Stop Killing Games' EU initiative had a second wind earlier this year, going from a bit of doom and gloom to 400,000 extra signatures past the requirement to get it in front of the European Commission, via a European Citizens' Initiative.
For context, Stop Killing Games is a movement designed to require game companies to support their games after they've been shut down. As explained on its site, this doesn't mean forcing companies to maintain servers forever—rather, it requires them to have some sort of end-of-life plan in mind, which can take a lot of forms. For instance, giving fan communities the tools they need to run their own local servers.
EU initiatives have a lot of stringent requirements before they can get in front of the politicians, including at least 1 million signatures, a minimum number of signatories each from a specific roster of countries, and—more importantly—verified signatures. Essentially, if you don't follow the rules, or aren't from within the EU, then your signature doesn't count.
That question mark hung over the whole endeavour. While it was great to see a flood of support after OG Stop Killing Games creator Ross Scott directly addressed the naysayers, there was every chance that a bunch of well-meaning gamers from outside the EU were inflating the numbers.
That's not the case, fortunately. As per a post made to the StopKillingGames subreddit, the signature verification process is over halfway complete and going strong:
"Out of 1,448,270 signatures," writes user Mr_Presidentle, "689,035 are already verified, and 15 countries have met their thresholds. We are still missing the two largest countries—Germany and France—but based on our current progress, we are confident we have surpassed the required thresholds."
In a separate comment, Mr_Presidentle confirms that only "About 3%" of signatures failed verification, which is great news for the initiative. To do some quick napkin math if that number holds:
The ECI petition needs 1,000,000 signatures, and there were 1,448,270 signatures. If 3% of that number failed verification, that'd be 43,448 (rounded down) signatures that don't pass muster, leaving 1,404,822 valid signatures in the pot. Still a good 404,822 over target.
In other words, all signs point to victory on this first crucial step.
