This week, Ars hosted a live discussion with Ross Scott about the Stop Killing Games movement and its ongoing efforts to ensure that games remain playable even after the original publisher shuts down the online servers undergirding them.

Scott talked with Ars Technica Senior Gaming Editor Kyle Orland, saying said he felt the situation around long-term game access was already "intolerable a decade and a half ago" and that he "kept hoping someone else would kick this off, [someone] more experienced or knowledgeable, but it felt like nothing was happening." Scott said he felt making the effort to organize a movement against the practice was like "[drawing] the short straw on this, essentially."

During the conversation, Scott noted how the standard practice of shutting down game access for any reason, at any time, with minimal notice, would seem ludicrous in other areas of life:

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By now, any serious gamer is familiar with a favorite title becoming unplayable after a centralized online server gets shut down, or being unable to purchase and download a digitally delisted, critically acclaimed title from yesteryear. Can anything be done about this video game preservation problem?

To help answer that question, we'll be hosting a live conversation with Ross Scott, the founder of the Stop Killing Games campaign, on August 11 at 2:30 pm ET as part of the Ars Live series. As Ars' Senior Gaming Editor, I've documented countless examples of once vibrant games being left for dead by their creators.

Scott founded the Stop Killing Games movement in 2024 after Ubisoft decided to shut down the servers for The Crew. Since then, he's helped gather millions of gamers' signatures on government petitions demanding legislative action to provide some form of perpetual access for games people purchase—either via continuing centralized server support or an option for players to maintain their own servers. The movement has already led to an official parliamentary debate and response from the European Commission and proposed legislation that is working its way through the California legislature.

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Following its announcement in March, game developer Cold Iron Studios has shut down the servers for the cloud version of Aliens: Fireteam Elite on the Nintendo Switch. The game originally cost $30 (or $60 for an “Ultimate” version with additional content).

Cold Iron Studios hasn't offered customers refunds.

TheGamer reported that affected players are entitled to a discount for the Nintendo Switch 2 version of the game, which is a 2021 co-op, third-person shooter based on the Alien film franchise. However, that would mean paying money for a game that you have already paid money for once.

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SteamOS is continuing its slow march to fuller support on a wider variety of non-Valve hardware. This weekend's release of the SteamOS 3.8.25 Beta includes "initial gamepad support" for a few recent gaming handhelds and improved support for a few others.

Those newly supported handhelds include MSI's Claw 8 EX AI+, the extremely expensive, extremely powerful handheld built around Intel's Arc G3 processor that launched this summer. While SteamOS has long included beta support for "other AMD powered handhelds," Valve has only recently been working on offering compatibility with Intel-based handhelds like the MSI Claw line. This weekend's update suggests the company hasn't abandoned those efforts and that Intel chips aren't being left out of the SteamOS conversation.

SteamOS 3.8.25 also newly supports the controllers built into Ayaneo's Android-focused Pocket S2 and the more recently released Windows-based Konkr Fit. Valve also says the new OS offers "improved support" for older MSI Claw devices and the OneXPlayer line of portable gaming PCs.

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This year is the 30th anniversary of the launch of the original Quake by id Software, if you could believe it. To commemorate that, publisher Bethesda has released a new campaign chapter for the game, titled "Dawn of the Machine."

This is part of a series of new campaign chapters, all developed by MachineGames "in collaboration with id Software." MachineGames is best known for making the games in the relatively recent Wolfenstein reboot series, as well as Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. The Quake maps are made by a team dubbed "Quake Club," which includes several MachineGames employees who work on Quake maps in their spare time.

The ambition and scope of some of these maps is beyond what was typical for Quake maps back in the late '90s, thanks in part to the team's use of TrenchBroom, a newer map editor that works well on modern systems and is easier to work with and more capable than what folks were using in those days.

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Sony is “cautiously” moving forward with plans to stop producing discs for PlayStation games as of January 2028, CFO Lin Tao said through an interpreter today.

During an earnings call, Tao said there are “various reasons” for Sony's decision, with the biggest being that the “digitalization of [content] overall has been progressing.”

“When we think about the future, and we put in a lot of thought and time, and we cautiously considered this, and we came to this conclusion. And we’re going to cautiously move this forward,” Tao said.

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Over the past couple of weeks, my immune system has been struggling to fight off a cold. It’s been unpleasant, as all colds are. But throughout this time—in defiance of my plight—I’ve been waging my own war against immune systems, thanks to Pathogenic, a new roguelite twin-stick shooter from developer Aberrant Labs.

As I've downed endless shots of ineffective cough syrup, I’ve done little else with my free time than repeatedly take on the role of a bodily invader. And let me tell you: Being on the enemy’s side is much more fun. Really fun, as it turns out.

Action roguelites are a dime a dozen these days, and it takes something special to stand out. So as quiet Internet whispers turned into widespread cacophonous praise—the little indie game quickly racked up 100,000 sales and an “overwhelmingly positive” review score on Steam—I set aside my default skepticism and gave it a shot.

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