Stop Killing Games gathered over 1.3 million verified signatures earlier this year, making it eligible for debate in the EU Parliament. While most of the speakers expressed sympathy for the campaign, Milan Uhrík, Slovak MEP (Member of the European Parliament) and leader of the far-right Movement for the Republic, which the popular media organization Denník N described as a “party of poorly disguised neo-Nazis”, quickly dragged the conversation into the bowels of an unmoderated internet forum.
As reported by PC Gamer , the MEP acknowledged that publishers killing games was a problem, but completely veered off course in a tangent about Assassin's Creed Shadows and Yasuke, setting off last year's culture war.
“The awakening and aggressive monetization of video games is ruining it,” said Uhrík. “You wanted to talk about what's ruining video games here in parliament, well, I'll say it out loud. One thing that's definitely ruining video games is the crazy woke ideology and political correctness that's being pushed into games. For example, if you want to play as a samurai, of course we want to play as a Japanese warrior and not be forced to play as a black female warrior, or more recently, a black female warrior.” character without any other choice, that's really a problem for the player.”
Stop Killing Games says Uhrík is “missing the point”
The idea that “awakening” is destroying the video game industry has been debunked time and time again: just look at the unanimous success of Baldur's Gate 3, which launched Larian Studios to fame. Not to mention that Assassin's Creed has always been a diverse and colorful series that started in the Holy Land, which includes present-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, western Jordan, and southwestern Syria, and later followed the Iroquois-speaking Connor Kenway, a. Kanien'kehá:ka (or Mohawk).
It's also worth noting that Uhrík's Movement for a Republic party is anti-immigration, anti-LGBTQ+ rights, anti-vax and pro-Russian.
However, Stop Killing Games has no interest in wading in the anti-awakening waters as it only distracts from the real issue of publishers shutting down games and making them completely inaccessible. SKG CEO Moritz Katzner explained on the movement's subreddit that Uhrík “was welcoming in tone, but somewhat missed the point in my opinion.”
Otherwise, “unreserved” support was expressed by several representatives, while a number of MEPs expressed their personal support, as detailed in the Reddit post above. Polish MEP Piotr Müller therefore warned that “we must now be careful not to over-regulate the market. The gaming market in Europe still needs to develop so that the European sector can continue to grow.”
Concord becomes one of the few games ever mentioned in the European Parliament
The game has a legacy after all.
