The Black Death was generally a bad thing. Lots of people died and not in pleasant ways. Broadly speaking, it wasn’t a good time. But as tends to be the case with society-altering events, there were other impacts beyond the terrible.
It essentially damaged the feudal system beyond repair. That was an unexpected positive benefit. Under feudalism, ordinary people owned nothing; there was instead a chain of responsibility from monarch through nobles to lesser nobles and eventually to peasants or serfs.
Those higher up the chain benefited from those at the bottom engaging in the system, largely with no choice, and could pull the rug out from the serfs at any time without any notable right for peasants to challenge.
With fewer peasants or serfs available to work the land they didn’t own after the Black Death, those left became empowered to make more demands.
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The European Commission may soon be in position to end or reform digital serfdom due to a movement built around computer games.
Stop Killing Games is a movement that is using the commission’s European Citizens Initiative to try to reform the nature of ownership of digital assets. Its core demand is that if a consumer has paid for a game, that consumer should be able to play it even after official support ends.
That goal goes beyond video games to a fight over what digital ownership actually means.
The European Citizens Initiative was introduced under the Lisbon treaty and is a direct democratic tool that requires action from the European Commission should certain thresholds be met. The key threshold is to get one million signatures from EU citizens, with signatories from at least seven member states.
Stop Killing Games began collecting signatures in June last year in response to a game called The Crew being delisted by Ubisoft, a gaming giant, earlier in 2024. Players who had invested time and, crucially, money into this game could no longer access it.
A game that most of the people reading this column haven’t heard of has now fuelled an extraordinary movement. The Stop Killing Games European Citizens Initiative cleared the one-million-signature, seven-member-state requirement earlier this month. In fact, it has signatories from citizens in 22 EU member states.
The movement plans to collect another 400,000 signatures between now and December, at which point it plans to submit the European Citizens Initiative to the commission. That’s the point at which matters get really interesting.
Once the signatures are verified, the commission must meet the campaigners in a public hearing and respond within six months, either outlining what legislation it will bring forward or explaining why it will not bring any.
Any outcome, even a negative one, has ramifications for the subscription-led digital economy we all live in today. It will be obliged to address the issue of digital serfdom.
In a manner akin to medieval peasants, consumers today have access but not control over many of the things they spend money on. The rights that consumers have are quite limited in terms of preservation. The games, books, films and music you listen to exist at the mercy of platforms and publishers.
It extends beyond our social lives. Subscription models permeate every aspect of the software we use in our working lives today. The end result is a built-in obsolescence not just of the good or service but of users’ rights to them.
The gaming industry has largely opposed the Stop Killing Games movement. Sega, Nintendo, Microsoft, Square Enix, and Epic along with other large publishing houses have come out against the European Citizens Initiative. That is understandable, as any level of success will cost these publishers either money or power.
On the financial side, publishers would have to consider maintaining largely unprofitable platforms to provide access to games in perpetuity. If they opted against that, they would need to turn over control of these games to an entity that would, creating assorted headaches around intellectual property.
That is why a petition using the European Citizens Initiative is pivotal to the future of what we consider ownership and our consumer rights.
To date, the European Citizens Initiative hasn’t proven very effective a tool. Of the few that have gone forward, none have directly led to legislation. That said, the attention gained using the process has indirectly led to change. This includes the EU’s current plans around limiting the caging of animals, with the bloc taking stronger stances on matters such as the right to water.
The commission’s own rules and habits mean we won’t have to wait all that long for answers on what comes next. If Stop Killing Games files as expected in December, the commission will indicate within less than a year what it will do and why.
Digital serfdom will move from a concept of philosophical debate to the legislative agenda. That in itself is a win.
