should absolutely be celebrated. However, creator Accursed Farms took to YouTube to explain that the movement will still need a lot more signatures and support if it wants to guarantee success.

Related Sorry Ubisoft, But I’d Like To Keep Owning My Games The future doesn’t look pretty when it comes to keeping the games we love.

According to Accursed Farms, while the official tally of signatures has reached one million, it’s extremely unlikely it will stay that way. That’s because when people make mistakes, even minor ones, when signing the initiative, the EU will completely invalidate these signatures, and it’s almost guaranteed that many of these signatures will have mistakes on them, be they accidental or intentional.

On top of that, Accursed Farms claims that he’s also heard of bad actors spoofing signatures on the initiative (which is illegal, don’t do that), so these will also be invalidated when the deadline is reached. With all that in mind, Stop Killing Games now has a new goal of around 1.4 to 1.5 million signatures to truly ensure that the original one million signature goal is met once all the invalid signatures have been weeded out.

That means Stop Killing Games needs more support to ensure its success, and this is your reminder to go ahead and make your voice heard before the deadline on July 31. If you’ve yet to sign the petition, you can find the link here as well as a link to the Stop Killing Games website, which includes several other petitions to sign if you reside outside the EU.

The Stop Killing Games EU petition reached its target of one million signatures just hours ago. Triggered by the shutdown of services for Ubisoft’s The Crew on April 1, 2024, Ross Scott founded the initiative in hopes of putting governmental legislative barriers in place to prevent publishers from pulling the plug on live-service games without an end-of-life plan.

Things seemed especially bleak for the Stop Killing Games initiative just days ago, as the founder predicted imminent failure of the entire movement in a YouTube video titled “The end of Stop Killing Games.” In it, he proclaimed that after months of efforts and roadblocks on almost every front, the last resort he had left was to bring the movement to either the UK Parliament or the European Commission. Both require a minimum number of signatures from residents of the UK and EU respectively to bring the matter to the lawmakers’ attention, 100,000 signatures in the UK and one million signatures in the EU; signatures that Ross believed the movement simply wouldn’t be able to muster, according to the trajectory at the time.

Related EA Game Shutting Down on December 12 EA confirms that yet another one of its games is shutting down this year, with this one getting the axe on December 12.

A few days later, Stop Killing Games has not only achieved its EU signature target of one million but surpassed it, nearly a full month ahead of schedule, thanks in part to extensive media coverage from both traditional outlets and influencers like MoistCr1tikal. The main driving factor that renewed interest in the initiative, however, seems to be Ross’ own YouTube video, as the signatures for Stop Killing Games jumped from 500,000 to 800,000 just days following its release on June 23. To give context, signature collection started on July 31, 2024, and had only reached roughly half its goal in 11 months. Only 10 days after Ross’s video, the petition secured the remaining half of the required target, clearing the minimum acceptance threshold.

Stop Killing Games EU Petition Reaches 1 Million Signatures

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However, Stop Killing Games still needs more signatures to guarantee success. After the deadline for the petition is reached, all signatures will need to be validated as being issued by real EU citizens. Invalid entries, like duplicates or those submitted by people outside the EU, will be thrown out. Reaching 1.4 million signatures would give the petition a higher chance of successfully clearing the validation stage and actually going to the European Parliament. Currently, signature submission is still open and will remain so until July 31. The EU Citizens’ Initiative is not the only front Stop Killing Games is fighting on, but it looks to be the most promising, especially since the UK petition for Stop Killing Games is in a bad spot.

The EU’s legislative arm has intervened in the gaming industry before, and has a proven track record of siding with consumer interests. Additionally, changes enforced by the EU Parliament have a higher chance of benefiting the entire industry, rather than only a localized region, something that would make Stop Killing Games’ aims a lot easier to achieve globally.

The Stop Killing Games initiative has successfully reached 1 million signatures following endorsement from major figures like PewDiePie, Jacksepticeye, Asmongold and even Elon Musk.

Stop Killing Games is a consumer-led movement that was first introduced by YouTuber Accursed Farms in April 2024. Its goal is to stop developers from ‘killing’ online games once official support has ended. In essence, Stop Killing Games wants companies to keep these games alive so people can play together even after they’ve been sunset.

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Stop Killing games has filed several petitions throughout Europe to protect online games, and is currently working to get one million signatures for the European Citizens’ Initiative. As per the official website, there’s a “very strong chance” the European Commission will pass a law to ensure that online games are preserved if the signature threshold is met.

Stop Killing Games petition finally reaches 1M signatures

Over a year later, the movement has officially reached one million signatures, as revealed by Accursed Farms in a celebratory tweet on July 3, 2025 — and while it’s certainly worth recognition, he noted that some of these signatures could be spoofed from people not in the EU.

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“The site says we have cleared 1 million signatures!” he wrote. “I hate being like this, but there’s a chance a significant number of them aren’t real. That means we have to keep signing in overdrive mode to make up for them! I’ll have a video on this later today.”

In fact, the website had so much traffic that it actually went down for a short period of time as users poured in to sign the petition.

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PewDiePie, Jacksepticeye & Asmongold support Stop Killing Games

This news comes after major figures in the online gaming space spoke out about the movement, including content creators like PewDiePie, Jacksepticeye and Asmongold.

PewDiePie encouraged his 110 million viewers to sign the petition in a YouTube community post on July 1, saying he “100% supports this movement.”

YouTube: PewDiePie

Jacksepticeye also uploaded a video about Stop Killing Games on his secondary YouTube channel, urging his viewers in Europe to sign the form.

“I see this as an absolute win,” he said. “…At least gamers will make their voices heard, as cringe as that might sound to people who are not really in the space.”

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Asmongold also rallied his community to spread the word, saying in a tweet, “If you’re from the EU and care about game preservation and consumer rights, consider signing this petition.”

Even Elon Musk chimed in, retweeting Asmongold’s post to his 222 million followers on X.

While there’s still a chance that a chunk of those signatures could be spoofed, reaching the 1M mark comes as a major win for those aiming to protect online games, especially in the wake of debate regarding the movement from YouTuber and game developer Pirate Software.

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Pirate Software spoke out against Stop Killing Games shortly after the initiative was announced in April 2024 and has continued to double down since then, arguing that it is too vague, unfeasible and sets a bad “precedent” for the gaming space.

Several high-profile creators, including MoistCritikal and SomeOrdinaryGamers, have directly challenged Pirate Software’s line of thinking on the subject, criticizing him for casting doubt on the movement and potentially harming something that could ultimately help preserve games.

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Now that the European Citizens’ Initiative has reached 1M signatures, Pirate Software has stepped back from his role at Offbrand Games after the backlash against him resulted in the publisher’s titles getting review bombed. He has not made any further statements about Stop Killing Games since then.

While the petition seemed doomed to fail just a few weeks ago, Stop Killing Games supporters have rallied to get the 1 million signatures the EU initiative had been seeking. While it’s a moment of celebration for the campaign, its figurehead wants more signatures because he’s worried many of them could be fake.

“The site says we have cleared 1 million signatures,” YouTuber Ross Scott, who has spearheaded the campaign from the start, says on Twitter. “I hate being like this, but there’s a chance a significant number of them aren’t real. That means we have to keep signing in overdrive mode to make up for them!”

Even if some of those signatures are fake, it’s still a massive turnaround for the campaign. The EU citizen’s initiative at its heart had a deadline of July 31, and by June 23, it hadn’t even reached half of its 1 million signature goal. That’s when Scott posted a video titled “the end of Stop Killing Games,” running down the campaign’s successes and failures, with the expectation that this would be the final update on the campaign.

That video ended up being a turning point. With more publicity, buoyed by support from major streamers and YouTubers – and some amount of backfiring spite from other content creators who did not support the campaign – the signatures started coming in at a rapid pace. The campaign reached 95% of its goal by this morning, with the remainder coming through the rest of the day.

But the EU citizen’s initiative is still looking for more signees to make up for any invalid signatures. “It’s probably not many, but I’ve been given a couple reports that there have been claims of non-citizens spoofing signatures on the EU initiative,” Scott said yesterday. “A reminder this is a government process and that’s considered a crime and would probably get reported to Europol or Interpol.”

Those fakes won’t invalidate the campaign as a whole, but they will ultimately be removed from the count, which is why they’re looking for more signatures from EU citizens. For more info, you can have a look at the Stop Killing Games FAQ. There’s another petition for UK citizens, but unfortunately there’s no similar venue for people to raise such issues in the US.

In an unrelated lawsuit, Ubisoft’s lawyers said you “cannot complain” it shut down The Crew because you never actually owned it, and you weren’t “deceived” by the lack of an offline version “to access a decade-old, discontinued video game.”

Despite a very unstable European Citizens’ Initiative website today, Ross Scott’s ‘Stop Killing Games‘ initiative has reached one million signatures as of this writing, meaning that is now eligible for verification by each of the responsible authorities in each European country and therefore the initiative can now move on and eventually be up for debate to the European Commission and Parliament. On top of this, yesterday at around 5PM BST, the United Kingdom-equivalent Parliament petition exceeded its 100K signature goal and now currently sits at 132K writings (nearing 133K!) as of this article’s publication. A debate date for that has yet to be announced.

Still quite broken!

It is important to note that signature collection doesn’t stop here—Ross Scott estimates that at least 1,2M signatures may be required as part of the verification process. You can head over to the Initiative site yourself to take a look and put your name in if you’re a European citizen. If you’re a United Kingdom citizen, head over to the Parliament petition page to sign and learn more about the petition as well.

If you’re new to the ‘Stop Killing Games’ campaign, it is a consumer movement started by Ross Scott of Accursed Farms fame meant to rally for a collective agreement to pass legislation that preserves games and their playability once a publisher shuts down their services. A significant chunk of games across the industry are shuttered every year and with those shutdowns means that games consumers have invested time and money in effectively become unplayable with no recourse beyond potential reverse-engineering solutions. A great video from Gamers Nexus and Ross Scott can shine more light on this as well as our prior article on the matter: