Stop Killing Gameshas blown up in popularity over the past month or so. It’s a movement dedicated to stopping video game publishers from shutting down their titles and making them inaccessible to those that have already paid for them. It’s a consumer-focused movement, and one that big video game publishers (and one particularly vilified Twitch streamer) aren’t too keen on seeing succeed.
A European gaming industry lobby recently claimed thatStop Killing Games is going to have “a chilling effect” on developmentshould it succeed, whileUbisoft recently claimed that “support for all games cannot last forever”, despite nobody actually asking them to support a game forever. Despite these objections from the games industry,Stop Killing Games reached its goal of 1.4 million signatures earlier today.
Stop Killing Games Accuses Games Industry Of Filing “False Claims” To Get Movement Shut Down
Naturally, you’d assume that this would be a cause for celebration, but YouTuber Accursed Farms (the spearhead of the entire operation) revealed some rather troubling news.In his latest YouTube video(thanks Eurogamer), Accursed Farms revealed that the European arm of the Stop Killing Games movement has been hit with “false claims”, and that it violated two different EU regulations.
Essentially, the complaints accuse Accursed Farms of not disclosing funding sources and “undisclosed professional contributions” towards the campaign, both of which the YouTuber vehemently denies. It claims that due to how much Accursed Farms has been working on the campaign, his contributions cannot be classified as volunteer work, thus meaning he’s been helping the movement as a professional.
It’s stated that Accursed Farms has been working for 15–20 weeks at “high intensity” levels, and at a professional rate of €50-75/hour for his services, claiming that Accursed Farms has racked up between €63,000-147,000 in “professional contributions”. The argument is that Accursed Farms' “professional” work is worth that much, thus not reporting it is a violation of the EU’s rules.
Accursed Farms has hit back at this claim, as he explains that not only is he not getting paid for his work on Stop Killing Games - suggesting that the complaint is making up numbers from “imaginary sources” - but that he’s not even a leader on the European campaign, as he’s ineligible to join given that his company is based in the US. In fact, given that he hasn’t contributed financially or signed any legal documents, Accursed Farms points out that what he’s been doing is legal based on the EU’s own guidelines.
Now, it’s worth pointing out that this complaint was completely anonymous, meaning there’s no way to tell who filed it, though Accursed Farms does point out it comes right after the aforementioned European gaming industry lobby’s statement on the movement. He believes that this is the industry “playing dirty” and that those that want to see the movement shut down will start “throwing dirt” at it to try and stop politicians from supporting it.
Unfortunately, we’ll never know for certain who filed the complaint, but it does stand to reason that the games industry would benefit far more from the destruction of Stop Killing Games than any random Joe. We’ll have to see how the situation evolves, and if any more spurious claims about Accursed Farms come piling in.
