YouTuber Pirate Software claps back at claims of him 'killing' the Stop Killing Games movement

YouTuber and indie game studio Pirate Software has silenced his critics who claimed that his disapproval of the Stop Killing Games initiative led to a decrease in the popularity of the campaign.

Stop Killing Games is an initiative started in 2024 by YouTuber Ross Scott, also known as Accursed Farms, who is campaigning game publishers not to ‘kill’ games after developers stop lending support. For this purpose, Scott introduced a petition to the European Commission, which recently achieved one million signatures.

Pirate Software, who released videos to his YouTube channel criticizing the ‘vagueness’ of the initiative, countered the narrative that his criticism led to the loss of the Stop Killing Games movement’s momentum. On X, Pirate Software posted a graph demonstrating the trend of support for the Stop Killing Games initiative, and wrote:

“The most interesting narrative is that my videos somehow ‘killed’ the initiative. This graph shows that the initiative already had a downward trend in interest when my videos dropped. My videos do not seem to have had any impact on the movement at all.”

Slamming his detractors, the YouTuber added,

“Making me the villain did though. Best of luck with your next steps.”

The most interesting narrative is that my videos somehow "killed" the initiative. This graph shows that the initiative already had a downward trend in interest when my videos dropped. My videos do not seem to have had any impact on the movement at all.

Making me the villain did… pic.twitter.com/eNhfsBVcTF

— Pirate Software (@PirateSoftware) July 4, 2025

According to Dexerto, while the graph did show a downward trend in signatures on the petition before the release date of Pirate Software’s videos, the drop in signatures increased after Pirate Software’s criticism of the initiative.

What was Pirate Software’s criticism of Stop Killing Games?

Pirate Software, whose name is Jason ‘Thor’ Hall, released videos in August 2024 criticizing the Stop Killing Games initiative.

Breaking down the technicalities of preservation of games, Hall called out the initiative and said,

“It is incredibly vague and will damage all live service games. How would you keep League of Legends in a functional playable state? You'd have to rearchitect the entire game. The game is what is called a client server. So in client server models, there’s a server and there’s a client. And all of the math, all of the game, everything happens on a server.”

He also explained the changes that preserving obsolete games would require, adding,

“If we wanted to re architect this we'd have to take all of that server logic push it back out into the client and somehow make that playable in a multiplayer only video game.”

Calling out Stop Killing Games, he continued,

“This isn’t going to work for all games, why is it calling out all games?”

Earlier, Pirate Software was forced to step away from OffBrand Games

After his criticism of Stop Killing Games created a furor, Hall stepped away from OffBrand Games. Announcing his decision on X on July 3, he said,

“I am no longer working at @offbrand_games. People were attacking all of the games we were publishing and trying to mass review bomb them. You can dislike the things I say but this kind of behavior is unhinged.”

I am no longer working at @offbrand_games. People were attacking all of the games we were publishing and trying to mass review bomb them. You can dislike the things I say but this kind of behavior is unhinged.

Learned a lot there, accomplished a lot, hope they succeed…

— Pirate Software (@PirateSoftware) July 3, 2025

In a comment to his post, Hall spoke about the online hate he received:

“The abuse was across socials, people on discord, twitter, reddit, and some reviews on steam. Indie Games are fragile things and attacks like that hit hard. Overall sentiment was to bash the games and the developers working on them to try to get back at me. Not worth bringing them down for my opinion.”

Pirate Software also urged netizens review-bombing OffBrand Games and targeting him to seek help.