A bill to prevent (or at least deter) publishers from taking games offline and making them unplayable has hit a roadblock in the California State Senate. The Protect Our Games Act failed to pass the Business, Professions and Economic Development Committee, with four state senators voting for, three against and four abstaining.
The committee voted unanimously to reconsider the bill, meaning it could return before this group of state senators. Assemblyman Chris Ward introduced the bill in February and it passed the California State Assembly by a vote of 43-16 in late May.
That said, abstentions have so far prevented the bill from moving forward. “Not enough yes votes means the bill stops here for this session,” noted a volunteer with the Stop Killing Games campaign (which supported the bill) on Reddit. “It’s the loss.”
The volunteer also claimed that this was the movement’s first attempt to pass such legislation in the United States, and that the bill got here without paid staff or an in-person lobbying campaign. They said the Entertainment Software Association – a trade organization of major publishers in the video game industry – had hired a lobbyist to stop the bill from moving forward (including calling for private servers for apps like Minecraft would be “illegal”) and that Stop Killing Games would be better prepared to counter this in the future.
“Next session we will return with an in-person lobbying presence, the funding to do it properly, and a long list of organizations and developers who have signed their support,” wrote volunteer u/Mr_Presidentle. “We are not limiting this to California. We intend to introduce versions of this model in other state legislatures, and we are seriously considering doing so at the federal level.”
If the proposed California legislation becomes law as is, it would require publishers and “digital game operators” to notify consumers 60 days before removing a game from the list, as well as information on how they could obtain a refund or continue playing it. The publisher/operator would, for example, be allowed to allow customers to play the game on a private or community server instead of offering a full refund. The rules would not apply to subscription or free-to-play games.
As VGC notes, players connected MultiVersus a few months before it closed in 2025, they received an update that allowed them to continue playing the game offline. This type of approach could give publishers and “digital game operators” an option to avoid issuing massive refunds when they shut down a game’s servers if legislation along these lines comes into force.
