The European Union parliament has taken up the debate about the Stop Killing Games movement and whether game publishers have the responsibility to keep their titles online after players have already purchased and played them for years. However, Slovakian politician Milan Uhrik decided to derail the conversation by focusing on his personal beef with the gaming industry rather than addressing the issue at hand.
“Wokeness and aggressive monetization is destroying videogames,” said Uhrik when it was his turn to speak. “One thing that is definitely destroying video games is the crazy, woke ideology and political correctness which is being forced into the games. For example, if we want to play as a samurai, obviously we want to play as a Japanese warrior and not to be forced to play as a Black person warrior or female warrior as it happened recently in Assassin’s Creed. Or to play as a queer character, without any other choice. This is an issue, really, for players.”
The game in question, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, featured Yasuke, a historical figure who was a samurai of African descent and lived in Japan during the late 16th century. Yasuke shared the spotlight in Shadows with a fictional creation, Naoe, both of whom were playable characters. Late last year, Ubisoft acknowledged that the backlash against Yasuke was one of the reasons Shadows was delayed.
Ubisoft inadvertently led to the creation of the Stop Killing Games movement when it decided to shut down The Crew. In response, YouTube host Ross Scott started Stop Killing Games by challenging the legal standing of publishers’ ability to shut down titles that had already been sold to players. In response, the EU lobbying association Video Games Europe responded that Stop Killing Games’ proposals to keep older games alive “would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create.”
During a shareholders meeting in 2025, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot argued that games are a service, “but nothing is written in stone and at some point the service may be discontinued. Nothing is eternal. And we are doing our best to make sure that things go well for all players and buyers, because obviously support for all games cannot last forever. But that’s an issue that we’re working on. That’s something that the industry at large is working on, to minimize impact on players.”
That’s the debate that continues to play out in the European Union parliament, despite the apparent attempt by Uhrik to turn it into something else.