US congressman proposes bill giving video game buyers ownership rather than a license
US House member Ritchie Torres has proposed a bill that would give video game buyers actual ownership instead of a revocable license. It would require normally online-only games to offer offline play.
US Representative Ritchie Torres has put forward a bill intended to change how video games are sold: buyers would receive ownership of the game they purchase, not merely a revocable license. The proposal responds to the problem of games becoming unplayable when publishers shut down servers or restrict access.
Why physical discs are not enough
Physical discs do not solve the problem by themselves. Many games sold on discs still need online servers to work, and end-user license agreements generally state that the buyer gets a revocable license, not ownership of the media, even when files are burned onto a physical product. In addition, there are games whose disc version was meaningfully different from the one players know after patches.
Activist and lobbying movements such as Stop Killing Games have campaigned for change, but proposed bills around the world suggest different solutions.
Possible technical obstacles
Some earlier proposals required developers to keep servers running indefinitely, drawing criticism that their authors did not grasp the cost. This bill appears to address that criticism, judging by the press release on Torres' House website. It does not say servers must stay online, but it requires normally online-only games to include offline play so people can keep playing after servers close. Because of how some online games are engineered, that may not be feasible, and developers could need to take very different approaches to their architecture.
The bill is not guaranteed to become law. It faces a long path, and most proposed legislation never reaches a vote. The full text is not yet public, so its effectiveness and enforceability cannot yet be assessed.
A new factor: decompilation
Large language models and specialized coding tools have recently enabled a wave of decompilations and reconfigurations of both classic and contemporary games and software. These projects are almost certainly illegal at present, but the scale of the movement could make enforcement difficult. The new tools may reshape the software preservation debate in the coming months and years.
