US congressman plans bill to protect video game ownership
New York Representative Ritchie Torres has announced a bill that would direct the Federal Trade Commission to protect players' ability to own and play the video games they buy. The measure faces possible obstacles in committee and in the courts.
US Representative Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat, has announced plans to introduce a bill calling on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the American consumer protection agency, to safeguard people's ability to own and play the video games they have purchased. The Power to the Players Act has not yet been introduced in Congress. In spirit, it aligns with the Stop Killing Games campaign, a movement pushing for game ownership protections in a market dominated by digital licenses that can be revoked at any moment.
A case in point: NBA 2K25
The announcement specifically cites NBA 2K25, a basketball game released in 2024 at $70. It is set to be removed from digital storefronts on October 30, only two years after launch. Publisher 2K will also shut down the servers behind the game's online modes in December, so by the end of the year players will no longer have the same game they paid for.
What the bill would do
As described by Engadget, the Power to the Players Act would instruct the FTC to prevent similar cases by establishing that players own games rather than license them, and by requiring companies to provide an offline mode when a game's servers are taken down. In an interview with Kotaku, Torres described enforcing such protections as a return to the historical norm that existed before games were mainly sold digitally. He suggested the approach could also prompt calls to extend similar protections to digitally purchased books, movies and music.
Possible obstacles
Several hurdles could stand in the way. The bill could die in committee, as a California bill with similar state-level protections did in June. Relying on the FTC is also less certain than it once was. After the Supreme Court's 2024 decision to overturn Chevron deference, a doctrine that told courts to defer to federal agencies' interpretation of ambiguous laws, the FTC and other agencies have considerably less power. As a result, FTC attempts to regulate the games industry could be blocked, as its ban on noncompete clauses was, when a single judge ruled it lacked the authority.
Engadget has asked Torres for a draft of the bill and for comment on the possibility that the FTC could be blocked by courts.
