GoKawiilStop Killing Games
Sun, 31 May 2026
The "Stop Killing Games" movement is making progress with the advancement of California AB 1921, a bill designed to stop developers from permanently bricking games when they shut down their servers. If you're a gamer who has watched a $70 purchase turn into a useless desktop icon overnight, you're entirely justified in your outrage. Having a software developer reach into your home and break your own software is a profound violation of trust.
But as the movement gains momentum, it's becoming clear that they're aiming at the wrong target.
Right now, advocates are treating game preservation purely as a consumer rights issue. They're lobbying for laws that force developers to build offline modes, issue final server patches, or offer refunds. This is fundamentally treating a symptom while ignoring the disease. The real problem isn't that developers are "killing games" - it's that they have the unquestioned, systemic power to do so in the first place.
What gamers are actually experiencing is the inherent injustice of proprietary software. It's a system built from the ground up to mistreat users by denying them control over their own computers.
Without using the exact vocabulary, the gaming community is spontaneously waking up to the exact ethical arguments the Free Software Foundation has been making for forty years. Gamers are currently saying, "You shouldn't be able to control how and when I run this code." They don't just want a band-aid; they're intuitively demanding software freedom. They just haven't realized it yet.
The Anatomy of a Kill Switch
When a game "dies" because a publisher unplugs the server, it isn't experiencing a natural death - it's an execution. But how is it possible for a company to reach across the internet and execute a piece of software living on your hard drive?
It's only possible because the software is proprietary.
... continue reading