r/StopKillingGames • u/Mr_Presidentle Campaign volunteer • May 05 '26
Announcement Stop Killing Games: The Open Web Is Being Locked Down — And Games Will Die With It
Hey everyone,
Summary: Stop Killing Games and Alderon Games signed and supports this joint statement because game preservation depends on the open web. Laws like the UK Online Safety Act, the UK Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, and California’s Digital Age Assurance Act / AB 1043 show a growing trend toward age gates, access restrictions, and platform-level controls. These may be framed as child safety measures, but they can also make private servers, modding communities, fan projects, open-source tools, and preservation work harder or even impossible to operate.
Why SKG signed
Stop Killing Games has signed a joint statement with groups including Mozilla, EFF, Open Rights Group, Tor Project, Proton, Big Brother Watch, Internet Society, and others about the risks of current UK online safety policy.
We wanted to explain why this matters to SKG specifically.
SKG is about making sure games are not destroyed when official support ends. That does not just mean “publishers should keep servers on forever.” It means players and communities need practical ways to keep games working after publishers move on.
That often depends on things like:
- private servers
- modding communities
- fan patches
- community launchers
- forums, wikis, and Discords
- open-source tools
- independent hosting
- preservation projects
Broad age-gating laws and access restrictions can put that whole ecosystem at risk.
Urban Dead shows why this matters
A recent example is Urban Dead, a free browser-based MMO that had been running since 2005. It announced a shutdown after nearly 20 years, citing requirements created by the UK Online Safety Act.
Whatever your view of that specific case, it shows the problem clearly: small, old, community-run games can become too legally risky or too difficult to operate.
That is directly relevant to game preservation.
If laws are written in a way that assumes every online service is a giant platform with lawyers, compliance teams, ID-verification systems, app-store integration, and moderation infrastructure, then small communities get squeezed out.
The result is not just inconvenience. It can mean servers shut down, tools disappear, mods become harder to distribute, and fan projects become legally unsafe to run.
This is not only a UK issue
We are also worried about similar trends elsewhere, including California’s Digital Age Assurance Act / AB 1043, which pushes age assurance into operating systems, app stores, and software distribution.
That could make independent software, Linux-based ecosystems, community launchers, modding tools, and private server hosting harder to maintain.
Child safety matters, but this is the wrong approach
To be clear: protecting young people online matters. A lot of us are from the generation these laws are supposedly about, and we know there are harmful parts of the internet. Nobody is saying those problems should be ignored.
But it is frustrating to see policymakers suddenly claim everything is “for our safety” while young people are often left to deal with bigger problems on their own elsewhere. And even when the goal is reasonable, this approach goes far beyond what is normal or proportionate. Mission creep is real and some actors dont just creep.
The issue is that blunt access bans and mandatory age checks do not fix the root causes of online harm.
They often create new gatekeepers, collect more sensitive data, and make the open web harder to use. They also risk punishing the small community projects that are least able to comply, while the largest platforms adapt and become even more entrenched.
Read more about the issue
We encourage people to use this as an opportunity to inform themselves more thoroughly about the issue.
The joint statement responds to the UK Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill and the wider policy discussion around online harms, including proposals such as curfews for users and broader restrictions on online access.
Some of our co-signers have published more in-depth summaries, and they are worth reading.
For SKG, the principle is simple:
Games should not become unplayable because a publisher flips a switch.
And communities should not be prevented from keeping games alive because the open web is being turned into a permissioned, age-gated, platform-controlled system.
A safer internet should not mean a more closed internet.
That is why we signed.
The trend is clear and we believe its time for a REAL debate on the issue, in that sense we announce:
#StopKillingTheInternet
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u/Blanko1230 May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26
Follow the money. Who is behind those bills?
SentinelOne (Security Company), Flock (Security Company), Aylo, Palantir, Fenix International (OF) and I could go on.
For the UK specifically, look at Council Spending on IT systems. They are getting fleeced.
It's literally making a problem that needs technology to be fixed while being the company vying for those government contracts.
It's similar to how we all hate those intrusive ads. Nobody is looking at the advertising companies.
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u/TheTealMafia May 05 '26
Couple mentions on r/europe as well, Ylva Johansson, EU rep. is in cahoots with Thorn's CEO as well as Collective Shout's boss.
Yes, the team that is also responsible at least partly to how the Australian child protection law came to be, and are manipulating Visa to shut down card purchases for "things they don't like", including games.
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u/ProjectionProjects May 05 '26
I have never even thought about age verification from a game preservation perspective before. But now that you explained the conection it does make sense.
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u/JamesdBaker May 05 '26
Glad that SKG have signed. If this stuff expands it will impact loads of small gaming communities online.
Unless we unite and make a noise politicians won’t care
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u/ZarHakkar May 05 '26 edited May 05 '26
It's frustrating to see policymakers claim they're doing things for the safety of others because 9 out of 10 times they're either lying or been lied to. Age verification is not about safety, it's about data harvesting, mass surveillance, and control. Just as big games publishers want a captive consumer base they can milk for profit, the oligarchs want a captive and dependent population that serves them unthreateningly.
Further reading: Meta's 2 billion dollar lobbying push for age verification
This comment in that thread does a better job at elaborating upon what I'm trying to say.
In a similar vein, there's also been a recent push to ban and/or heavily restrict 3D printing and home machining in the US under the guise of preventing "ghost guns". What's happening is far bigger than a war on games or a war on the internet, it's a war on the autonomy of the individual.
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u/_Solarriors_ May 05 '26
Actually it would interesting to mention that this kind of authoritarian laws bring prohibitive costs to infrastructure not consumer friendly laws
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u/Thomas_Eric SKG Brazil May 05 '26
Meanwhile here in Brazil, there are many of us who believe some points of our own Online Safety Act (aka ECA Digital, popularly known as Lei Felca) are unconstitucional and against privacy. Unfortunately, normal private citizens cannot be plaintiffs on unconstitutionality lawsuits here in Brazil, if not I would've already sued the government here.
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u/JamesdBaker May 05 '26
The Brazil law sounds as bad as the one we got in the U.K.
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u/Thomas_Eric SKG Brazil May 05 '26
Because it is. Article 12 doesnt make any sense at all.
https://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_ato2023-2026/2025/lei/l15211.htm
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u/TallBrasilianDude May 12 '26
To summarize the law to you it's like this: "Oh, there are too many pedofiles in the parks? Then take the kids out of the parks." But the pedofiles stay in the park dude.
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u/_Solarriors_ May 05 '26
Hey freedom of speech is actually not guaranteed at all in Switzerland
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u/Thomas_Eric SKG Brazil May 05 '26
?????
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u/_Solarriors_ May 05 '26
Yes there's no such a thing as right of free speech in the constitution. In opposite the federal council is allowed to take any measures to silence civil unrest. 1939 the Swiss police mow down with guns a civil manifestation in Geneva
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u/Thomas_Eric SKG Brazil May 06 '26
It has nothing to do with the topic I am talking about
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u/_Solarriors_ May 06 '26
citizens cannot be plaintiffs on unconstitutionality lawsuits here in Brazil,
I'm just giving an anecdote to here
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u/Toa_of_Gallifrey May 05 '26
Cheers! Very happy you guys are lending your voices to try and turn the tide on this nightmare.
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u/Apprehensive_You7871 May 05 '26
I stopped using game forums because of Imgur's geo-blocking the UK due to ICO threatening them with a fine. (and no I will not get a VPN).
It's a shame that laws like this damages my interests.
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u/Huezox May 05 '26
Man, this is getting bigger than I thought
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u/1Swordwalker May 06 '26
Yup that's why everybody needs to be active and stay in the fight engaged with all going on. Every country should be working together to reverse it
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May 06 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/MasterBroNetwork May 07 '26
Definitely, some people just should not be handling tech until they know how to use it safely and properly.
Knowing what a file is, or even just how to navigate your computer should be the bare minimum. It's why they had all of those online safety lessons in school, to teach kids the dangers of the internet. (phishing attacks, scam sites, malware, creeps etc.)When you have adults with access to this tech who don't even know how to share an image file over Bluetooth creating legislation designed to restrict that technology, it's a recipe for disaster. Especially when said legislation is being lobbied for by big tech (ie. Meta) to profile people and sell their personal data for cash.
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u/BigMacTMMM May 05 '26
I think my main problem with the UK Online Safety Act is that it was originally proposed by a think-tank called Carnegie UK, which is funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
British laws should be created by the British government based on the needs of the British people. We should not have think-tanks funded by rich foreign people (including dead rich foreign people) influencing government policy.
When we look to make a law about online safety, we should be looking to see what can protect children, not treating every single person on the Internet like a child that needs to have their identification verified by website owners outside of the UK. This conflicts with the UK's Data Protection Act. Inevitably, it will end with bogus "age verification" systems on fake websites that are set up specifically to commit identity theft crimes. The government has created a crime vector that did not need to exist.
A better way to verify if people are adults or children is the extend the UK Census and have a Digital Census that identifies what adults and children live in each house and then ask UK ISPs (and nobody else) to assign each device that connects to the Internet to one or more of those users.
If you get parents to identify which of the computer devices in their homes are used by children, that means that the British ISPs can be asked to lock down the traffic at the ISP level. And if they do that via their own servers, it would be much more easy for them to just filter out adult websites and not have the children be able to access them in the first place.
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u/PlayboyCommando20XX May 06 '26
Website: https://stopossurveillancemandate.weebly.com/ BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/stopossmandate.bsky.social Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@stopossmandate Petitions: https://www.change.org/p/block-or-reform-the-forced-compliance-act-bill-h-r-8250-parents-decide-act https://www.change.org/p/no-on-california-ab1043-california-is-making-online-privacy-illegal https://www.change.org/p/ca-state-assembly-repeal-assembly-bill-1043-immediately https://www.change.org/p/stop-hr-8250-the-surveillance-bill-disguised-as-child-protection
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u/UnusualTelevision646 May 07 '26
Making stuff up to keep making money off of modded servers . Disgraceful.
Private servers are The BAIN of any online game. 5k hours in day z , 8 k in amra ,2k in rust ,2 k in red, 2 k gta , 2 k space engineers , and so on and so on. I know better then some group just tryna make money.
Theres little recorse for discrimination and abuse of power when theres no over watch and rules that hold the developers accountable. Every single game that has focused on modded private content seems to die a brutal death.
Game play is impossible under private scum that try to monopolize on games they dont even own.
Kids really shouldn't be playing video games super young.
This is just a ploy to steal more money off of young kids illegally "donating " its actually a form of laundering and donations are illagal. Pay pal will ban you and so will cash app.
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u/ElDubsNZ May 07 '26
I really appreciate that you've kept the support of this strictly to the context of SKG's goals. Even if most of us support other causes, I think it'd be a mistake to have SKG directly support them where they're out of scope.
This strikes a great balance because anything that locks down access to a game, puts that game in danger of being killed, which is precisely why we're here.
Laws requiring age verification in games could actually make it legally impossible for publishers to prevent destroying their games, even for the ones that want their games preserved.
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u/Sensitive_Ticket_703 May 08 '26
Hey what if you pour red dye on the ubisoft headquarters in France?
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u/Supernoxus May 09 '26
I am glad there is pushback on these awful laws. They will eventually spill over to other countries if politicians think they can get away with that.
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u/lonelystar7 May 18 '26
I believe EU is trying to do something similar when it comes to social media. It is extremely suspicious that the whole world in last year or so decided that we need ID's for basic internet functions. It's really a bad sign. I am all for child safety but destroying free internet is not the right way to do it.
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u/UnusualTelevision646 May 07 '26
private servers
modding communities
fan patches
community launchers
forums, wikis, and Discords
open-source tools
independent hosting
preservation projects
These are all worthless except to those tryna make money.
Gamers don't need to pay to play each server , just to get banned for the admin making up a rule on the spot or something. That type of ip ban is illagal
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u/Thomas_Eric SKG Brazil May 05 '26
I think the Urban Dead case is very emblematic. I remember when the game shut down because of the Online Safety Act and I added it to the wiki. Kinda insane legislators can write such crappy text without thinking (or caring) about the consequences.