Games are art. If you have someone telling you they are not - I encourage you to re-evaluate your relationship with that person. Yes, there are games, that are... Trash, let say it as it is. There are some contentious and controversial ones as well, but while anyone can produce art, not everyone can produce good art.
Games are also a source of money. Sometimes huge amounts of money. People like money. Despite what some say, money can buy happiness. Or technically simplify path to one, but that's not the point here. The point is that to make art (and a game by extension), you need money as well. Or if not money directly, some other resource, that can be quantified as money. So it makes sense, that sometimes you have to abandon your art, because you no longer have enough resources to maintain it.
If it's a play - you will stop playing it in theaters. If it's a book, you will stop printing it. If it's a movie you stop... Oh, right, with modern tech you do not stop producing that. Similarly with music. Even if you can no longer legally buy a movie or a music or painting (digital or not), there are still ways to obtain them. Some may be almost lost to the public, of course, because they stay on someone else's hard drive in a home NAS, but still, not gone. Preserved. And more often than not you will not really be punished even if you distribute it, as long as you do not get money from that. Not always, but often.
For some reason, games are different.
This is rare to see about developers, that is actual creators of the games, that actively destroy what they created. And I do not mean "destroy" as in release a patch, that makes the game's balance so broken it is practically unplayable. I mean "destroy" as in "you can't paly it anymore". This happens, but rarely. Publishers, though... Oh, those do like to do that. Because they are driven by greed, not by art. They actively make games unplayable (Ubisoft with The Crew), and even if it is playable with some tinkering - legally prevent you from sharing anything related to the game and how to play it (Nintendo with... well, everything, even when it's not purchasable by legal means).
I myself faced the grief of a liked game becoming unavailable. No, it's not some MMO. At least, technically it's not. It's just a mobile game, Tap Civilization. Simple resource management and "evolution through the ages" type game. Idle one. But one of the few, where I did buy something for the sake of supporting the devs. Because it was great. It was not forcing you to buy anything, waiting times were not obnoxious (like Dominations with its 2 and more days of waiting for an upgrade), the gameplay loop was good. Not perfect, I had some ideas how to improve certain things (now lost, sadly), and the art was cute. I really enjoyed it.
It got shutdown in like 2019. The APK is still downloadable even from Google Play for some reason, but servers are not available. Or rather, it looks like they are available, because some update gets downloaded, but you still can't get into the game itself. When they announced the shutdown, I tried contacting both devs and publisher: I was ready to invest and/or host the game myself. I even had ideas to improve monetization in the game (it was very mild, and not forceful, so I can understand why it probably was not bringing enough money). I think I only got some response along the lines of "we will relay this to someone", and that's it. Now the game is technically gone, because no one can enjoy it even on a local server.
This needs to stop. This needs to change. And that's what Stop Killing Games initiative is all about.
Gamers need a way to enjoy their games, especially, the ones they paid for in one way or another, even when owners of the game are no longer willing to support them. The initiative is not asking for the owners to support those games indefinitely (as some tried to misrepresent), it's asking for technical and legal ability to play the game. If it has server-side aspects - allow us to host dedicated servers. You can add clause(s) that we are not allowed to profit from that - that's fine, we do not care for that. We just want to play the game, nothing more.
This is also important from cultural perspective. There are games that change the industry. Not only gaming industry but technology in general even. Some old games, like Doom, can still be easily playable on literally anything, so much so it's now a meme. Original Crysis, which also became a meme in its time, can no longer be purchased legally, but it can still be downloaded and played to show the level of technology available at that time. Or, let's say, Matrix Online. It was not a great game, but there was some interesting tech and gameplay mechanics involved in it, that may be interesting to try, if you are learning. And surprise-surprise - there is a way to play it thanks to some fans. I also played Tribes: Vengeance relatively recently, thanks to the fans making it more or less working on modern systems. Same with Red Faction. Both have their quirks, but you can play both of them online even.
Point is, that these games are preserved in some way by fans. Similar how "fans" created first galleries with paintings and statues in the past. And even now anyone can go to a gallery and enjoy some Mona Lisa or whatever. Enjoy and learn from. Be inspired by David or Aphrodite or whatever other statue. And then create new art. Push our civilization forward. Which is just amazing.
But notice, that I mentioned only old(er) games. Why? Because modern studios show us gamers a big middle finger, whenever they can no longer get billions (with a "b") from us. They create games, that require constant server connection, they flop or just lose traction and then just get killed. Anthem will be lost. Suicide Squad will be lost (although not yet announced, from what I know). Were these good games? Maybe not, but they can be used to learn from, and just watching videos is not enough to understand certain types of games, especially those with multiplayer component.
I have not even mentioned much the fact, that people bought these games. People should own their copies and be able to play them. Ok, yes, companies can argue, that they are selling a license, not a game copy, but... At the time of purchase, there is no mention that on day X the game will turn into pumpkin. So, yeah, there is even a legal aspect here, that is not black-n-white, to put it mildly.
Even if you do not care about games, you should still care about this initiative, though. Because the same is happening with all the software. All software now requires a subscription to work, even when it does not even make sense. Like Acronis, that has not had a perpetual license to backup software for years now. They ask you to pay subscription (for an anti-virus) even if you want to make backups locally. For cloud backups - fine, that makes sense, but why for local ones? Photoshop does not allow you to load some older versions, because they connect to their servers for some checks, and get blocked. Microsoft does similar, if not same, approach to Office suite, where you are forced to buy OneDrive as well (let alone save all your files to OneDrive starting from recent updates). We are being stripped of control over our own lives, and what software we use, and that sucks. If we succeed in pushing the initiative to creation of legislative changes - maybe something can be changed for software in general.
Stop Killing Games has technically reached enough signatures on their petitions, and at least EU is planned to officially look into it. Some actors did not like that, and are still trying to misrepresent it, to cover their own behinds (and cash-flows). But the fight is not over. Spread the word, share the initiative gamers' perspective with any politicians/representatives, that you know, and leave comments under the petition as well. Don't let scrooges win, help art prevail.
