Players Unite to Save Games in Response to Publisher Discontent

All good things come to an end

In an era where video games cost more and more money – the producer of Tekken 8, for example, recently spoke of production costs doubling in a few years – certain studios are naturally seeking to rationalize their costs. And among the means available, Closing servers for “old” video games is anything but an unthinkable option.

Thus, many titles released at the end of the 2000s or the beginning of the 2010s saw their audience decrease fundamentally, sometimes turning out to be really minimal after more than a decade on the market. Last January, Ubisoft closed the servers of many hits like Assassin's Creed II, Assassin's Creed Revelations, Trials Evolution and others, often just on specific platforms. This therefore prevents access to all multiplayer aspects, whether online matches or scoreboards.

Most recently, it was The Crew who were entitled to an even more merciless sentence, making the game simply unavailable in its entirety. The players therefore expressed their dissatisfaction… even leading to the opening of an unprecedented petition.

Against the closure of servers

The fresh bad buzz from The Crew will have pushed some to launch a petition to the British Parliament: this calls for real preservation of purchased video games and access to them.

Many video games rely on servers. When these are stopped, games may remain unplayable if no action is taken to remove this addiction. We believe this amounts to stealing from customers, leaving them with no recourse to keep their purchases. We are concerned that existing laws and agencies do not effectively address this problem. We therefore believe that government intervention is necessary to end this practice.

Launched for a period of six months, this petition will end in October 2024 and has so far collected more than 6,500 signatures at the time of writing these lines. At 10,000 signatures, a response from the government is promised and at 100,000, the petition will simply be examined with a view to a possible debate in Parliament. A matter which could well be taken seriously by the highest authorities of the United Kingdom.

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