Key Takeaways
- Democratic US Representative Ritchie Torres of New York has announced the Power to the Players Act targeting digital game ownership rights.
- The bill would direct the FTC to enforce regulations making digital game purchases true ownership — not just revocable licenses.
- Online games would be required to have functional offline modes before their servers are permanently shut down.
- NBA 2K25 is cited as a prime example — sold for up to $99.99 and being delisted from storefronts by October 30, 2026, with servers closing December 31.
- The bill has not yet been formally introduced to Congress — no vote has been scheduled and no official cosponsors are confirmed.
- Similar efforts include California’s Protect Our Games Act (AB 1921), which passed the State Assembly but stalled in the Senate.
- Torres described current digital game sales as “a rental disguised as a sale” — not ownership in any real sense.
- The bill covers video games only — not movies, music, or other digital media — though Torres hopes it could set a wider precedent.
Alright, I’m just going to say it — we’ve been getting scammed for years. You hand over seventy, sometimes a hundred dollars for a game, you get a little icon on your library screen, and you feel like you own something. But you don’t. You own a license. A glorified permission slip that a company can yank away from you the moment they decide it’s not profitable to keep the lights on anymore. Well, it looks like at least one person in Washington has actually noticed — and they’re trying to do something about it.
Representative Ritchie Torres, a Democrat from New York’s 15th Congressional District, has announced the Power to the Players Act — a piece of federal legislation that, if passed, would fundamentally change the way digital video games are sold in the United States. This is a big deal. And honestly, it’s long overdue.
What Is the Power to the Players Act?
The core idea behind the bill is straightforward, even if the legal machinery around it is more complex. The Power to the Players Act would direct the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to establish new regulations that protect consumers’ right to actually own the digital games they pay for. Not lease them. Not borrow them on a conditional basis from a corporation. Own them.
Under the current system, when you buy a game digitally, you’re technically purchasing a license. That license can be revoked, the game can be delisted, servers can be shut down, and you’re left with nothing — even if you paid full price just months earlier. Torres put it bluntly in his announcement: “When you pay for a game, you should own it. It is a rental disguised as a sale.”
The bill also takes direct aim at one of the most frustrating practices in the industry: shutting down the servers that make a game playable without giving players any alternative. Under the Power to the Players Act, any online game would be required to provide a functional offline mode before its servers are permanently taken offline. That means if a studio decides to sunset an online title, they’d first have to ensure players could still access what they paid for in some form.
It’s worth noting that the bill has not yet been formally introduced to Congress. No vote date has been set, no confirmed cosponsors have been announced, and the road from announcement to actual law is long and full of obstacles. But the announcement itself is significant — this is the first time this kind of consumer protection fight has reached the federal level in the United States.
Why NBA 2K25 Is the Poster Child for Everything Wrong With Digital Ownership
Torres didn’t pull his example out of thin air. NBA 2K25 is literally name-dropped in the legislation as a case study for why this bill needs to exist. Here’s the situation: the game launched at $69.99 for the standard edition and $99.99 for the All-Star Edition. Not cheap. Two years later, 2K Sports is planning to delist it from digital storefronts on October 30, 2026, and shut down its online servers on December 31, 2026 — rendering most of its core game modes completely unplayable.
You paid a hundred bucks. Two years later it’s gone. That’s the deal. And it’s technically legal because you never owned the game — you owned the right to access it, subject to the publisher’s continued goodwill. The Power to the Players Act would flip that default and make true ownership the legal standard rather than a favor companies occasionally choose to extend.
This Isn’t the First Time Gamers Have Tried to Fight Back
The Power to the Players Act didn’t emerge in a vacuum. This fight has been building for a while now, and Torres is stepping into a conversation that the gaming community has been screaming into the void about for years. The broader Stop Killing Games movement — started back in 2024 by YouTuber Ross Scott after Ubisoft pulled The Crew from digital libraries and made it completely unplayable — has been pushing for exactly this kind of legislation across multiple countries and regions.
In California, Assembly Bill 1921, also known as the Protect Our Games Act, actually passed the State Assembly with a 43-to-16 vote earlier in 2026. The bill was championed by Assembly Member Chris Ward and had the backing of Stop Killing Games. It required publishers to give at least 60 days’ notice before shutting down servers for paid online games and offered players either a refund or an offline patch as remedies. Unfortunately, it stalled in the California State Senate, falling short of a majority after heavy lobbying from industry groups like the Entertainment Software Association. That result was a gut punch for the movement, but it didn’t kill the momentum.
Similar efforts have also been building in Europe. The Stop Killing Games petition gathered nearly 1.3 million verified signatures and reached the European Parliament for a formal hearing, though no sweeping legislation has been finalized there either. The fight is very much still alive globally, and Torres’ federal bill is the biggest escalation yet on American soil.
The GTA 6 and Sony Angle That Made This Boil Over
If you’re wondering what pushed this issue into congressional territory right now, the timing makes sense when you look at the recent headlines. Rockstar Games confirmed that Grand Theft Auto 6 would have no physical release, making it digital-only for what will almost certainly be the biggest-selling game of the generation. For a lot of players, that was already alarming.
Then Sony dropped the bombshell that it would be ending physical game disc production for titles launching from January 2028 and beyond, pushing the entire PlayStation ecosystem toward a fully digital model. Suddenly, the abstract worry about “what if I can’t actually keep my digital games” became a very real and immediate concern for tens of millions of console players who have always relied on physical media as their safety net.
That combination — GTA 6 going digital-only, Sony killing discs, and NBA 2K25 being a live example of a game disappearing after two years — created the pressure that Torres is now trying to channel into actual policy. You can also check out more on Sony’s latest moves in the PlayStation space to see the broader picture of where the platform is headed.
What Torres Is Actually Asking For — And What It Doesn’t Cover
It’s worth being clear about the scope of the bill so expectations stay grounded. The Power to the Players Act covers video games only. Movies, music, digital comics, and other media are not included, even though similar issues exist there — Terminator 2 and other digital movie purchases were pulled from people’s libraries earlier this year, for example. Torres acknowledged this gap but told Kotaku he hopes the gaming bill could set a precedent for broader digital media rights down the line.
Torres also framed the bill not as some radical new idea but as a restoration to the historical norm that existed all the way through the 80s, 90s, and 2000s. When you bought a cartridge or a disc, you owned it. Full stop. Nobody could take it from you. The Power to the Players Act is essentially trying to rebuild that guarantee for the digital era — and that framing is both accurate and actually pretty compelling from a consumer rights standpoint.
For games on platforms like GOG, which sells DRM-free games, this kind of protection is already effectively built in because players can back up their game files directly. The challenge the bill would face is determining exactly what “ownership” looks like in a world where most games still use DRM, and the FTC would presumably have to work out those technical specifics in its rulemaking process.
Will the Power to the Players Act Actually Become Law?
Okay, real talk — don’t hold your breath. That’s not me being cynical, that’s just how Congress works. Faith in legislative bodies to act on anything quickly is at an all-time low, and a bill protecting gamers’ digital rights is going to face pushback from some very well-funded lobbying arms. The ESA, which represents major publishers, already helped torpedo California’s Protect Our Games Act at the state level. Going up against them at the federal level is a significantly harder fight.
There are also no confirmed cosponsors yet, which matters. A bill with a single sponsor and no allies in Congress is a very different animal from one with bipartisan support and a coalition behind it. Torres’ next step is formally introducing the bill, which hasn’t happened yet as of this writing.
That said, the announcement itself has real value. It puts a name and a framework to a fight that millions of players care deeply about, and it signals that at least some elected officials are paying attention. The fact that this has now escalated from a YouTube movement to state assembly floors to the halls of Congress is genuinely meaningful progress, even if the road ahead is bumpy.
If you’re invested in where gaming is heading from a broader perspective — including the kinds of games that will exist in this increasingly digital landscape — you might also want to check out what’s coming down the pipeline, like the newly announced Trollheim: Gnomes co-op survival game heading to Steam Early Access. The shift to digital-only makes announcements like that even more relevant when you start thinking about long-term game preservation.
What Can You Do Right Now?
If this bill matters to you — and it should, because this is literally about whether the money you spend on games means anything — there are a few things worth doing. Follow the progress of the Power to the Players Act through Torres’ official channels. Support the Stop Killing Games movement, which has already proven it can move legislative needles even when the results aren’t perfect. And if you’re in a congressional district represented by someone who sits on relevant committees, reaching out to their office is always a legitimate option.
The gaming industry is going fully digital whether we like it or not. The only question is whether consumers will have any real rights in that future — or whether we’ll all just be renting our libraries from corporations who can flip the switch at any moment. The Power to the Players Act is the first serious federal attempt to answer that question in the right way. Whether it succeeds or not, it needs to be watched very closely.
