Stop Killing Games backs California bill supporting clearer EOL rules for online games

[Alfonso Maruccia]

Editor's take: The Stop Killing Games movement is still working to pressure publishers to preserve access to games after online servers are shut down. A new bill aims to protect the long-term availability of game worlds, which is why some corporations are already lobbying against the proposed legislation.

Stop Killing Games is backing a new bill from Chris Ward, a member of the California State Assembly since 2020. Introduced earlier this year, the Protect Our Games Act would require gaming companies to make clear commitments to long-term support for "server-connected" video games. The bill has undergone a significant review process and is expected to be debated soon.

According to Ward's original proposal, AB 1921 would require companies selling live-service games to notify consumers of the end-of-support date. In addition, publishers would not be allowed to sell games within the final two months of their service life. Before servers are shut down, companies would also need to provide an alternative plan for preserving access or enabling offline play.

The newly amended AB 1921 includes more detailed obligations for game companies. The updated rules, expected to apply to games released after January 1, 2027, would require publishers or developers to patch games losing online-only functionality so they remain playable offline after official support ends. Alternatively, consumers would be entitled to a full refund of the original purchase price.

Furthermore, AB 1921 now requires publishers to send a warning to players both in-game and through the company's website 60 days before a game's servers are scheduled to go offline. Players must also be given clear notice of which online features will be disabled, any potential security risks, and the technical requirements needed to keep the game functional offline over time.

The bill includes several exceptions, such as subscription-based game services and free-to-play games that have never required a purchase. Games sold as one-time downloads and designed to function fully offline from the outset are also exempt.

SKG recently confirmed that it fully supports the California AB 1921 legislation and has advised Ward on aspects of its drafting. The bill has already attracted attention from major lobbying groups within the US gaming industry, suggesting it is gaining traction and prompting significant debate.

The SKG collective has also shared additional details about its upcoming initiatives. After collecting more than one million verified signatures in the EU, the SKG-backed Stop Destroying Videogames initiative is set to be a "special guest" at a European Parliament hearing on April 16.

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Stop Killing Games backs California bill supporting clearer EOL rules for online games

 

[Plutoisaplanet]

Tbh they should require by law for games to be offered with a minimum number of months/years of online service included, and then a monthly subscription afterwards (aka no guarantee of continuing of service). If the MSRP was meant to provide ownership, the monthly cost could be cheap or it could be a long service period (and then a partial refund would be provided if the game was canceled early). No one likes dealing with more subscriptions, but on-going costs is essentially the problem the proposed bill is trying extremely hard to avoid acknowledging.

This is how most of the car industry is handling autonomous driving related features. They will charge you for 3 years of service, and then a monthly fee if you want to continue to use it (until they cancel it). This article is 2.5 years old, but it lets you see it in practice: https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/28/how-tesla-bmw-ford-gm-and-mercedes-driver-assist-systems-compare/

And there's already an example of a subscription-based auto feature being canceled. Mercedes-Benz discontinued Drive Pilot described in the article above ($200/mo): https://www.techspot.com/news/110966-mercedes-hitting-pause-level-3-hands-off-driving.html

 

[The Talking Tech]

Excellent news, Ubisoft will be the first gaming company to throw a tantrum about this.

Now let's make every State and country do the same.

 

[PXAbstraction]

Tbh they should require by law for games to be offered with a minimum number of months/years of online service included, and then a monthly subscription afterwards (aka no guarantee of continuing of service). If the MSRP was meant to provide ownership, the monthly cost could be cheap or it could be a long service period (and then a partial refund would be provided if the game was canceled early). No one likes dealing with more subscriptions, but on-going costs is essentially the problem the proposed bill is trying extremely hard to avoid acknowledging.

Server costs in the age of on-demand contanerization are very different than they were prior to that. It doesn't cost a fortune to keep game servers up for a small population and it's a rounding error to the finances of a large publisher. That said, I don't think it's reasonable to expect publishers to keep them online forever either. Your subscription idea for long-term support is an interesting one, though I do wonder how viable it would be across a large number of games.

What I like about Stop Killing Games is it isn't saying "You have to keep every game online forever", it's just saying "You have to give clear expectations before purchase of how long it will be available and make it possible to access at least the base content offline or give an open source, unsupported user server option". That is not effortless for a game developer to do, but if planned as part of the project from the beginning (STK also isn't asking for games to be retroactively adapted), it doesn't add much to it in terms of cost or time.

The only things this obviously couldn't cover is if a game developer goes under before the stated guaranteed server availability or like in the case of Frost Giant Studios, their server partner got acquired by an AI company and just told them "Yeah, we don't do game servers any more kthsbye!". But there could be carve outs for that.

 

[RudyBob]

I still play Monopoly just not online. If they are going to do this for games I want Win 7 back

 

[AnilD]

The "refund at original purchase price" clause is doing a lot of heavy lifting here and I love it. Ubisoft sold The Crew for $60, shut down its servers rendering it unplayable, and told customers that's just how it is.

If publishers know they'll have to write refund checks to every owner the moment they pull the plug, suddenly they'll discover a deep passion for offline functionality they never knew they had. Money is the only language this industry speaks fluently.

 

[jbright]

A million verified EU signatures and now a European Parliament hearing. A California assembly bill with actual legislative momentum. Meanwhile publishers spent that same period shutting down more games, apparently under the impression that would make the problem go away.

 

[VariableSpike]

A million verified EU signatures and now a European Parliament hearing. A California assembly bill with actual legislative momentum. Meanwhile publishers spent that same period shutting down more games, apparently under the impression that would make the problem go away.

Exactly, even just the EU bill passing would be enough, since you're not going to cut out a market of 500-750 million people that have lots of purchasing power, and so that would have a very similar net result, but if this California bill passes, its a done deal for gake devs, so its crazy they haven't accepted what will happen, especially as the reasoning behind SKG is quite fair, not being retroactive, not expecting servers to be kept up, but instead offline modes keeping functionality or an open source (or similar) game server emulator, which has issues now with licensing and so on now sure, but again, it being non retroactive is the reason for that, devs should have plenty of time to add that as a requitement and plan accordingly. While they could try and lobby away this California bill, the chances of lobbying away the EU bill are very slim, Apple's ended up with USB-C because of it at the end of the day