How the EU Kids act would impact gaming and the Stop Killing Games campaign

This week we obtained a draft copy of the EU Kids Act. This law if passed would threaten gaming as a cultural practice and infringes people’s freedom of expression rights. You can download a copy of our briefing using the button above. We will update this once the final text of the Act is formally published. The Act contains a number of very worrying developments for anyone who plays games. The EU wants these laws to apply to any service online that can be accessed by EU citizens, so it will directly impact people running and playing games here in the UK too.

To quote Ross Scott the Founder of Stop Killing Games –

“The Kids Act is the most Draconian piece of legislation proposed on video games I’ve ever seen. It starts with a reasonable concept: that online games which are targeted at minors should have some sort of parental controls, something few would disagree with. It then uses that concept as cover to make the most radical and consumer-hostile piece of legislation ever proposed on video games. As it stands, it would make all game servers not collecting personal data from customers unlawful in the EU, including discontinued and community ones, even if the publisher allows it. It defines “online games” to mean any game that is sold digitally, regardless of whether it actually connects online. Most importantly to us, it would make running a digital game after support ends unlawful. Most of the EU Kids Act is not about child safety. It is about directly placing large burdens on thousands of game developers, favoring large corporations, and making preservation of unsupported digital games illegal. The proposals put forth in it are something out of a dystopian science fiction story. They are an attempt to ensure customers will never have anything even resembling ownership of a game they pay for moving forward. In the United States, the Entertainment Software Association recently declared private servers such as for Minecraft, as being illegal. This statement was widely mocked due to its dishonesty and outrageousness, but now the European Commission is trying to make that and much worse a reality.”

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