The final count is in for Stop Killing Games' European Citizens' Initiative, which is now confirmed to have accumulated almost 1.3 million verified signatures before its collection was closed at the end of July 2025, meaning it can officially move forward to the next stage in the process.
In a post on Reddit, Stop Killing Games director general Moritz Katzner explains that "things are moving quite fast right now," so much so that the group is sharing the final count "ahead of schedule." It's good news, though – to be exact, the initiative racked up 1,294,188 signatures across the European Union. While that means that not all of the over 1.4 million signatures it had gained by the end of July were valid, the verified number is still comfortably above the 1 million goal.
According to a breakdown of the number of verified signatures per country, the initiative gained the most support in Germany, which had 233,180 supporters. There was also a strong level of support in France, Poland, and Spain, which brought in 145,289, 143,826, and 121,616 signatures, respectively.
In a separate video announcement (below), Stop Killing Games creator Ross Scott (AKA Accursed Farms on YouTube), explains: "We have cleared the requirement, and the next phase will be officially submitting them to the EU Commission in Brussels, probably some time late February. Now, there's actually a lot more going on with the Stop Killing Games campaign in a good way, which will get announced later – I've been told to hold off on that. But, things are happening."
The initiative – officially called Stop Destroying Videogames – by its own description "calls to require publishers that sell or license videogames to consumers in the European Union (or related features and assets sold for videogames they operate) to leave said videogames in a functional (playable) state."
It doesn't aim to "acquire ownership of said videogames, associated intellectual rights or monetization rights," or put any expectation on publishers to "provide resources for the said videogame once they discontinue it while leaving it in a reasonably functional (playable) state," but it does hope to "prevent the remote disabling of videogames by the publishers, before providing reasonable means to continue functioning of said videogames without the involvement from the side of the publisher."
Of course, as Scott highlights, there's more to be done yet, so the battle isn't yet over for the initiative. However, this is a good sign, and based on what he said in the latest video, it sounds like the Stop Killing Games group might have more good news to share soon.
