Here's a sentence I didn't expect to write today: a US state legislature just voted to make it illegal for publishers to brick games you've paid for when they switch the servers off.
The California State Assembly passed AB 1921, the Protect Our Games Act, on a 4-16 vote today. The bill, which was drafted with input from the Stop Killing Games campaign, requires publishers to provide one of three things when they shut down an online game's servers: a version of the game that works independently, a patch that enables offline play, or a full refund. They also have to give players 60 days' notice before pulling the plug, which feels like the bare minimum of human decency, but apparently needed to be written into law.
The vote split almost entirely on party lines: 41 Democrats in favour, 1 opposed; 15 Republicans opposed, 2 in favour. Twenty-one members were absent. Party-line votes on consumer protection aren't exactly a shock, but it's worth noting that the bill passed comfortably regardless.
Now, before anyone starts planning the parade: the bill isn't law yet. It still needs to clear the California State Senate, then survive a trip to Governor Gavin Newsom's desk. Newsom has 12 days to sign, approve without signing, or veto once it lands. A veto can be overridden with a two-thirds majority in both houses, but in practice, getting to the governor's desk at all is the main event.
What the bill actually covers is sensibly scoped. It applies to games released from January 1, 2027 onward. It does not apply to free-to-play games, subscription services like Game Pass, or any game that ships with a permanent offline downloadable version from the start. There's some ambiguity around what constitutes "ordinary use" of a game: the law defines it as a purchaser's ability to use the "core features" based on what the game was advertised as offering. If Destiny 3 hypothetically shipped and Bungie later killed the PvP servers, does that count as a core feature? That's the kind of question courts would need to sort out.
The games industry, through the Entertainment Software Association, is not happy about this at all. The ESA's statement to local news outlet ABC10 argued that the bill "doesn't reflect how games actually work today" and warned it could "force developers to spend limited time and resources keeping old systems running instead of creating new games, features, and technology." This is, as you might expect, a wildly disingenuous framing. The bill does not demand eternal server support. It says: either give players a way to keep playing after you're done supporting it, or give them their money back. That's it.
The ESA has been here before, incidentally. They've previously argued against allowing libraries to preserve games digitally, because apparently letting the Library of Congress archive a copy of an MMO that's been offline for a decade would somehow destroy the industry. Their argument here is the same playbook: frame any consumer protection as a threat to innovation, and hope nobody reads the actual text of the bill.
Stop Killing Games has been working toward this moment for years. The campaign started in earnest after Ubisoft shut down The Crew, a racing game people had paid full price for, by switching off the servers and rendering it completely unplayable even in single-player. That case is currently grinding through French consumer courts and could set a European precedent on its own. Separately, SKG has a European Citizens' Initiative petition in progress, and they were called in to advise the UK's Department for Culture, Media and Sport recently. The California bill is the furthest any of these efforts have reached so far.
There's something genuinely heartening about this. Game preservation has spent decades being treated as a niche concern for academics and hoarders. The industry has quietly accepted that hundreds of games, many of them critically acclaimed and culturally significant, simply vanish when server costs outweigh the revenue from a dwindling player base. What the Protect Our Games Act says is simple: if you sell someone a product, you don't get to remotely detonate it later without consequence.
It's still a long road to becoming law, and even if it passes, it only covers games released from next year onward in a single US state. But California is the world's fifth-largest economy, and legislation there has a habit of becoming the blueprint for federal law and international standards. This matters.
Sources:
- TechRaptor - primary source for the Assembly floor vote results (43-16, party breakdown, details on exemptions and next steps)
- Rock Paper Shotgun (Mark Warren, May 11) - ESA statement and Stop Killing Games counter-letter, AB 1921 bill details
- Rock Paper Shotgun (April 16) - Stop Killing Games advising on bill drafting, UK DCMS consultation, The Crew lawsuit context
- StopKillingGames.com - campaign background, global supporter numbers, European Citizens' Initiative status
- California Legislative Information (AB 1921 )- full bill text, amendment history, exemptions, and scope
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