It’s Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., by the way, just some context here, though he said a lot more “interesting” things too.
Duo to ask for some more sources:
-Marcos open to banning violent online games after Tacloban school shooting
A reminder to people: this is the exact issue we’ve been talking about, and the reason we exist in the first place.
You never truly owned your disc. If instructed by Sony, you would be required to destroy it, or they could simply brick access on your device.
Physical media still had some leftover protections, which is exactly why Sony moved against it.
Your daily reminder: you will own nothing and be happy.
Only ownership guarantees ownership, and looking at this article from Kotaku, that’s what the industry is scared of. Sony also updated their terms of use and will delete your account after 3 years of no use. We will own nothing and be happy, until we understand what this is really about.
Sony isn’t just closing down a factory or a less profitable section of its business. They are embracing a trend where you own nothing and are expected to be happy about it.
The fact that all of this happened at the same time as the committee hearing, with the ESA lying to Senators, may actually be coincidental, but it sure leaves a very bitter aftertaste.
Guess why they are fighting back against us so hard? Why do they resort to open lies?
Making petitions to get discs back is not only, unfortunately, going to do nothing it distracts from the very reason this is being done in the first place. You want your discs back? Help us force them to stop taking away our ownership.
Completely forgot about this, but Ubisoft’s terms of use say that if they terminate your license, you must uninstall the game and destroy all copies in your possession, discs included.
In plain English: they are telling you that you do not own the game. You only have permission to access it until they decide otherwise.
We will participate in this consultation, share with us your thoughts to include them!
A courtesy note to some of our content creators who brought attention to this topic: this very much sits within the broader chat control / age verification debate, especially knowing how these kinds of discussions tend to go in parliament.
This is about an ongoing consultation around parts of the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA), specifically the part outlining “trusted news sources.” Leaving aside the obvious slippery slope of giving governments the power to decide what counts as “trustworthy”, because surely no one would ever misuse that, right bro, there is a much bigger issue here.
Mainstream media’s competence when reporting on anything online, and sometimes even beyond that, can be deeply agenda-driven and one-sided. How and why depends on the country, but the pattern is very noticeable.
The last time I saw a major story about games or digital developments, anything around rights, ownership, or even just digital culture outside of “the AI thing”, was an article by Tagesschau, the German public broadcaster. It was basically about how much money the games industry makes.
There was no real discussion of cultural impact, no mention of how games overshadow film and music combined, despite those industries receiving exponentially more coverage. And then, of course, we still have to suffer through the yearly “gamers are violent and shooters are bad” story. Yes, that is absolutely still a thing.
And honestly, this is exactly the kind of space where serious media institutions would actually be useful. They could bring some sense into the constant culture war debate around games. Let developers make what they want, and if a game ends up not being played, that is on them, and fair enough.
Take the Roblox scandal. Every time something goes seriously wrong, it takes mainstream media ages to pick it up, if they pick it up at all.
Now, bringing this back to SKG: in my home country, Germany, we had a stranded whale on a beach as the main story for weeks, while reporting on us was apparently impossible for most of the time. At the very least, that was the case until we had over a million signatures. Even then, almost no one took the time to critically examine what this is actually about: the question of ownership in the digital age.
Instead, it was reduced to the usual “some gamers doing X” framing.
Look at the latest situation with the ESA. At minimum, senators were misled, or accepted an obvious lie without challenging it, and almost no one even tried to contest it. How in the name of all hells is that not worth reporting on? The views this whole shit-show received on independent channels alone should be enough justification. It reached more people, than most mainstream media stories ever do.
So, with that as the opener: can the state, and more importantly mainstream media, really be trusted to be “prioritized” on platforms when they are not even doing their normal job properly?
And is it fair to effectively declare the work of thousands of people, many of whom can absolutely be called journalists or serious commentators, as second-class? Yes, of course there are plenty of clowns in the online space. But there are plenty of clowns in mainstream media too.
What are your thoughts?
For SKG and SKI, Moritz
It’s now out in the open: what’s been known in Brussels for a while is coming.
Age verification, internet controls, and likely chat-scanning laws are on the way.
As reported by Euroactive: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is expected to announce proposals for an EU-wide social media ban for children during her annual State of the Union address in Strasbourg on 16 September, multiple EU officials and diplomats told Euractiv.
For SKG this is bad, really bad. It could undermine our efforts completely and as we have seen with the ESA: the Industry will use it against us!
Stop Killing the Internet: A Global Movement for a Better Internet
While we’re not pleased with the ESA’s behavior (obviously), we’ve received reports of serious threats toward individuals. This behavior does not reflect SKG’s values and anyone found to be doing this will be banned immediately.
Emergency Announcement
This is a grim moment for the gaming community, for ownership, which some groups want to say we do not have, for consumer rights, and for the wider Internet as a whole.
The events of the last few days have overwhelmed us, with jaw-dropping news breaking by the hour.
What we are doing next:
They are panicking. They are fumbling in committee. We have reputable sources from both the industry and the EU Commission confirming to us that they are afraid of what we are doing, how far we have gotten, and what we have all accomplished.
If there has ever been a moment, it is now.
No matter where you are or who you are: write to your local, federal, state, or union representative. Whether you are in the EU, the US, California, the UK, or anywhere else, tell them what you think of this.
Your representatives hear you. And we can tell you: they care, these companies' PR teams can be pushed to care about us through political pressure.
(Stay kind, stay respectful, we are better than these lies)
You can support us on our fight:
"Wow. Confusing a server existing with the crimes committed on a server. Lots of crimes happen in parking garages, we should make parking garages illegal."
Apparently they noticed how badly the f….d up or Microsoft reigned in on them but please make up your own mind. Whatever the case, they said what they said in committee with the result it gotten. They also added context they didn’t give earlier (lmao):
Statement in committee:
Ward was questioned by the committee about the feasibility of providing consumers with privately hosted servers to continue playing games after publishers have ceased supporting them. “Minecraft is currently hosted by community servers,” Ward replied, “Call of Duty [has] community servers, so it’s an option that is out there, in existence here today.”
“They’re illegal,” Gibbons interrupted. “They are not in any way affiliated with Microsoft. Microsoft, for Minecraft, has gotten a lot of criticism because of those community servers not employing the same safety standards that Microsoft does on their Minecraft servers.”
Gibbons was then asked by a committee member if private servers were akin to a “black market” for video games, to which she replied, “Yes. In fact, we consider it piracy. We have lawsuits, two pending lawsuits, against private servers right now, and the United States Trade Representative (USTR) in their Notorious Markets Reports on counterfeiting and piracy has named some of these big private servers as a notorious market.”
Initial statement by the ESA to PC Gamer and others:
"Private servers infringe on the intellectual property (IP) rights of game publishers. Publishers reserve the right to exercise their rights against them."
Updated statement by the ESA made to Kotaku and other medias
Update 6/30/2026, 3:45 p.m. ET: An Entertainment Software Association representative emailed Kotaku to clarify Jennifer Gibbons and the ESA’s “position on private servers.”
“Private servers that host or distribute copyrighted game content without authorization infringe on the intellectual property (IP) rights of game publishers,” they said. “While publishers may take different approaches, all publishers reserve the right to exercise their rights against IP infringement.”
They continued, “The provision in CA AB 1921 that proposed these servers as a legitimate alternative to keep games running raises concerns about a publisher’s ability to enforce their IP rights. In addition, private servers operate with no oversight from the publisher and do not uphold the same trust and safety standards. This could create an unsafe environment for players and be counter to the industry’s commitment to fostering safe and fun game play for all players.”
The ESA representative also stated that Gibbons was responding to a “multi-part question in which the committee was using the terms community server and private server interchangeably.”
Charlie covering the situation
In a statement to PC-Gamer the ESA has confirmed, that (In a statement to PC Gamer, the ESA wrote that, so far as it's concerned,) "Private servers infringe on the intellectual property (IP) rights of game publishers. Publishers reserve the right to exercise their rights against them."
They didn’t confuse stuff, they meant it and they’re doubling down on it. Dear Minecraft community dear COD community and many more, you bloody outlaws xD.
Contact your Senator, it’s blocked there so far.
The ESA just said, live in committee on the POG Act, that Minecraft community servers are illegal.
AB 1921, the Protect Our Games Act, has now officially failed in committee.
The vote was 4 yes, 3 no, with the rest abstaining.
Video is in the comments.
Timestamp: 56:24 in the original stream Minecraft private servers are illegal, according to the ESA.
The lobbyist who made the claim: Jennifer Gibbons, Entertainment Software Association
https://www.theesa.com/staff/jennifer-gibbons/
Here is exactly what happened, and why we are not going anywhere.
AB 1921 did not make it out of the Senate Business, Professions and Economic Development Committee. The bill needed a majority of the committee to vote yes. It did not get there. Four Democrats voted yes, three Republicans voted no, and the remaining Democrats abstained.
Those abstentions matter. In a committee vote, an abstention is not neutral. It has the same practical effect as a no, because a bill only advances if it gets a majority of yes votes. Not enough yeses means the bill stops here for this session.
That is the loss.
Now here is the part the headlines and clickbait YouTube “SKG FAILED??!” thumbnails will not give you.
We never expected to get this far.
This was our first attempt, in our first year, in the United States, with a U.S. budget of zero dollars. No paid staff in California. No war chest. No in-person lobbying operation. The timeline was so compressed that we could not get funding in place fast enough to put people in the building.
We ran this on volunteers, emails, phone calls, and the truth.
And we still pushed a consumer-rights bill through the entire State Assembly, 43 to 16, and into a Senate committee vote. We were only three votes away from this becoming law.
A volunteer movement with nothing took on one of the most powerful trade groups in entertainment and forced them to spend real money and real effort to stop us.
They had to work for this.
They are going to have to work a lot harder next time, because next time we will be ready.
The opposition was led by the Entertainment Software Association, the lobbying arm of the biggest publishers on earth. They did not fight this with facts. They fought it with fear.
They brought in a high-paid, D.C.-based lobbyist, Jennifer Gibbons, who worked the offices with claims that ranged from misleading to flatly false. We are putting those claims on the record, because sunlight is the entire point:
They claimed that running a private server, like the ones people run for Minecraft, would be “illegal.”
They claimed the bill demands “forever” support.
They claimed it is “impossible” to keep online games playable after support ends.
They claimed games with licensed content, like music, car brands, or sports, could never stay playable after sales stop.
They claimed that requiring an end-of-life plan would force studios to build “a completely new product.”
Every one of these claims was designed to scare a busy legislator who does not have time to fact-check a well-dressed lobbyist in real time.
It worked just well enough this round.
It will not work when we are standing in the same room, with developers and players beside us, ready to answer every single claim as it happens.
Here is what happens next.
We are not stopping. Not even close.
Next session, we come back with an in-person lobbying presence, the funding to do this properly, and a long list of organizations and developers signed on in support.
We are not limiting this to California. We intend to introduce versions of this in other state legislatures, and we are seriously looking at the federal level.
The ESA is about to learn what it is like to fight on many fronts at once.
They have to win every single time to keep things the way they are.
We only have to win once to change them.
That math does not favor them.
As we, at Stop Killing Games, grow and expand our structure and efforts, we are at the stage of making mass recruitment. Likewise, we are helping establish the SKI movement (Stop Killing the Internet), our sister project launching tomorrow, which will have their own teams. For those reasons, we now created a form where those of you that think that have the skills and availability can apply to either SKG, SKI or both! Before we make that announcement public in other platforms, we are giving the community here in discord the head start courtesy, as this is our center of operation and we love the community here present. If you wished to be more involved with these movements, this is your chance. Even if you are uncertain what exact team/role you would end up in, don't be shy or judge too much the titles. We have created a section in our discord server where you can talk/write and we will have people talking to you and help you figure out which role would be suitable. Also, if you have any questions related with the recruitment topic, feel free to ask in this new section. We have also a voice channel where potentially, interviews will be conducted or questions can be directly made. Here are the respective text and voice channels recruitment-textrecruitment-voice
You can read more about the teams at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kAvWKeurT9FH10iTs7dWKUxS5coxhIJQsqeZDiESoJg/
And you can apply at: https://forms.gle/pU71JR4xVRpJi8cv7
“Do not claim to speak for children while ignoring them everywhere else.”
This launch comes as governments around the world move in the same direction at the same time. In the United States, the Kids Online Safety Act is back. In Canada, new online harms legislation is expanding state and platform power over speech and online access. In Australia, the under-16 social media ban has turned access restrictions into national policy. In India, expanding platform-control powers are already reshaping what people can say, host and access online.
In the European Union, Chat Control keeps returning even after Parliament voted it down, with the will of elected representatives being ignored until the desired outcome is forced back onto the table. In the United Kingdom, the Online Safety Act has already pushed the internet towards age checks, access restrictions and new enforcement powers, while further proposals now include under-16 social media bans, device-side controls, threats against platform executives and even rules that could force platforms to prioritise “trusted news” in users’ feeds.
This is not just abstract policy. It risks pushing thousands of content creators, including people doing work that can absolutely be called journalism, into second-tier visibility. Their work could be downranked by government-shaped platform rules, overriding audience choice and threatening the livelihoods of independent creators.
For Stop Killing Games, this matters because these measures do not stay neatly inside one policy box. The same infrastructure that starts with age checks, scanning, ranking rules or platform controls can quickly affect gaming communities, private servers, modding, preservation projects, independent creators and the wider online spaces where culture is built and kept alive.
Stop Killing the Internet goes live today because this is a global attack on the open internet, and it requires a global answer. There cannot be one single global call to action, because the fights are different in every country. That is why the campaign exists: to reveal the pattern, show people where they can fight back, and bring together the communities, creators, experts and campaigners who are already pushing back.
Most importantly, we want to drag this debate into the open and develop genuine solutions in public. There is no grassroots demand for mass scanning, identity checkpoints, device controls or ranking mandates. People should not have to watch the same rejected ideas come back again and again until governments get the answer they want.
the Stop Killing the Internet website will soon include a global map showing ongoing efforts to restrict the internet, expand surveillance, introduce scanning, impose access controls or reshape what people can see online. People will be able to click on their country or region, see what is happening, find organisations fighting those measures locally, and discover actions they can take part in.
together with the organisations joining this campaign, we will build a global hub for information, research and accountability. This will help people understand who is lobbying whom, which companies and interests are pushing these measures, what evidence is being used, what evidence is being ignored, and how to explain these issues to others.
we are inviting people and organisations to join the work of building a real democratic alternative. The answer to online harm cannot be surveillance, censorship, identity checkpoints and backroom policymaking. We need meaningful safety, platform accountability, safer design, enforcement, education, support, privacy, access and democratic scrutiny. We need a better internet, shaped by the people who use it.
as we always do, we are working on videos to inform you as well as we can. In the meantime, feel free to either sign up to the mail-list or directly join the SKG discord. We need all hands on deck and are thus doing a recruitment drive. If you are a content creator, we are looking to expand the current team.
For both Stop Killing Games and Stop Killing the Internet
Moritz Katzner
#StopKillingInternet
Sony is taking away 551 movies from users, movies they payed for. Two days after Rockstar Games announces, that their disc folders won’t have a disc!
The first once again showing the need for the second and the second just being blatantly ignored. Why? Because physical media prevents stuff like „you only own a license, so we can do what we want“, which isn’t even true either but here we are.
Mostly an informational post, we are ramping up our capabilities rn and will start recruiting people from today on (more on that later or on the discord). We may actually bring this specific case to court but will have to look into the legal details.
For the SKG team
Moritz
The cook continues, no matter how loudly the doomers cry.
This movement is defined by action and we will keep acting, we owe Ross and the millions of people, that have put their trust in us. MEPs have recognized that, the California state assembly and even the courts have. Let’s keep winning
US: SKG’s legal and policy team will continue its work on the POG Act.
EU: SKG’s EU team has already begun adapting the POG Act into legislation suitable for the European Union.
EU: We are currently working with the EPP and S&D to determine which existing legislative proposal we should target first.
UK: SKG’s UK team will focus on building the new Stop Killing the Internet team, in coalition with groups including Open Rights Group, Big Brother Watch, Index on Censorship, Progressive Victory, the Pirates, and many others.
Moritz Katzner
For SKG from the EU parliament and kind greetings from all MEPs
*we had a lot of fun and are pretty happy with where we are (we just internally knew what the commission would do, so it didn’t surprise us and we simpel planed with it