Stop Killing Games is a grassroots movement aimed at getting video game publishers to implement systems that will keep online titles available in some form even after the servers shut down. To hear Randy Pitchford, head of Borderlands 4 studio Gearbox, tell it, it's also a grand metaphor about the struggle to hang onto life in the inevitable face of death.
"I've lost games, and it's an emotional experience, so I admire the activism," Pitchford tells TheGamer when asked about Stop Killing Games. "It's a weird, challenging problem, though, because I think that at the same time, if we're going to have any games that are sincere live services, it seems mutually exclusive to have something that's going to be a living thing that can't be allowed to die. I don't know how to get around that."
According to Pitchford, "It's kind of a metaphor, I think, for life. I hate the fact that someday, the people that I care about aren't going to be here, and someday I'm not going to be here. I freaking hate that." Pitchford thinks that innate, human hatred of death is why we now live much longer than we once did, and "maybe tomorrow we could live even longer, and our games could live even longer."
Yes, we are still talking about Stop Killing Games here, though certainly Pitchford feels that the metaphor of the project is pretty far-reaching. "I really appreciate the activism, and I think it comes from the same heart that I have, which is a heart that loves experiences that are worthy and just wants to make sure they're there forever."
One experience that did not last forever is Battleborn, Gearbox's live-service shooter which launched in 2016 and ultimately shut down in 2021. That game's setting is actually about the survivors of a galaxy-spanning catastrophe teaming up to fight against the forces that destroyed most of the universe. Talk about metaphors, right?
"The truth is, there's going to be a time, trillions and trillions of years from now, when the universe will exist in a heat death, and everything will have decayed to a maximum state of entropy, and there's literally nothing," Pitchford concludes. "Battleborn was about the last star that would exist before that moment, because all of the stars in the universe will end. And it's so sobering to think about the fact that everything will end. Not just us, but literally everything, and I kind of hate that, and I hate the fact that we have to live in a universe that will be destroyed. And I love that I hate that, because it makes me want to fight against that."
Dang, Randy. Borderlands 4, which features at least one non-Skibidi Toilet meme, launches on September 12.
