Pam Cox

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Mundell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Ben Goldsborough) for securing this important debate, which shines a light on the growing disconnect between video game consumers and the companies that profit from them. The e-petition received nearly 190,000 signatures nationwide, and Colchester ranked among the top 20 constituencies for signatures. I thank those who signed it for standing up for fairness and for their digital rights. I should say that I am not a gamer—I feel rather in the minority—but, as a parent of gamers, I have made a solid financial contribution to the gaming industry over the years. Colchester has a thriving video game industry of its own, based around the Innovation Centre, Knowledge Gateway at the University of Essex. The university offers a very respected BSc in game technology. The city also has a fantastic creative digital learning charity called Signals, which offers superb short courses to school pupils—very good for half-term recreation, as I recall—in animation, coding and other skills that underpin the industry. I cannot resist saying that Colchester has another claim to fame in this space: it was recreated in “Assassin’s Creed Valhalla”, in which players are able to roam around our Roman and Anglo Saxon heritage. I do not know whether any other constituency can match that. It is another testament to our city’s huge cultural importance, and reminds us that games are more than entertainment, as Members have said. They combine rich and complex design, art, graphics and music. What happens when that rich content is deleted? When publishers shut down servers or revoke access, consumers lose something that they have paid for, often with very little warning or recourse. That is not just inconvenient but fundamentally unfair. Other forms of cultural production—film, books, music and so on—live on, but we have allowed a situation to develop in the gaming industry whereby games are sold to consumers to play, but it is never quite clear when it is game over. The Stop Killing Games movement highlights the growing frustration among players who see their purchases vanish. It is clear that digital ownership must be respected, and that publishers should look to provide routes for players to retain or repair games even if the official service support for products ends. I welcome the Government’s willingness to monitor the issue, not least because current laws such as the Consumer Rights Act clearly do not offer adequate consumer protections against digital obsolescence. I ask the Minister to review statutory protections in digital ownership and protect gamers in Colchester and elsewhere.