(I wonder if it would have been better if I divided "You intellect is as weak as" (CONCEPTUALIZATION) with "Your dollar" (Savoir Faire)

His Majesty Emperor Yoshiro has summoned you to his quarters to discuss the recent failure of strategy at the battle you commanded.

1. "Your Majesty!" (bow your head respectfully) "What can I do for you?"

2. [Rhetoric – Godly 16] Try to convince His Majesty that your failure was not that bad.

3. "You know, I did pretty good out there in that battle, despite what you’ve heard."

4. (Kneel before him) "I have failed you, my liege, and I am sorry. Do with me as you wish."

RHETORIC [Godly: Critical Failure] – His Majesty scans you head to toe, a countenance of un-remarkability upon his face, and delivers his judgment upon you with these words:

Given that a major failing of Garland was his refusal to act quickly on Trump, would Jones have done things differently?

Good news everyone!

SKG and SKI signed a letter opposing the UK government’s efforts to block VPNs, and we succeeded! This is a major victory for the continued viability of VPNs in the UK.

The letter was signed alongside respected organizations and companies including Mozilla, Proton, Reporters Without Borders, Amnesty International, and several major VPN providers.

We’re also excited to share that our first major SKI partner meetup has now been coordinated! It brought together a group of serious experts from around the world (see attached images).

Why are we posting this here?

This is a continuation of the letter we signed with Mozilla and others back in May opposing the UK’s Online Safety Act.

If you remember that post, we explained that laws restricting the internet would make independent software, Linux-based ecosystems, community launchers, modding tools, and private server hosting significantly harder to maintain.

Similarly, mandatory age checks for software would:
- Make hosting private servers more cumbersome and burdensome.
- Make communities like our Discord server and subreddit less free and open.
- Create opportunities for lobbying groups such as the ESA to further misrepresent and campaign against preservation efforts.

Ultimately, these measures would compromise our ability to make effective end-of-life plans for video games. In practice, they could make private game servers functionally illegal: the very outcome some industry groups have been advocating for. They want to make their faulty reasoning into legal reality.

What’s next?
There are even more important developments happening with SKG, but we’ll share those when the time is right. (don’t want the lobby to know what we're gonna do next 🙃)

I just realized that ROTS screenshot might be a reference to them becoming more like stormtroopers. Also found an interesting video analysis on this: The real reason why Stormtroopers always fire from the hip

A consumer movement that's trying to have end-of-life plans for future online-only games and challenge the legality of publishers destroying games people paid for had a European Citizens' Initiative with almost 1.3 million signatures that the European Commission recently responded to that said, "We won't propose new law, we'll have an industry code of conduct and clarify what customers' rights are": https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-will-engage-industry-following-european-citizens-initiative-disabling-videogames

The full text communication is here: https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/document/download/75d642bc-6ff5-4713-b1cf-14f4aaf15869_en?filename=C_2026_4110_EN.pdf

And that was less than 2 weeks after an invite-only meeting with members of the Commission and the game lobby Video Games Europe and figures from large gaming companies, which included the CEO of Ubisoft and CEO of Video Games Europe: https://bsky.app/profile/stopkillinggames.bsky.social/post/3mndsgredbk2d

"Game not over"

But ironically, it is not over yet. They're planning to go through European Parliament to amend Stop Killing Games to the Digital Fairness Act. They have majority support from several MEPs, so they're in a good positioned to get an amendment passed in the DFA.

Meanwhile their California Bill, the Protect Our Games Act, has cleared the state assembly and is in the state senate where it has to pass before it can get signed into law.

So if you want to still make a difference, contact your CA state senator or Member of European Parliament

A cross-party group of MEPs has issued a call for legislation in support of the European Citizens’ Initiative Stop Destroying Video Games.

The ask of Stop Killing Games has repeatedly been misrepresented as a call for eternal server support, endless updates, mandatory private servers, or source-code releases. That was never the demand.

The actual demand is simple: when consumers pay for a game, publishers should not be allowed to deliberately make it unusable after support ends without providing reasonable means for continued operation.

For months, we have explained this to institutions, lawyers, developers, consumer advocates, and elected representatives. Now it is time to move from clarification to solutions.

Tiemo Wölken, the MEP leading the call for us, said:

>“When nearly 1.3 million EU citizens are calling on the European Union to take action, it is our obligation to listen and to act. We cannot ignore this overwhelming call to action. The plenary debate a few weeks ago sent a clear signal: This Citizen Initiative has broad cross-party support in the European Parliament. When consumers pay for a game, they invest more than just money. They spend their time on it, make memories, develop passions and make real friends for life along the way. It is indefensible that publishers should have the right to simply pull the plug on these games at any time, and destroy cultural heritage in the process. With this letter, we reiterate our position: It’s Game Over for this abusive practice.”

This is the route we have been working toward for months. The Commission has heard the explanations. Parliament has heard the explanations. The public has now seen why those explanations were necessary.

The next step is not another round of pretending the demand is unclear. The next step is working on solutions.

That means legislation that protects consumers from having paid-for games deliberately disabled after support ends, while making clear that publishers are not being asked to provide perpetual services. It means serious discussion of reasonable end-of-life options where feasible. And it means using the upcoming Digital Fairness Act as the vehicle to turn this principle into law.

Nearly 1.3 million citizens asked the EU to act. On the 16th of this month, the Commission will officially answer the European Citizens’ Initiative.

That answer will show how seriously the Commission takes its citizens. Parliament, at least, is standing ready to act on their behalf and without it.

(Side note on the UK situation: we see it, and we are monitoring it closely. It is not yet fully clear whether this requires us to step in, but we are following developments.)