Stop Destroying Videogames Has Received an Anonymous Transparency Complaint Citing Ross Scott’s Involvement

With only seven days left for the Stop Destroying Videogames (SDV) petition in Europe calling on video game makers to provide a plan for ensuring that their games lives on beyond corporate support, SDV has been accused of failing to declare what’s been paid to Ross Scott for his contributions to the initiative – and withholding this information is a regulatory violation.

Stop Killing Games (SKG) is similar to SDV, but was started by Scott, an American citizen residing in Europe, in April 2024 in the US, with the intent to start a serious conversation in the gaming industry about consumer rights and protection. As it currently stands, players don’t own the games they purchase – not even physical versions – and companies reserve the right to cut players’ access as they see fit, and even demand that players destroy any copies they may have in their possession.

“I’m just assuming that this is coming from somewhere in the industry. I don’t know which company it is or which lobby group or if it’s just someone who’s being a proxy for something else,” Scott told Eneba. “As I understand it, the accuser is protected by privacy laws.”

Allegations Based on Estimates – Not Facts

According to the transparency complaint, a 3-page document in Eneba’s possession, the SDV, which falls under the rules of any European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI), has failed to declare its sources of funding, and that this “appears fundamentally incorrect based on publicly documented evidence of substantial undisclosed professional contributions to the campaign.”

The complaint continues with its evidence, citing public statements made by Scott, including a quote from an interview in July with PC Gamer: “There have been many weeks on the campaign where I’ve been working 12 to 14 hours a day to keep things moving to get signatures.”

The document follows with a conservative professional value assessment of how much money Scott supposedly earned for his contribution to the campaign. The “many weeks” is estimated to 15 to 20 weeks which brings the 12 to 14 hours per day admission to a total of 1,260 hours to 1,960 hours spent working on the campaign.

For good measure, it’s also estimated that Scott would have been paid a professional rate of $59 to $88 per hour for a grand total of anywhere from $74,125 to $172,960.

EU Regulations Favors Advocacy Groups

According to EU regulations, €500 ($588) is the threshold for any contribution from individuals, organizations, or sponsors of an ECI that isn’t required to be registered. Any amount above must be declared and include the donor’s name, the value amount, and type of support – money, goods, or services. The purpose for this is to prevent covert lobbying, foreign influence, and opaque financing.

“No one has ever hired me and I’ve never said ‘please spend money so I can work on the initiative.’ I’m just a volunteer. And the rules of the EU says that if you’re a volunteer then you don’t need to declare that,” Scott said. “Even Stop Killing Games is just a name of a movement. It’s not an official organization. It’s just a website run by a friend and we have never accepted money for it. It’s just a grassroots movement.”

These stringent rules are not applied to industry advocacy groups like Video Games Europe (VGE), which spent $476,000 to $588,000 in 2024 to promote the interests of its 21 members that are gaming industry companies, including 16 which are headquartered outside of the EU.

The Second Step Taken By The Industry

On July 4, 2025, VGE published a position paper against SKG on its website. In the paper, the advocacy group stated that they were not entirely sure of what the initiators of the SDV petition seek to achieve as a legal change.

“It appears to be a combination of a requirement to provide online services for as long as a consumer wants them, regardless of price paid, and/or a requirement to provide a very specific form of end-of-life plan where the game is altered to enable private servers to operate,” VGE said in its position paper, and continued: “We do not believe these are proportionate demands.”

Scott believes that this was the first step towards discrediting the initiative and coming after him with false accusations is the second toward discrediting the campaign before the EU even starts debating the petition.

“I think that’s absolutely the goal. In my eyes this is the second step. The first was the position paper against Stop Killing Games …I’m highly suspicious of them (VGE) intentionally misunderstanding the petition,” Scott said. “This is a professional organization and for them to say that we’re asking for endless support (for video games), this creates a narrative that will make it (the SKG initiative) look bad. I think this is what they’re doing.”

The SKG movement was founded by Scott to challenge the legality of publishers discontinuing support for games that consumers have paid for. He is not a part of the leadership of the European initiative, but he doesn’t shy away from speaking his mind as a volunteer for it.