US Rep proposes bill to give video game buyers "ownership," not "a license"

A new bill proposed by Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) aims to establish new regulations that would ensure that “buying a video game would give the consumer ownership of the game rather than a license to play it,” including assurances that they can continue to access the games for years after they are released. The announcement names NBA 2K25 as an example of the problem the bill aims to solve; that game launched on September 6, 2025, but is scheduled to become unplayable on December 31 due to server shutdowns. The bill, which is called the Power to Players Act, directs the FTC to take action to prevent outcomes like that in the future.

美国众议员里奇·托雷斯（Ritchie Torres，民主党，纽约州）提出了一项新法案，旨在建立新的法规，确保“购买电子游戏应赋予消费者对游戏的所有权，而非仅仅是游玩许可”，并保证消费者在游戏发布多年后仍能继续访问这些游戏。该公告以《NBA 2K25》为例说明了该法案旨在解决的问题；该游戏于2025年9月6日发布，但由于服务器关闭，计划于12月31日变得无法游玩。这项名为《赋予玩家权力法案》（Power to Players Act）的法案指示联邦贸易委员会（FTC）采取行动，以防止未来出现类似情况。

Torres published the following statement on the bill: When you pay for a game, you should own it. Consumers must have the right to own, the right to play, and the right to transfer the games they buy. 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. Families in the Bronx and across the country save up to buy these games, and they deserve better than a license that can vanish at any time. The Power To The Players Act ensures consumers own what they buy and can keep playing long after a company moves on. “I think there should be a simple rule: if you pay for it, you own it,” Torres told Kotaku. He called the new status quo the bill proposes a “restoration to the historical norm,” referencing how most games were experienced by players back in the ’90s.

托雷斯就该法案发表了以下声明：当你为一款游戏付费时，你就应该拥有它。消费者必须拥有购买游戏的拥有权、游玩权和转让权。一款在公司切断服务器后就会被收回的游戏不是购买，而是伪装成销售的租赁。布朗克斯区和全国各地的家庭省吃俭用购买这些游戏，他们理应得到比随时可能消失的许可更好的保障。《赋予玩家权力法案》确保消费者拥有他们购买的产品，并在公司停止支持后仍能继续游玩。“我认为应该有一条简单的规则：如果你付了钱，它就是你的，”托雷斯告诉Kotaku。他称该法案提出的新现状是“对历史规范的恢复”，指的是90年代玩家体验大多数游戏的方式。

A wider movement: The bill comes at a time when game ownership and preservation is a hot-button issue. Some consumers have been protesting Sony’s announcement that it plans to discontinue releases of PlayStation games on physical media. In its most recent financial earnings report, Sony revealed that digital downloads account for 82 percent of full-game unit sales across PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 for the covered fiscal year, suggesting that less than 20 percent of games are still purchased in physical media form. But the argument is that continuing to offer physical discs is not just about satisfying a minority of players’ habits. Players hope it would aid with long-term preservation of games, which are sometimes delisted from digital marketplaces and then become inaccessible.

更广泛的运动：该法案出台之际，游戏所有权和保存正成为一个热门话题。一些消费者一直在抗议索尼宣布计划停止发行PlayStation实体版游戏。在最近的财务报告中，索尼透露，在所涵盖的财年中，数字下载占PlayStation 4和PlayStation 5完整游戏销量单位的82%，这意味着只有不到20%的游戏仍以实体介质形式购买。但支持者的观点是，继续提供实体光盘不仅仅是为了满足少数玩家的习惯。玩家希望这有助于游戏的长期保存，因为游戏有时会从数字市场下架，从而变得无法访问。

Physical discs don’t solve the problem on their own, though. Many games sold on discs still require online servers to function, and generally, the 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 that shipped on the disc was meaningfully distinct from the version players ultimately know because of patches. So it makes sense that consumers and their representatives are turning to legislation like this to drive a change in industry practices. There have been activist and lobbying movements, such as Stop Killing Games, that have been advocating for change on this front, but different proposed bills around the world have suggested different kinds of solutions.

然而，实体光盘本身并不能解决问题。许多以光盘形式销售的游戏仍需要在线服务器才能运行，而且通常情况下，最终用户许可协议明确规定用户购买的是可撤销的许可，而非介质的实际所有权，即使文件被刻录在实体介质上也是如此。此外，还有许多例子表明，由于补丁的存在，光盘上发行的版本与玩家最终体验到的版本有显著差异。因此，消费者及其代表转向此类立法以推动行业实践的变革是有道理的。目前已经出现了诸如“停止扼杀游戏”（Stop Killing Games）等激进和游说运动，一直在倡导在这一方面进行变革，但世界各地提出的不同法案提出了不同类型的解决方案。

Potential technical concerns ahead: Some prior proposed legislation on this issue has required developers to keep servers running indefinitely, leading to criticism that those bills’ authors don’t understand the cost. This bill appears to take those criticisms into account—but at least as worded in the press release on Ritchie Torres’ House of Representatives website, it could still face resistance. While the announcement does not say the bill requires online servers to remain online, it requires normally online-only games to offer offline modes of play so players can keep playing long after servers might be shut down. The way some online games are engineered, that may not be feasible, so this could require developers to take very different approaches to some online games’ architecture.

未来的潜在技术问题：此前针对此问题提出的一些立法要求开发商无限期地维持服务器运行，导致人们批评这些法案的起草者不了解成本。该法案似乎考虑到了这些批评——但至少从里奇·托雷斯众议院网站上的新闻稿措辞来看，它仍可能面临阻力。虽然公告并未说明该法案要求在线服务器保持在线，但它要求通常仅限在线的游戏提供离线游玩模式，以便玩家在服务器关闭后仍能继续游玩。考虑到一些在线游戏的工程设计方式，这可能并不可行，因此这可能要求开发商对某些在线游戏的架构采取截然不同的方法。

This bill’s proposal does not guarantee it will become law; it still has a long path ahead, and most proposed legislation never even makes it to a vote. And since the full text of the bill is not yet publicly available, it’s not yet possible to assess its effectiveness or enforceability. There is another elephant in the room: Large language models and specialized coding harnesses have recently enabled a wave of decompilations and reconfigurations of both classic and contemporary video games and software. These projects are almost certainly currently illegal, but the scale of the movement is such that enforcement may be difficult. It’s possible that these new tools will change the shape of the software preservation conversation in the coming months and years.

该法案的提出并不保证它会成为法律；它前方还有很长的路要走，大多数拟议的立法甚至从未进入投票阶段。由于该法案的全文尚未公开，目前还无法评估其有效性或可执行性。还有一个显而易见的问题：大型语言模型和专门的编码工具最近引发了一波对经典和现代电子游戏及软件的反编译和重构浪潮。这些项目目前几乎肯定是非法的，但该运动的规模使得执法可能变得困难。这些新工具很可能会在未来几个月和几年内改变软件保存讨论的格局。