We appreciate the passion of our community; however, the decision to discontinue online services is multi-faceted, never taken lightly and must be an option for companies when an online experience is no longer commercially viable. We understand that it can be disappointing for players but, when it does happen, the industry ensures that players are given fair notice of the prospective changes in compliance with local consumer protection laws.

Private servers are not always a viable alternative option for players as the protections we put in place to secure players’ data, remove illegal content, and combat unsafe community content would not exist and would leave rights holders liable. In addition, many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create.

We welcome the opportunity to discuss our position with policy makers and those who have led the European Citizens Initiative in the coming months.

If they don’t want to be held legally responsible, why don’t they just open source the code at the end of their commercial endeavors?