A New York congressman wants to settle, by law, a question that has nagged PC and console owners for more than a decade: when you buy a video game, do you actually own it? On October 15, 2026, Rep. Ritchie Torres, Democrat of New York’s 15th Congressional District, announced plans to introduce the “Power To The Players Act,” a bill that would direct the Federal Trade Commission to guarantee that paying for a game means owning it, not merely renting access to it. The announcement was first reported by Ars Technica, and quickly picked up by outlets including IGN and Inven Global.
The timing is not an accident. Searches for “stop killing games” have climbed toward 9,900 a month in the United States, according to keyword tracking data, as players grow increasingly frustrated watching paid-for titles disappear when publishers flip the switch on servers. Torres’ bill is the first serious attempt by a member of Congress to turn that frustration into federal policy, and it lands at a moment when the video game industry‘s live-service business model is under more scrutiny than at any point in its history. We covered the initial bill announcement and its potential impact on platform storefronts as the story broke. This analysis looks at the bigger picture: why this proposal is arriving now, how it connects to a growing global preservation movement, and what it would actually change if it ever becomes law.
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What the Power To The Players Act Would Actually Do
According to the announcement, the Power To The Players Act would task the FTC with protecting three specific consumer rights: the right to own a game once it’s purchased, the right to keep playing it, and the right to transfer it. The bill would also require that games with online functionality ship with, or add, an offline mode before their supporting servers are shut down. As Torres put it in a statement, “Consumers must have the right to own, the right to play, and the right to transfer the games they buy.”
Crucially, reporting indicates the bill had not been formally introduced in Congress as of the October 15 announcement. That distinction matters. A formal introduction starts the legislative clock, assigns a bill number, and routes the text to a committee. None of that has happened yet. There is no confirmed bill number, no full legislative text in the public record, no confirmed cosponsors, and no committee assignment. What exists right now is a policy position and a press push, not a pending vote.
That gap between announcement and introduction is normal in Congress, where members frequently preview legislation to build public support before filing it. But it also means every “could,” “would,” and “if passed” in this story is doing real work. The bill’s actual language, its penalty structure, and its implementation timeline remain unconfirmed.
The Rhetoric: “A Rental Disguised as a Sale”
Torres has framed the issue in blunt, consumer-facing language rather than legislative jargon. “When you pay for a game, you should own it,” he said in a statement posted to his official House page. He went further in comments reported by Ars Technica, arguing that “a game that can be taken away the moment a company pulls the plug is not a purchase. It is a rental disguised as a sale.”
That framing is deliberate. Most digital storefronts, including the major PC and console marketplaces, already tell buyers in their terms of service that a purchase grants a license, not title to the software. Gamers routinely skip past that language at checkout, so the gap between what people think they’re buying and what the fine print actually promises has become one of gaming’s most persistent points of friction. Torres is betting that making the distinction explicit, and backing it with FTC enforcement, will resonate with voters regardless of party.
He summarized the goal this way: “The Power To The Players Act ensures consumers own what they buy and can keep playing long after a company moves on.” That last clause, “long after a company moves on,” is the bill’s real target. It is not aimed at single-player games sitting on a hard drive. It is aimed squarely at online and live-service titles whose playability depends entirely on a publisher’s continued willingness to keep servers running.
Why Now: A Live-Service Graveyard Years in the Making
Torres’ bill did not emerge from nowhere. It arrives after a string of high-profile live-service shutdowns that turned “game preservation” from a niche archivist’s concern into a mainstream consumer complaint. Ubisoft’s racing game The Crew was pulled from sale and had its servers shut down in 2024, a move that left owners with an unplayable game and triggered lawsuits and a formal consumer petition in multiple countries. Sony-backed shooter Concord was withdrawn from sale and shut down roughly two weeks after launch the same year, with refunds issued to buyers. Square Enix and PlatinumGames’ Babylon’s Fall and Velan Studios’ Knockout City both saw their online services discontinued within roughly a year of release after player numbers collapsed.
Each of these cases shares a common thread: players paid full price for a product that functioned normally for months or years, then stopped functioning entirely because the publisher decided to stop paying for server infrastructure. There was no recall, no refund in most cases, and no requirement to offer an offline fallback. That pattern is exactly what the offline-mode provision in the Power To The Players Act is designed to prevent.
It is also why the bill is arriving through the lens of the “stop killing games” search trend rather than through traditional antitrust or consumer-protection channels. The phrase has become shorthand for an entire category of grievance: games bought, then unilaterally deleted from existence by the company that sold them.
The Global Backdrop: Europe’s Citizens’ Initiative
Torres’ proposal is not happening in isolation. A grassroots European Citizens’ Initiative, explicitly branded “Stop Killing Games,” spent much of the past two years collecting signatures across the European Union to force the European Commission to formally respond to the same complaint: that publishers can render purchased games permanently unplayable with no recourse for buyers. The initiative cleared the one-million-signature threshold required under EU rules to compel a Commission review, pushing the question of mandatory end-of-life support for online games onto Brussels’ policy agenda.
California has already moved further than the EU on a related but narrower front. State law AB 2426, signed in 2024 and in effect since the start of 2025, requires digital storefronts selling games, movies, and other digital media to sellers in the state to disclose clearly that a purchase is a license rather than outright ownership, unless the seller actually grants permanent, unrestricted access. It does not force publishers to keep servers running or to add offline modes. It simply forces more honest labeling at checkout.
Torres’ bill goes further than California’s disclosure requirement by proposing to change the underlying transaction itself, not just the label on it, and by adding the offline-mode mandate that the EU initiative has also pushed for. That makes the Power To The Players Act, if it is ever formally introduced and passed, the most consumer-favorable of the three approaches now circulating in Western markets.
| Jurisdiction | Policy / Initiative | Status as of Oct. 2026 | Core Requirement |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | Power To The Players Act | Announced, not yet formally introduced | FTC-enforced ownership, play, and transfer rights; offline mode before shutdown |
| European Union | Stop Killing Games (ECI) | Signature threshold cleared; under Commission review | End-of-life plans for online-dependent games |
| California | AB 2426 | In effect since January 2025 | Clear disclosure that digital purchases are licenses, not ownership |
| Other US states | No equivalent law identified | Not applicable | Not applicable |
What Platforms and Publishers Stand to Lose
If a bill resembling the Power To The Players Act ever becomes law, the biggest operational headache falls on the companies that run the storefronts and the servers: Steam, the Epic Games Store, the PlayStation Store, the Xbox and Microsoft Store, and Nintendo’s eShop. Every one of those platforms currently sells games under license agreements that reserve the right to revoke access. Rewriting that language, and building the technical capability to ship offline modes for online-dependent titles, would be a non-trivial engineering and legal lift. We detailed the specific store-by-store exposure in our market impact coverage of the EULA question when the bill was first announced.
The live-service subscription business is also exposed. Services like Xbox Game Pass, PlayStation Plus, and Nintendo Switch Online are built on rotating libraries where access is explicitly temporary by design, not an edge case. An ownership mandate aimed at purchased games would not directly touch subscription-based access, but it would sharpen the legal distinction between “you own this” and “you are renting access to this,” which could invite more scrutiny of how subscription services market their libraries.
Cloud gaming adds another wrinkle. As the market for streaming-based play keeps expanding, with analysts projecting cloud gaming revenue growing sharply over the next decade, an increasing share of “play” will happen without a local, ownable copy of anything. A law built around the idea of a transferable, offline-playable purchase sits awkwardly alongside a gaming future that is trending toward streamed, server-dependent access by default.
What Happens to Your Data When a Service Dies
The Power To The Players Act is focused on games, but the underlying question, what happens to something you paid for when the company behind it folds or walks away, is not unique to gaming. The same issue surfaced recently with Character.AI’s bankruptcy proceedings, which raised hard questions about what happens to user data and paid subscriptions when a digital service shuts down. Lawmakers and regulators across tech sectors are increasingly being asked to draw a bright line between “you bought something” and “you were granted temporary access to something,” and gaming has simply become the loudest venue for that fight because the emotional stakes, hundreds of hours sunk into a now-dead game, are so visible.
Notable Live-Service Shutdowns That Fueled the Backlash
The push for legislation like the Power To The Players Act did not happen in a vacuum. It follows a recognizable pattern of live-service titles going dark, often within a year or two of launch, leaving paying customers with nothing playable.
| Game | Publisher / Developer | Shutdown Year | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Crew | Ubisoft | 2024 | Servers shut down; game rendered unplayable; sparked lawsuits and petitions |
| Concord | Firewalk Studios / Sony | 2024 | Pulled from sale about two weeks after launch; refunds issued |
| Babylon’s Fall | Square Enix / PlatinumGames | 2023 | Online services discontinued roughly a year after launch |
| Knockout City | Velan Studios | 2023 | Shifted to free-to-play, then shut down entirely |
| Anthem | BioWare / EA | 2021 | Live-service support abandoned; planned relaunch canceled |
None of these publishers were legally required to offer refunds, maintain servers, or provide an offline mode once they decided to stop supporting a title. That is precisely the gap Torres is trying to close with the offline-mode requirement in his bill, and it is also the exact grievance driving the “stop killing games” search trend that has made this one of the most engaged gaming stories of the week.
Industry Reaction Is Still Forming
As of this writing, no major publisher or platform holder has issued a formal public response to the Power To The Players Act announcement. That silence is not unusual at this stage; companies typically wait until a bill is formally introduced, with real legislative text, before committing to a position. Trade groups representing the game industry have historically opposed similar ownership mandates in other contexts, arguing that maintaining server infrastructure indefinitely is not commercially sustainable for every title, particularly smaller online games with shrinking player bases.
That tension, between a reasonable consumer expectation of lasting access and the real cost of running servers forever, is the crux of the policy debate ahead. An offline-mode requirement sidesteps the “keep servers running forever” problem by letting publishers shut down multiplayer infrastructure while still leaving buyers with something playable. Whether that is technically feasible for every type of online game, especially ones built around persistent shared worlds or constant matchmaking, is an open engineering question that the bill’s eventual text will need to address.
Historical Context: From DRM Backlash to Right-to-Repair
The Power To The Players Act fits a broader arc of consumer pushback against restrictions on things people believe they own outright. Digital rights management software sparked similar outrage in the music and film industries during the 2000s, eventually giving way to more permissive, DRM-light models once consumer backlash made the restrictions commercially costly. The right-to-repair movement followed a similar path in electronics and automotive markets, starting as a niche advocacy cause and eventually producing state and federal legislation requiring manufacturers to make parts and repair information available.
Video game ownership is arguably the next chapter in that same story, but with one added twist: the product itself can be deleted remotely, not just locked down. A repair law assumes the physical object still exists and simply cannot be fixed without manufacturer cooperation. A dead live-service game often cannot be fixed at all, because the thing that made it work, the server, has been physically or contractually switched off. That distinction is why preservation advocates argue gaming needs its own legal framework rather than simply borrowing from right-to-repair precedent.
What Comes Next in Congress
For the Power To The Players Act to become law, Torres still needs to formally introduce the bill, secure a bill number, attract cosponsors, and get it referred to committee, most likely the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over FTC-related consumer protection matters. From there it would need to clear committee markup, pass the House, pass the Senate in identical or reconciled form, and be signed by the president. Each of those steps is unconfirmed and could take months or years, if the bill advances at all. Many consumer-protection bills announced with fanfare never make it past the introduction stage, and plenty that are introduced never receive a floor vote.
What is different this time is the cultural momentum behind the idea. A nearly 10,000-search-a-month trend around “stop killing games,” an active European regulatory review, and a California disclosure law already on the books all point toward a policy environment where some form of digital ownership protection, even if not Torres’ exact bill, seems increasingly likely to land somewhere in US law within the next few years.
Predictions: Where This Goes From Here
- Formal introduction is likely within months, not years. Torres has already built public momentum with the announcement; filing the actual bill text is the natural next step and the lower-effort move politically.
- Expect pushback framed around small and mid-size studios. Publishers will likely argue that an offline-mode mandate is achievable for large studios but could be financially crushing for smaller online games with thin margins, pushing for carve-outs or phased timelines.
- California’s disclosure model will be cited as a “safer” middle ground. Lobbyists are likely to point to AB 2426 as proof that disclosure-only rules can address consumer concerns without mandating costly offline infrastructure.
- Platform storefronts will quietly update terms of service regardless of the bill’s fate. The reputational risk of looking like they are hiding license language has already grown enough that stores may clarify ownership terms even if Congress never passes anything.
- The EU’s Stop Killing Games review will likely move faster than the US bill. With the signature threshold already cleared and a Commission response required, European regulatory movement is likely to outpace the US legislative process, potentially creating pressure on American lawmakers to keep up.
The Bottom Line
The Power To The Players Act is, for now, a press release and a policy position rather than a pending law. But it arrives at a moment when the gap between what players think they are buying and what publishers’ terms of service actually promise has become too visible to ignore. A string of live-service shutdowns, a parallel European regulatory push, and an already-enacted California disclosure law have all converged on the same basic question that Torres is now putting in front of the FTC: if you pay for a game, do you own it? Whether his bill is the one that finally answers that question in federal law, or just another marker on the road to one that eventually does, depends on what happens in the months after this week’s announcement.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Power To The Players Act?
It is proposed federal legislation, announced by Rep. Ritchie Torres on October 15, 2026, that would direct the FTC to protect consumers’ rights to own, play, and transfer video games they purchase, and require online games to offer an offline mode before servers are shut down.
Who proposed the bill?
Rep. Ritchie Torres, a Democrat representing New York’s 15th Congressional District.
Has the bill been formally introduced in Congress?
No. As of the announcement, reporting indicates the bill had not yet been formally introduced, meaning there is no confirmed bill number or legislative text in the public record.
How does this relate to the “stop killing games” trend?
The phrase has become shorthand for publishers discontinuing online games and leaving paying customers with unplayable products. It mirrors a European Citizens’ Initiative of the same name and reflects the same consumer grievance Torres’ bill is designed to address.
Which agency would enforce the proposed rules?
The Federal Trade Commission, according to the bill’s announcement.
What would happen to online multiplayer games under this law?
Reporting indicates games with online functionality would need to provide an offline mode before their supporting servers are shut down, though the bill’s full technical requirements are not yet confirmed.
Is there a similar law already in effect anywhere in the US?
California’s AB 2426, in effect since January 2025, requires digital storefronts to disclose when a purchase is a license rather than outright ownership, but it does not mandate offline modes or server continuity.
When could the Power To The Players Act become law?
There is no confirmed timeline. The bill would still need formal introduction, committee review, and votes in both chambers of Congress, a process that, if it happens at all, typically takes months to years.
