Listen now on Apple, Spotify or YouTube
In This Edition,
An industry state-of-play (podcast only)
What is Stop Killing Games?
Why is it losing?
Can it win?
Hello and welcome back! How have you been?
We took a bit of a break last week, and it was a chance to reflect on what has been a really tough couple of months for industry news.
We’ve had to contend with huge price increases to consoles, the death of the disc and significant job cuts at the likes of Bungie and Xbox. The trust in the business, both from the outside and inside, appears to be at an all-time low. .
But… change isn’t always good, but it is inevitable, and good things can come from it. The video game industry remains a huge creative and commercial force. It’s what other industries look to when wanting to learn how to engage with customers. Hollywood is obsessed with games IP. And each new generation brings with it new players.
The challenges are real. No motivational paragraph is going to change that. But we will overcome them, and we’ll do It together. That’s what The Game Business is all about. Sharing, learning and being inspired by one another. We’ll tackle the tough subjects, but in a positive way designed to move the conversation on. And hopefully find a sustainable path for everyone.
This week, we’re tackling the challenging conversation brought about by the Stop Killing Games initiative, which wants the industry to make sure its online games remain available even when they’re no-longer financially viable.
It sounds simple, but it really isn’t. And in today’s Show and Newsletter, we speak to video game policy expert Dr Celia Pontin to explain why the industry is pushing against legislation on this issue.
You can hear our full chat, plus a whole lot more, in today’s edition of The Game Business Show. Alternatively, keep on reading for the highlights.
Enjoy.
The video game industry is taking Stop Killing Games very seriously
The Stop Killing Games consumer movement has had major game companies and trade bodies worried.
The campaign started in 2024 when Ubisoft ended server support for its racing game The Crew, which rendered the title unplayable. Since then, Stop Killing Games has prompted an official response from the UK Government and European Union, and is supporting court cases globally around the issue.
It wants legal protections that ensures games don’t suddenly become unplayable, and various trade bodies are fighting against that idea.
“The industry is engaging with it seriously and fairly intensely,” said Dr Ceila Pontin on today’s edition of The Game Business Show. Pontin is the director of policy and public affairs at Flux Digital Policy, and is an expert on the subject.
“The Stop Killing Games campaign has been very vocal across multiple jurisdictions, it’s not that this is just an American issue and we don’t hear about it in the UK, or it’s just an EU one, it’s being shared everywhere. It’s hard to escape, and it’s not something that you can really back away from. It’s also gaining momentum in the more general public consciousness, because it speaks to the move towards a digital-only culture, and that’s not just games.”
Of course, the industry doesn’t want to ‘kill’ games, but legislative or legal changes would prove problematic.
“One of the concerns is there’s a mismatch between what people might be calling for and what is possible”
“One of the concerns is there’s a mismatch between what people might be calling for and what is possible, not necessarily just technologically, but also when it comes to how existing legislation works, whether that’s consumer protection or IP law, as well as the practical implementation of it,” she told us.
“So, there might be some ideal solution being touted, but that might not actually work out. And if that were to be legislated for, then you could have this real tension of [the industry] having to deliver something that might not actually really work in practice. That can be a real concern to them.”
Currently, the EU and UK have pointed to existing consumer rights laws.
“Are consumer rights being violated? Well, they already exist to be violated,” Pontin noted. “There is already a framework for dealing with these sorts of things about contracts having to be delivered as laid out in terms of service and things like that, and whether what you have been provided as digital content or service, whether that matches up to your expectations, and to what was promised. There are aspects of those that already exist and actually already provide what’s being asked for.”
Sponsored Message
Scale globally. Keep quality in control.
Keywords Studios is the games industry’s end-to-end partner, with 13,000 people across 26 countries helping studios build, launch and support games at global scale. Supercharged by technology and shaped by long-term partnership, Keywords Studios connects specialist expertise around the player experience.
For global impact, that means helping studios prepare games for more markets, languages, platforms and launch windows while keeping quality, context and control where they matter most. From localisation planning and QA to LQA and launch support, Keywords Studios helps protect meaning, tone and release quality at global scale.
There’s no ‘one solution’ to the Killing Games debate
The Stop Killing Games goal is to make it so that games remain playable after they’ve been discontinued. It sounds simple, but it isn’t.
A situation like the one with The Crew, which is primarily a single-player game, is comparatively easy. But what if a company is running a promotional game for a specific event? What about free-to-play games where there are no up-front costs? And what even is playable? Is an MMORPG still playable if you can walk around in the world but are unable to meet any other players or partake in most of the quests?
There are many varying situations that need to be considered, and so a blanket rule simply wouldn’t cut it. And then there’s the potential impact on smaller teams.
“A lot of this is complicated, particularly when you are trying to apply a solution across a really diverse industry, and diverse in terms of the types of game, not just genres, but whether they’re multiplayer or single player or require lobbies or the server architecture and the technology that lies behind that,” Pontin explained. “But also the sorts of companies that you have, from one or two people studios, through to multi-billion dollar companies with thousands of staff. Trying to get to a point where you have a solution that works across that, and including the diversity of what people think it means to play a game and be able to access it, that’s a really tall order.
“I’m not sure there is one solution that would work even if there were a legislative appetite to do so.”
She continued: “When a big company says that something can’t be done, there’s a level of cynicism in people to think, ‘Well, you would say that because it’s commercially convenient for you to say that.’ And there are times when something that may be commercially convenient may also be true.
“We need to make sure that [small studios] don’t get lost in the mix. And that you’re not going to end up putting out suggestions that would perhaps work to get what you want for a big game, and then stifle innovation because a small studio thinks that they can’t engage with that process [because they don’t know] what their game needs to do if it comes to the end of its life. You want to make sure that you’ve got an ecosystem that is going to support new talent.”
Letting the players take over is really complicated
One suggestion is that when a game is discontinued, developers should make it so the fans can take control. But that comes with all sorts of difficulties.
For one, just because someone owns an IP, you can’t simply compel them to make it available. But even if it became standard to let players take over a game, it potentially runs into numerous challenges, including around IP law, online safety and GDPR requirements, plus maintaining third-party tools and integrations.
“[IP law] is not straightforward when it comes to video games because instead of being one single item that has one kind of intellectual property right associated with it, it is this bundle and cloud miasma of interconnecting different tiny bits of copyright works,” Pontin told us.
“It’s not just one thing. It is the script and the voiceover and the graphics, sometimes even frame by frame. It’s this big old bundle of different things that are put together, unlike a film or unlike a book. And that means that if you are talking about handing over a game to the fans, that’s not really a very straightforward way of thinking about it. It is genuinely something that adds a lot of complication, because you might not actually, as a company, be legally able to hand that stuff over even if you wanted to, because it might not all be yours.”
There are technical barriers, too
“If I, as a game creator, want to sunset my game and I hand it over to the fans, I might have this web underneath of different third-party services to do things that I haven’t done myself. And I could maybe hand over the arrangements if I could get that worked out. But then if one of those services goes under, or they’re bought out, or they just cease to exist for whatever reason, then what happens to the game that was dependent on them? That means the game still might not be persistently available, and does that third-party service have any obligations in this? It starts to get quite complicated.”
New legal rules around age verification and online chat protections can also make things complex. And then there’s a reputational issue to consider. If a player group takes over a game and does something wrong, or adds something controversial, it could impact the original owner.
There will be cases where players can take over a game, but it won’t work all of the time.
Is Stop Killing Games a win for consumer awareness?
Even before digital, if you bought a game, you had a license to play it, you didn’t actually own it.
Of course, that’s in the legal sense. In practicality, unless a publisher was going to come to your home and take the game off you, you effectively owned it. Now in a digital world, that legal reality is proving an issue for users. And they’re becoming aware of something they perhaps didn’t realize before.
“If nothing else, the campaign has highlighted that when it comes to digital media of certain types, it’s not about whether you’re purchasing the media, it’s you are purchasing access to it, and how that functions,” Pontin said.
“And you’ll see that some platforms are saying quite clearly that you’re purchasing a license, and it is becoming more and more well-known and well-understood, particularly as a result of this.”
Do check out our full chat with Pontin in today’s edition of The Game Business Show above.
Meanwhile…
Square Enix had a strong Q1 with profit rising 175.5% to $83 million. This was driven by Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth coming to Nintendo Switch 2 and Xbox formats in June. The firm also saw an uptick in users for the MMO Final Fantasy XIV MMO.
Bandai Namco’s Digital segment, which includes games, saw sales drop 15.6% to $573 million, while profit fell 30.9% $94.5 million. This was due to there being no major PC or console release. In the corresponding quarter, it released Elden Ring: Nightregn.
Sega’s entertainment division, which includes games, did better than expected during Q1 with a slight increase to $432 million.
Remedy’s Q2 revenue hit €10.2 million, which is down 40% year-on-year, with an operating loss of €3.9 million. Part of the decline is due to the game FBC: Firebreak launching in the corresponding quarter last year.
NC (formerly NCsoft) will take over the global publishing of Throne and Liberty. The MMO was developed by NC and its studio FirstSpark Games, and had been published by Amazon Games globally. Amazon is shifting away from MMOs and towards more mainstream games better suited to its Luna streaming platform.
Indie hide and seek hit Meccha Chameleon has now sold 20 million copies.
Co-op adventure game Big Walk has sold 1m units worldwide. The game is by Australian studio House House, which is famous for Untitled Goose Game.
Supermassive Games, the UK developer of story horror titles such as Until Dawn and The Dark Pictures Anthology, is laying off a further 75 employees, which is its third round of job cuts.
UK charity GamesAid has raised £82,000 that will be distributed among four charities: AFK, Autistica, Rays of Sunshine Children’s Charity, and Solving Kids’ Cancer UK. Each received £20,500.
Electronic Arts has appointed Cam Weber as chief studios officer and David Tinson as COO after the completion of its $55 billion leveraged buyout.
Nintendo saw its operating profit jump nearly 151% thanks to higher software revenue and a $300 million US tariff refund. However, Q1 sales were down 9.5%, mainly due to unfavourable comparisons with the Switch 2 launch in June 2025.
PlayStation’s sales income rose 0.6% to $5.8 billion. Operating income rose 37%, boosted by a US tariff refund. However, the cost of next-generation platforms and restructuring has hit the company’s overall earnings.
Xbox Series S will increase by £130 and €150 in the UK and Europe, while Xbox Series X will increase by £170 and €200. Xbox announced it would be raising prices in June due to higher component costs.
Devolver Digital wants to go private again. The firm intends to delist from UK’s AIM market, with shareholders set to vote on the matter on September 8. Devolver went public in November 2021 with a valuation of nearly £695 million. Today, its market cap is £34.6 million.
Secret Mode has opened an internal development studio in Sheffield, UK. The studio will support the publisher’s games by creating add-on content, as well as porting titles to other platforms.
Unity now has dedicated engine support for Netflix. This means that developers can more easily release titles on the streaming giant’s platforms. Netflix has used Unity for its internal games, including the recent horror game Unhinged.
That’s it from us today, we have a number of big Shows scheduled for next week as we gear up for Gamescom. Until then, thank you for reading.
