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New Video Game Law Proposed: 'If You Pay For It, You Own It' (kotaku.com) 152

Posted by EditorDavid from the game-on dept.
"When you pay for a game, you should own it," says U.S. Representative Ritchie Torres (D-NY), introducing a new bill to fight the practice of "a rental disguised as a sale".

Kotaku reports: The fifth best-selling game of 2024 in the U.S. was NBA 2K25. Every year, fans dump hundreds of hours and hundreds of dollars into the grindy NBA basketball sim. But just a little over two years after its release, 2K Games confirmed it's already pulling the plug on it. The game will be delisted from digital storefronts on October 30. By January 1, 2027, online servers will go offline as well, making it impossible to play the most popular modes. A game millions paid $70 for will become mostly useless. Democratic Congressman Ritchie Torres wants to change that.

"I think there should be a simple rule: if you pay for it, you own it," Torres told Kotaku in a phone interview this week. To make that the law of the land, the U.S. representative for New York's 15th congressional district since 2021 plans to introduce legislation in Congress called the Power To The Players Act. The bill would direct the Federal Trade Commission to create regulations protecting ownership rights for video games. Companies selling digital games would need to grant players more than just a license that can expire at any time, and games with online features would need to provide offline modes that still work even when servers eventually shut down...

The Power To The Players Act noticeably leaves out other types of digital media like movies and music, though Terminator 2 and a bunch of other movie purchases were ripped from people's digital libraries earlier this year.
Representative Torres "did not confirm if the bill will have any cosponsors," the article acknowledges, "or whether any of his Republican colleagues will sign on to support it."

But players will see the bill's importance next month, the article points out, "when Grand Theft Auto 6 releases as just a download code in a box, giving fans no control over a purchase that starts at $80.

New Video Game Law Proposed: 'If You Pay For It, You Own It' More | Reply

New Video Game Law Proposed: 'If You Pay For It, You Own It'

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  • I'm not a gamer, so I'm looking this from the outside. And what I see is both a very understandable ick factor of seeing Amazon yank 1984 from Kindles *and* the ick factor of legislation making certain kinds of software illegal. Remember how we all used to go to war over that one? OpenSSH, PGP, GPG and ITAR and all that?

    I'd settle for beefed up truth-in-advertising laws regarding the distinction between purchases and leases, but I can't get on board with flat-out trying to legislate product features into ex

    • I'd settle for beefed up truth-in-advertising laws regarding the distinction between purchases and leases, but I can't get on board with flat-out trying to legislate product features into existence.

      What you're actually buying is a license those do come with limitations. Heck, even when you buy a piece of piece of hardware it's not something you'll be able to realistically use for the rest of your life. With old cars for example, eventually the replacement parts become unobtainium and even if you really want to keep the car on the road indefinitely, there's a limit to how long such a goal will be practical.

      Really, it is just an issue of making sure buyers are aware that they're only paying to play th

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        yes but people instinctively understand mechanical devices wear out. There is/was no natural reason to assume that about software. For the first decades of computing most of the public encountered that wasn't the case, quite the opposite in fact in 1995, the COBOL program you wrote in 1965 still worked fine. The DOS program you bought in 1985 still ran on Windows 95 just fine (well it was as likely to work as it ever was on any given DOS machine ;-) maybe more).

        Software right seem to people like book, and

        • To be fair, and I know you know this, software is designed to run in a specific environment. You change that environment enough with updates and eventually, it's not going to work.

          I have old games that require a lot of effort to get running and some just won't do it, period. I'd have to either emulate the entire OS under it. I do this with a VM for some titles actually.

          I don't expect some game to be supported for 30 years. That's crazy.

          I think we can probably agree that the law, at most, should be about pro

      • Although, if you have a CNC mill and lathe, you can make the parts you need for the old car.

        If I want, I can dig out my '89 Sega Genesis and the copy of Sonic 1 that came with it and play it. Even if they technically revoke the license, unless they grab the cartridge and throw it in a woodchipper, it's mine to play anytime I want.
        Same with my copy of Diablo II.
        Same with all my DVDs and 33RPM records.

        If it's a game you download to your computer, and then GOG or whatever installs it; if you can get that inst

    • This makes certain kinds of monetization illegal not the software itself. You can make all the software you want you can put all the DRM you want in it however when you remove access to the software because you don't want to pay the money to support it anymore then you need to provide the tools that people can use to continue using the software and those tools need to be reasonable for the type of consumer who purchased your software. That's all.

      Make all the software you want. But if you're going to sel

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by flink ( 18449 )

        There are always going to be corner cases that make certain kinda of games illegal under any kind of "own it forever clause", particularly in the case of massive online games. The server side component required to play the game could contain licensed 3rd party software, IP, or media that the company that made the game has no right to redistribute or disclose to third parties. If a developer had to open source or even just release a binary blob of their server software when it was no longer profitable to

        • There are always going to be corner cases that make certain kinda of games illegal under any kind of "own it forever clause", particularly in the case of massive online games.

          The solution for MMOs and other games with significant server-side requirements is to make the client free for download and charge monthly/yearly for subscriptions. They can also sell the client on a DVD/BR with a subscription code.

    • Someone illegally uploaded and tried to sell 1984 and Animal Farm. And Amazon refunded anyone who bought it, and reversed some of the payments to that seller and banned them. Is that censorship or copyright law? I can tell you it wasn't politically motivated by the content of Orwell's books. We live in an era where the power structure does not care what we read, because the misinformation and propaganda machines are so powerful they don't really need consensus from the People anymore.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by allo ( 1728082 )

      I think the problem started with mobile devices.
      On the PC people were used to freedom and went to war when someone wanted to take it away.

      Then Apple and Google introduced mobile devices without freedom from the start. Locked bootloader, proprietary OS without alternatives (Android ROMs are still android and most of them contain quite a bit of components ripped from the stock firmware because they otherwise wouldn't work), trusted computing to prevent you from tampering with things, DRM all the way, apps can

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      This ^^

      We do not live in a command economy. It is not the role of congress to decide what business models are appropriate. It is the role of congress to make sure free citizens are able to make informed decisions.

      What is really need here IMHO is good warning labels like what is placed on a pack of cigarettes.

      WARNING - This software does not function without access to components not included, with no certainly of future availability or access pricing.

      WARNING - This product contains digitial rights manageme

      • "We do not live in a command economy. It is not the role of congress to decide what business models are appropriate."

        This is laughable at the very best. Corporations wouldn't even exist if not created by law.

  • Change to a monthly service (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Sunday October 18, 2026 @07:39PM (#66381502) Homepage

    I expect a lot of these game companies to change to a system where:

    1) You pay for a yearly contract to play ANY of their games.

    2) Despite them having only one or two games that people want to play, in addition to 8+ crappy games that no reasonable person would pay to play.

    This allows them to screw over people in a manner similar to what they do now.

    • I could actually see this happening. Like a netflix of games. Pay $XX per month for access to X game publishers entire game library for as long as they want to keep the games maintained. When they're tired of maintaining a game, just pull it offline and replace it with something new.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tepples ( 727027 )

        Until you realize that to keep up with what your friends are playing, you need the equivalent of Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Paramount+, HBO Max, Peacock, and a bunch of other services. Netflix streaming began as the online extension of Starz, and now Starz is its own separate subscription service.

    • This allows them to screw over people in a manner similar to what they do now.

      It's totally optional entertainment. Stop giving them your money if you don't like the offering. Geesh. Go touch some grass.

      Or, buy older games and ignore the bleeding edge. Nothing new has come out in the past decade anyway. It's all rehashing with better graphics and graphics have already been great for the past 15 years anyway. In fact, most new games are inferior to the older ones of the exact same name. Fewer features, fewer maps, but hey, you can buy skins!

      • I do not give them money.

        I consider them all to be fraudsters. Specifically they use the words "sell" , "buy", etc. when they are not selling you anything, they are renting you stuff.

        People should not be allowed to misuse these words, it encourages ignorance in the younger generation.

  • Can't expect online support forever! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JcMorin ( 930466 ) on Sunday October 18, 2026 @07:43PM (#66381506)
    While we can't expect the company to provide online support forever, that support costs money, and the company should release a private server instance when they abandon the game. Like Minecraft or other games where you could host your own server.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      While we can't expect the company to provide online support forever, that support costs money, and the company should release a private server instance when they abandon the game. Like Minecraft or other games where you could host your own server.

      My first question is... why do you even need a server? Especially for single player games.

      • There are loads of games which require a server to function even though they are mostly single player, like No Man's Sky.

      • Aren't we really just talking semantics now? client/server does imply networking but it's really just how you divide up the software. I run private wow server to play wow single player. In theory, you could cram the server and the client together and viola, it's a single player game with no networking.

        Or, you could divide those two things up and now it's multiplayer with networking.

        Also, I would be totally fine with going back to the 90s way of multiplayer. With modern tools, you and your friends (lol, no o

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by flink ( 18449 )

        My first question is... why do you even need a server?

        Especially for single player games.

        The game world can be so massive that you can't expect the average consumer's computer to have enough storage or RAM to be able to run the world model. E.g. Elite Dangerous.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by flink ( 18449 )

      While we can't expect the company to provide online support forever, that support costs money, and the company should release a private server instance when they abandon the game.

      Game companies don't always fully own all of the server tech that runs the game. Some or all of it could be licensed and not redistributable.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tepples ( 727027 )

        Game companies don't always fully own all of the server tech that runs the game. Some or all of it could be licensed and not redistributable.

        If it becomes a crime or tort for the server middleware publisher to provide middleware that is "licensed and not redistributable", server middleware publishers will have to either change their standard license terms going forward or close.

  • But it will never pass. It does however sound like how games in the 90s were made. We use to actually be able to host our own game servers on local networks, all provided with the purchase of the game. It's where I learned the very basics of networking and kind of what got me interested in that stuff. I had almost as much fun setting up the network for the LAN party as I did getting smashed in the games.

    Those were the good ole days. That ship, of course, sailed 20 years ago.

  • That sounds socialist.

  • Extend the U. S. Commercial code and the standards of a regular sale to all content that is sold on an individual basis. Customers expect that if they add it to their "Library" that it is purchased and owned. That they exchanged money for that personal copy of the media.
    For MMO it gets a bit complicated, but I suspect a solution exists for that too. For catalogs that let you access some selection of games, as long as everyone in that tier has the same games/movies/books, then you can probably avoid that law

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bahbus ( 1180627 )

      Customers expect that if they add it to their "Library" that it is purchased and owned.

      Customers should get smarter and just stop falling for the trap and then getting mad about it.

      • How do you expect the next generation of consumers to get smarter when Math and English scores have never been lower? They literally can't think anymore. No critical thinking to be seen anywhere. Then you add peer pressure and FOMO. The young will happily parted with their money.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Bahbus ( 1180627 )

          They literally can't think anymore. No critical thinking to be seen anywhere.

          Well, that all went out the window with Bush Jr and No Child Left Behind. Common Core was an attempt at course correcting, but did it badly in every conceivable way.

          But, anyway, how do I expect them to learn this? From the fact that this has been happening for 30 years. Buying a revocable license to use software or listen to music has been very standard since the mid-90s. It's not new. The Boomers and Gen Xers were the only ones with any legal/economic power to put a stop to it and now it's much too late to

  • This is nothing new. Everybody wants a subscription. You can't make nearly as much money with a one-time shot.

    • Funny, none of my software is subscription. I seem to be getting by fine. Maybe people shouldn't be such fucking sheep, eh? Outside of very specific business software, there is pretty much a FREE, as in beer, open source version of software that will do 99% of what you need or more.

      Maybe the Eternal Septembers should learn a thing or two about software and push back. May gain some understanding that a computer is not an appliance.

      All this law accomplish is that games will literally be labeled as "lease" or

  • I have a better idea (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MpVpRb ( 1423381 ) on Sunday October 18, 2026 @10:15PM (#66381620)

    If it's no longer offered for sale, it becomes open source

    • That would alleviate a lot of the high seas sailing one often has to do.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by G00F ( 241765 )

      err, while nice, not possible but really, if its no longer being sold/maintained, users should be allowed what ever they want to make it still usable for them.

      Still respect the right that can't copy/distribute, but to those who bought it, they can do what ever to keep it functional. (and this right can't be signed away)

  • Movies too! (Score:3)

    by andyring ( 100627 ) on Sunday October 18, 2026 @11:16PM (#66381668) Homepage

    Interesting idea. But this NEEDS to apply to movies as well, or really any digital purchase. How often do we see where you've "bought" a movie and years later the licensing changes. Boom, suddenly you no longer own it, it disappears from your libraries because licensing changed, and you have no financial recourse.

    That right there is why I default to buying actual physical copies of media.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bahbus ( 1180627 )

      Just don't make digital purchases then. Or, accept the fact that, unless explicitly stated, you simply bought permission to access the content. It's not a hard concept, and if customers weren't so lazy and stupid, they could have worked to avoid this a long time ago.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tepples ( 727027 )

        If the publisher of a movie or video game refuses to make it available in physical copies, am I justified in pretending that the work was never released?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Bahbus ( 1180627 )

          Sure. Why not? We already do that for things that are just plain bad (Indiana Jones and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

      Yes it does, but video games are different. Nobody downloads an "update" for their movie that removes scenes or disables it. That is where the Stop Killing Games movement really should focus. It should be illegal to send out a patch that neuters the game, then announce version 2 of the game is on sale for $50.

  • Hundreds of lawyers rubbing their hands thinking of ways to put an asterisk against "own".

  • If I pay for a movie ticket do I own the movie? Entertainment is fleeting. I have little sympathy for someone who gets hundreds of hours of entertainment for $70 and then complains.

    Sure it's not nice when you can't do something you like doing, but the reality is in the media world nothing is forever. How many of you had VHS cassettes you can no longer play? How many of you can still get your copy of Doom running. I'm not talking about some hobby group on the internet, I'm talking about how many of you still

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tepples ( 727027 )

      If I pay for a movie ticket do I own the movie?

      That's advertised up front as the equivalent of a rental. I draw a sharp contrast with buttons labeled "buy" that do not grant equivalent rights to those of the owner of a lawfully made copy.

      You've never "owned" media.

      Per the copyright statute of Slashdot's home country, Title 17, United States Code:
      - A copy is a physical object in which a work is fixed. (Section 101)
      - It is not an infringement for the owner of such an object to resell that copy. (Section 109)
      - And it is not an infringement for the owner of such an object to make ano

  • So are they suggesting I won't need an activation server? Hope the company that made the game doesn't go bust or deactivates the servers in 2-3 years?

    Can I at least be forced to sign into their proprietary platform with my user account?
  • Part of the problem is you never receive the whole game with a purchase. All of the server side and backend parts are never delivered. That back-end costs money to host and maintain. Unless there's a subscription for that part it's loosing money after the original game is purchased. The company won't have any incentive to continue supporting and host the game after the sales fall off. Make the game "owned" by the consumer won't fix that problem. Forcing the companies to support old game will just caus

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tepples ( 727027 )

      Forcing the companies to support old game will just cause them to no longer make the games or go out of business.

      If the publisher of a single-player or small-group multiplayer game can't make a useful subset of the server software available to licensees, they should go out of business.

  • Wanna know why we have so many stupid laws?

    This isn't a problem that needs a law. Why? Because AI is about to change the landscape in ways we cannot fathom today. And it is already happening. People are spending tokens decompiling games right now, as I type this.

    Steam is going away, the same way Blockbuster went away.

  • It has just been done. Funcom's "Dune Awakening" was released about a year ago, 100% online multiplayer. With the recent updates they added BOTH offline single-player mode for any owner of the game, AND private servers that anyone can run (with good enough hardware). I expect Funcom will keep their servers running for quite a while, but when the time comes to drop support, the game is completely ready for independent use by anyone who has purchased it.
  • People complain about restrictive licenses, but that is exactly what powers open source software, and has protected it for years. It is also what allows open core companies (monetizing open source), virtualization (limiting benchmarking), OEM (separating OS/hardware markets), and much more to exist. If you don't want to "lease/rent" a game, then don't, play a different game. Making contracts where you lease/rent a game illegal just removes choices/products for everyone on the market, increases the cost of r

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tepples ( 727027 )

      Making contracts where you lease/rent a game illegal just removes choices/products for everyone on the market

      Making motor vehicles without safety features illegal also removes choices/products.

      the risk of making them (perpetually maintaining game servers, or giving away massive amounts of IP) were too intimidating to embark upon the project.

      Multiplayer video games ought to be designed up front for private servers after end of support, in the same way that motor vehicles are designed up front for the safety of occupants of that vehicle, occupants of other vehicles, and pedestrians.

      A choice becomes a Hobson's choice when all sellers in the relevant market choose not to offer an option to buyers, such as an option to run a private server after end of support. A Ho

  • Expand it - make it the same for books (Looking at YOU, Amazon Kindle)

  • Additionally, I propose it be broadened to stuff like cars.

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