Solely 3% of Stop Killing Games’ EU initiative signees have failed verification to this point—which is a superb signal it’s going to progress to the European Commission

Stop Killing Games’ EU initiative had a second wind earlier this yr, going from a little bit of doom and gloom to 400,000 additional signatures previous the requirement to get it in entrance of the European Commission, by way of a European Citizens’ Initiative.

For context, Stop Killing Games is a motion designed to require sport corporations to help their video games after they have been shut down. As explained on its site, this does not imply forcing corporations to keep up servers without end—reasonably, it requires them to have some kind of end-of-life plan in thoughts, which may take quite a lot of varieties. For occasion, giving fan communities the instruments they should run their very own native servers.

EU initiatives have a lot of stringent requirements before they can get in front of the politicians, including at least 1 million signatures, a minimum number of signatories each from a specific roster of countries, and—more importantly—verified signatures. Essentially, if you don’t follow the rules, or aren’t from within the EU, then your signature doesn’t count.

That question mark hung over the whole endeavour. While it was great to see a flood of support after OG Stop Killing Games creator Ross Scott directly addressed the naysayers, there was every chance that a bunch of well-meaning gamers from outside the EU were inflating the numbers.

That’s not the case, fortunately. As per a post made to the StopKillingGames subreddit, the signature verification course of is over midway full and going robust:

“Out of 1,448,270 signatures,” writes consumer Mr_Presidentle, “689,035 are already verified, and 15 countries have met their thresholds. We are still missing the two largest countries—Germany and France—but based on our current progress, we are confident we have surpassed the required thresholds.”

In a separate remark, Mr_Presidentle confirms that solely “About 3%” of signatures failed verification, which is nice information for the initiative. To do some fast serviette math if that quantity holds:

The ECI petition wants 1,000,000 signatures, and there have been 1,448,270 signatures. If 3% of that quantity failed verification, that’d be 43,448 (rounded down) signatures that do not move muster, leaving 1,404,822 legitimate signatures within the pot. Still a very good 404,822 over goal.

In different phrases, all indicators level to victory on this primary essential step.