European game publisher group responds to Stop Killing Games, claims 'These proposals would curtail developer choice"

I mean, it's true. Killing game services in a way which ensures people have absolutely no way to use the games they bought is... a choice.

And now a million Europeans have just officially expressed that they don't agree with "developers" (really, publisher higher-ups) being free to choose that.

I hate that they tried to blame the developers here. I feel like they are just as exploited as the consumers. Many times have I tried to be passionate about my own work only to have it crushed and expunged by greedy upper management. I'd hate to be them working years on a passion project only to have it degraded by corporate grifters sending it into microtransaction hell

So tone deaf, and clearly they're just trying to steer the narrative.

They call out that it's never taken lightly and it has to happen. We know. Stop killing games just says you have to do something when you turn off the servers. Either release the server source code so it can be engineered by the community, release a self hostage server alternative, even just documents or guides on how to get started.

But they're going to try to make it about the mean old gamers want them to go broke

This entire argument is nonsense. With enough advance notification, all future games can be built with these rules in mind. If you are developing it in that way to begin with it’s not going to require any extra work.