US representative proposes bill to give video game buyers 'ownership', not 'license'

There are still significant hurdles ahead, both technical and legal.

US Representative Richie Torres (D-NY).

A new bill proposed by Rep. Richie Torres (D-NY) aims to create new regulations that ensure "the purchase of a video game gives the consumer ownership of the game rather than a license to play it," including guarantees that they can access games years after release.

The announcement cites NBA 2K25 as an example of the problem the bill aims to address. The game was released on September 6, 2025, but is scheduled to become unplayable on December 31 due to a server shutdown. The bill, called the Power to Players Act, would direct the FTC to take action to prevent such outcomes in the future.

Torres released the following statement on the bill:

When you pay for a game, you have to own it. Consumers must have the right to own, play and transfer the games they purchase. A game that can be removed the moment a company shuts down is not a purchase. This is a lease converted to a sale. Families in the Bronx and across the country are saving up to buy these games, and they deserve better than to be allowed to disappear at any time. The Power To The Players Act ensures that consumers own what they buy and can continue to play long after the company moves on.

"I think there should be a simple rule: If you pay for it," Torres told Kotaku, calling the new situation the bill proposes "a restoration of the historical norm," referring to how most games were experienced by players in the '90s.

This bill comes at a time when game ownership and preservation is an important issue. Some consumers have protested Sony's announcement that it plans to stop selling PlayStation games on physical media.

In its latest earnings report, Sony revealed that digital downloads accounted for 82 percent of full game unit sales across PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 in the fiscal year under review, indicating that less than 20 percent of games are still purchased on physical media. But the argument is that continuing to offer physical discs is not just to satisfy the habits of a minority of players. Players hope it will help preserve games for the long term, which are sometimes removed from digital markets and then become unavailable.

However, physical disks do not solve the problem by themselves. Many games sold on discs still require online servers to function, and in general, end-user license agreements make it clear that the user is purchasing a revocable license, not actual ownership of the media, even if the files are burned onto something physical.

There are also numerous examples of games where the version shipped on disc was significantly different from the version players would eventually know due to patches. So it makes sense that consumers and their representatives are turning to laws like this to bring about a change in industry practices.

There have been activist and lobbying movements like Stop Killing Games advocating for change on this front, but different proposed bills around the world have proposed different solutions.

Some previous proposed legislation on the matter has required developers to keep servers running indefinitely, leading to criticism that the authors of those bills did not understand the cost. The bill appears to take those criticisms into account — but it may still face resistance, at least as stated in a press release on House Rep. Richie Torres' website.

While the announcement doesn't say the bill would require online servers to stay online, it would require normally online-only games to offer offline game modes so players can continue playing long after the servers are shut down. The way some online games are engineered may not be possible, so this can require developers to take very different approaches to the architecture of some online games.

Proposing this bill is not a guarantee that it will become law. It still has a long way to go, and most proposed legislation never even gets to a vote. And since the full text of this bill is not yet available to the public, it is not yet possible to assess its effectiveness or enforceability.

There's another elephant in the room: large language models and specialized programming constraints have recently enabled a wave of compilation and reconfiguration of classic and contemporary video games and software. These projects are mostly illegal now, but the scale of the movement is such that it may be difficult to implement. It is possible that these new tools will change the shape of the software maintenance conversation in the coming months and years.

Samuel Axon is the editor for tech and gaming coverage at Ars Technica. He covers physical and generative artificial intelligence, large language models, software development, gaming, entertainment, and mixed reality. He has been writing about gaming and technology for nearly two decades at Engadget, PC World, Mashable, Vice, Polygon, Wired, and others. He previously ran a marketing and PR agency in the gaming industry, led editorial for CBS Television, and worked on social media marketing strategy for Samsung Mobile at creative agency SPCSHP. He is also an independent software and game developer for iOS, Windows, and other platforms, and is a graduate of DePaul University, where he studied interactive media and software development.