Protect Our Games Act

Protect Our Games Act is the short title of California Assembly Bill 1921 (AB 1921), a 2026 bill that would stop video game publishers from selling a single-purchase digital game & later disabling the access that keeps it playable, unless the publisher first gives buyers an end-of-life plan. The bill, by Assemblymember Chris Ward, would require 60 days' notice before an operator ends the services a game needs, then at least one remedy: an offline version, a patch for independent use, the tools or software to run a community server, or a refund. The Assembly passed it 43 to 16 on May 27, 2026. On June 29, 2026, it failed passage in the Senate Business, Professions and Economic Development Committee on a 4 to 3 vote with four members not voting, after the Entertainment Software Association testified in opposition; the committee granted reconsideration, so the bill is not dead.

The bill's requirements

AB 1921 would add Chapter 6.8 (commencing with Section 20660) to Division 8 of the California Business and Professions Code as the Protect Our Games Act. It defines ordinary use as a buyer's ability to use a game's core features consistent with how it was advertised, marketed, or described at the time of purchase, & a digital game operator as the publisher, developer, or other entity that controls whether a buyer can make ordinary use of the game, including through authentication systems, server access, Digital rights management, or required software updates.

At least 60 days before an operator stops providing the services a game needs for ordinary use, the bill would require it to tell buyers & prospective buyers the cessation date, which services & features will end, any security risks, and how to keep using the game or obtain a refund. Once those services end, the operator would have to provide at least one remedy: an offline-playable version, a patch or update that lets the game run independently, documentation or software for buyers to host their own servers, or a refund equal to the highest price the operator had offered for the game in the 12 months before it stopped providing those services.

AB 1921's operative section requires an operator to give 60 days' notice before ending the services a game needs, then provide at least one remedy: an offline version, a patch, a refund, or documentation to host a private or community server.

The bill would also bar an operator from selling or distributing a version of a game that a buyer cannot use independently of the operator's services after those services end. Its requirements would apply only to games first available for purchase or rereleased on or after January 1, 2028, & would exempt subscription services, games offered at no charge, & games a buyer can permanently download & the seller cannot revoke.

In the Assembly Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee analysis, Ward described the problem the bill targets:

When a game operator stops supporting a live-service game server, that game becomes inoperable for users who purchased a license with the expectation of continual access. This bill requires user notifications before the end of server support and ensures that paid users walk away with either a playable version of the game or a refund once services cease.

Remote game shutdowns and the Stop Killing Games movement

A live-service game can stop working entirely when its publisher shuts down the servers it depends on. When Ubisoft delisted its racing game The Crew on December 14, 2023 & shut down its servers on March 31, 2024, the game became completely unplayable, including its single-player campaign, because it required an always-online connection.

The shutdown prompted Stop Killing Games, which describes itself as a global coalition of gamers, consumer advocates, & developers pushing for legal protections. The campaign frames its demand as an end-of-life requirement rather than a call for perpetual servers:

An increasing number of games are sold as goods, but designed to be completely unplayable for everyone as soon as support ends. We are demanding legislation to end this practice.

California had already addressed digital ownership at the point of sale. AB 2426 by Assemblymember Irwin, approved by the governor on September 24, 2024, bars sellers from advertising a digital good with words such as buy or purchase unless they disclose that the buyer is receiving a license & list the restrictions & conditions that come with it.

The campaign's reach extends past California. In the European Union, a European Citizens' Initiative titled Stop Destroying Videogames collected statements of support between July 31, 2024 & July 31, 2025 & was submitted to the European Commission on January 26, 2026 with 1,294,188 verified signatures, past the one-million threshold the rules require. The European Parliament held a public hearing on the initiative on April 16, 2026 & a plenary debate on May 21, 2026. On June 16, 2026, the Commission concluded that a legal obligation to keep games playable after publishers stop providing them would not be proportionate & was not envisaged, & said it would instead initiate, by the end of 2026, an exchange with the video game industry & consumer representatives to draw up an industry code of conduct on managing video games' end of life.

In the United Kingdom, a petition to Parliament titled Prohibit publishers irrevocably disabling video games they have already sold drew 189,887 signatures before it closed on July 14, 2025 & was debated in Parliament on November 4, 2025. The UK government responded that it had no plans to amend consumer law on disabling video games.

Legislative history

Ward introduced AB 1921 on February 12, 2026. It cleared three Assembly committees that spring: Privacy and Consumer Protection on April 16, 2026 by 10 to 4, Judiciary on April 22, 2026 by 8 to 2, & Appropriations on May 14, 2026 by 11 to 2. The full Assembly passed it 43 to 16 on May 27, 2026.

In the Senate, the Privacy, Digital Technologies and Consumer Protection Committee passed it 6 to 2 on June 23, 2026 & sent it to the Business, Professions and Economic Development Committee. That committee took up the bill on June 29, 2026. The motion was to pass the bill & re-refer it to Appropriations; it drew 4 ayes (Arreguín, Caballero, Umberg, & Wahab) and 3 noes (Choi, Niello, & Strickland), with four of the eleven members on the roll not voting (Archuleta, Grayson, Menjivar, & Smallwood-Cuevas), and it failed. The committee then granted reconsideration, which leaves the bill alive for a possible future vote.

The Senate Business, Professions and Economic Development Committee record shows AB 1921 failing on June 29, 2026 by 4 ayes to 3 noes, with four members not voting.

Industry opposition

The Entertainment Software Association, the trade association for the video game industry, led the opposition. In a June 9, 2026 op-ed, ESA president & CEO Stan Pierre-Louis wrote that the bill would force developers to choose among three options:

keeping it running indefinitely, rebuilding the game to work without technical support or providing a full refund to everyone, no matter how long ago they played or how much time they spent in that particular game.

He wrote that an online game depends on an enormous, invisible infrastructure of development teams, moderators, & servers, and that [m]aintaining legacy systems is inefficient and expensive, and those costs get passed on to consumers.

The Assembly Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee analysis lists the Entertainment Software Association as the sole registered opposition to AB 1921.

The ESA's lead opposition witness before the June 29 committee was Jennifer Gibbons, its vice president of state government affairs, who joined the ESA in 2024 after serving as senior vice president of government affairs for the Toy Association &, earlier, as a chief of staff & communications director in the California State Assembly. Gibbons told the committee that the ESA had suggested looking at the approach Assemblymember Irwin took in AB 2426 on digital goods.

Industry-side legal commentary echoed the cost concern. Attorneys at the law firm Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz wrote on June 23, 2026 that maintaining an indefinite online service can become an untenable burden, and that compliance through rebuilding a game to run offline or on private servers could cost a publisher upwards of the cost of developing a video game port for free.

Committee testimony, June 29, 2026

Gibbons told the committee that the bill rested on two flawed premises:

One, that consumers who purchase a license for a video game should have access to it indefinitely. No other digital product is subject to that standard. Books, movies, music, software, and online services are not required to remain available forever, yet this bill would apply that obligation to video games.

She also said the bill addressed a question of consumer satisfaction, not consumer protection.

The Senate Business, Professions and Economic Development Committee heard AB 1921 on June 29, 2026, the hearing where the Entertainment Software Association's witness called community-hosted game servers illegal and described them as piracy.

Community servers and Minecraft

One of the bill's compliance options lets an operator satisfy the law by giving buyers the tools or software to run their own community servers. During the hearing, Minecraft & Call of Duty community servers were named as existing examples of that option. Gibbons responded:

They're illegal, and they are not in any way affiliated with Microsoft. Microsoft for Minecraft has gotten a lot of criticism because of those community servers not employing the same safety standards that Microsoft does on their Minecraft servers.

When a member asked whether it was like the black market of video games, Gibbons answered:

Yes. In fact, we consider it piracy. We have lawsuits, two pending lawsuits against private servers right now ...

Microsoft, through its Mojang Studios subsidiary, distributes free Minecraft server software for players to host their own multiplayer games. Its official download page offers a Minecraft: Java Edition server & a Bedrock dedicated server, & invites players who want to set up a multiplayer server to download & run one.

Mojang's official Minecraft page, headed Download the Minecraft: Java Edition server, invites players who want to set up a multiplayer server to download and run one.

Perpetual support versus an end-of-life plan

Pierre-Louis's op-ed described the bill as a demand that online video games should last forever. The bill's text lists a refund as one of the remedies an operator may choose, alongside an offline version, a patch for independent use, or server tools, & its requirements would attach only to games first sold or rereleased on or after January 1, 2028.

Keeping online games playable after shutdown

Gibbons told the committee:

Where compliance is impossible, this bill is going to require refunds that bear no relationship to the years of entertainment that the consumer may have received.

Some publishers have kept games available after ending online service. Sony's Gran Turismo Sport ended its online services on January 31, 2024; the developer's notice stated that [t]he offline portions of the game can still be played, including purchased Add-Ons. Before shutting down the public servers for Knockout City on June 6, 2023, Velan Studios released a free Private Hosted Server Edition for Windows so players could run their own servers, saying it wanted to turn the keys to Knockout City over to the community.

Licensed music in Alan Wake

The Frankfurt Kurnit attorneys also wrote that AB 1921 did not account for third-party rights:

Video games often include licensed third-party content such as music, likeness rights, or other protected content that typically have fixed terms. When those terms expire, the operator may no longer have the right to distribute or maintain those elements.

After the music license for David Bowie's Space Oddity in Remedy Entertainment's Alan Wake expired, Remedy released an update that removed the song due to changes in licensing & replaced it with a new original track by Petri Alanko called Strange Moons.

USTR Notorious Markets reports

Gibbons added:

[T]he United States Trade Representative in their notorious markets reports on counterfeiting [and] piracy has named some of these big private servers as a notorious market.

The most recent report, the USTR 2025 Review of Notorious Markets for Counterfeiting and Piracy, does not use the terms private servers, pirate servers, or grey shards; its game-related listings are NSW2U, a site distributing infringing copies of Nintendo Switch games that the FBI seized in July 2025; FitGirl-Repacks, a site offering compressed copies of pirated games; & UnknownCheats, a site for submitting & downloading video-game cheat codes. The only USTR document to use the phrase is a footnote in the 2015 Out-of-Cycle Review of Notorious Markets, which described the reappearance of molten-wow.com, a site that had provided unauthorized access to a popular multiplayer online role-playing game, under a successor name, warmane.com, & referred to unauthorized private servers, which it also called pirate servers or grey shards. That 2015 review listed molten-wow.com among positive developments because it had reportedly closed.

Status

As of June 30, 2026, AB 1921 had not advanced past the Senate Business, Professions and Economic Development Committee, where it failed passage on June 29, 2026. The committee granted reconsideration, leaving open a possible future vote. If enacted, the bill's requirements would not apply to any game until January 1, 2028.

See also

• Video game preservation
• Planned obsolescence
• Digital Millennium Copyright Act
• Right to repair