Bill to keep online games playable clears key hurdle in California

A bill focused on maintaining long-term playable access to online games has passed out of the California Assembly’s appropriations committee, setting up a floor vote by the full legislative body. The advancement is a major win for Stop Killing Games‘ grassroots game preservation movement and comes over the objections of industry lobbyists at the Entertainment Software Association.

California’s Protect Our Games Act, as currently written, would require digital game publishers who cut off support for an online game to either provide a full refund to players or offer an updated version of the game “that enables its continued use independent of services controlled by the operator.” The act would also require publishers to notify players 60 days before the cessation of “services necessary for the ordinary use of the digital game.”

As currently amended, the act would not apply to completely free games and games offered “solely for the duration of [a] subscription. Any other game offered for sale in California on or after January 1, 2027, would be subject to the law if it passes.

Battle of the interest groups

This week’s 11–2 committee vote to advance the Protect Our Games Act is being trumpeted by Stop Killing Games (SKG), the UK-based player advocacy group that was formed after the 2024 shutdown of Ubisoft’s The Crew. SKG wrote last month that it “advised on the drafting” of the bill before it was first introduced by Assemblyman Chris Ward earlier this year.

“Back shortly before Christmas, when I flew to the US to help set up SKG-US, I didn’t expect us to get this far this quickly,” SKG’s Monitz Katzner wrote on Reddit after the committee vote. “It has been an honor to take part in drafting this bill on behalf of the SKG community: gamers, developers, and publishers alike.”

In a formal statement of support for the bill sent to the California legislature, SKG wrote that “there is no other medium in which a product can be marketed and sold to a consumer and then ripped away without notice… As live service games rise in popularity for game developers and gamers alike, end-of-life procedures are essential tools to ensure prolonged access to the games consumers pay to enjoy.”

The Entertainment Software Association, which helps represent the interests of major game publishers, publicly told the California Assembly last month that the bill misrepresents how modern game distribution actually works. “Consumers receive a license to access and use a game, not an unrestricted ownership interest in the underlying work,” the ESA wrote. The eventual shutdown of outdated or obsolete games is “a natural feature of modern software,” the group added, especially when that software requires online infrastructure maintenance.

The ESA also said the bill would impose unreasonable expectations on publishers regarding licensing rights for music or IP rights, which are often negotiated on a time-limited basis. “A legal requirement to keep games playable indefinitely could place publishers in an impossible position—forcing them to renegotiate licenses indefinitely or alter games in ways that may not be legally or technically feasible,” they wrote.

Last month, the Protect Our Games Act also received positive votes from the California Assembly’s Privacy and Consumer Protection and Judiciary committees. But the bill still faces significant hurdles in getting majority passage in the full California Assembly and the California Senate before being sent to California Governor Gavin Newsom for signature.

Still, the current legislative progress in California has to be heartening for the Stop Killing Games movement, which has seen its momentum in the UK stall a bit after a UK Parliament debate on game preservation last November.