Recently we witnessed some bad news regarding a game named The Crew, which is published by Ubisoft. In short, the servers were shut down, so the game is unplayable now. You bought the game, you thought you own the game and now you have nothing again.
Of course, this is far from the first time a game was killed and there are even more games, which were left in a playable, but crippled, state. It is expected by now, so most people probably did not pay much attention to such news and I was one of those people.
But not so Ross of Accursed Farms. He and the community around him noticed some important details. Like the great amount of people affected or the fact that Ubisoft, unlike many of the other greedy game publishers, is located in France, where the law protects customers a bit more than in countries like the USA. And so they decided to take advantage of this opportunity and launched a website stopkillinggames.com to focus the effort of anyone willing to help. Ross has a video, which explains the plan of the legal action better than my summary would, so just watch that.
Considering the weeks of research I poured into my starter guide on game preservation, I consider myself someone, who is not indifferent to games being lost or unplayable. And I assume the same applies to most of you, who are reading this. It does not matter what is your political leaning. This is about preservation of art, a part of our culture, so that in the future you can share with your loved ones the games you liked playing when you were young. Legal things tend to take months to get anywhere, so if you are reading this at any point during 2024, you most likely still can help in some way. I am going to do my part, will you?