California Bill To Preserve Online Games Fails Committee Vote

The volunteer also claimed this was the movement’s first attempt to nudge such legislation through in the US, and that the bill got this far without paid staff or an in-person lobbying campaign. They said the Entertainment Software Association — a trade organization of major game industry publishers — brought in a lobbyist to halt the bill’s progress (including by claiming private servers for the likes of Minecraft would be “illegal”) and that Stop Killing Games would be more prepared to counter that in the future.

“Next session, we come back with an in-person lobbying presence, the funding to do this properly and a long list of organizations and developers signed on in support,” the volunteer, u/Mr_Presidentle, wrote. “We are not limiting this to California. We intend to introduce versions of this in other state legislatures, and we are seriously looking at the federal level.”

Were the proposed California legislation to become law as-is, the legislation would require publishers and “digital game operators” to give consumers a 60-day heads-up before delisting a game, along with information on how they could either obtain a refund or continue playing it. The publisher/operator would, for instance, be permitted to allow customers to play the game on a private- or community-run server in lieu of offering full refunds. The rules would not apply to subscription-based or free-to-play games. 

As VGC notes, players who logged into MultiVersus in the few months before it shut down in 2025 received an update that allowed them to keep playing the game offline. That kind of approach could offer publishers and “digital game operators” one option to avoid issuing mass refunds when they shut down a game’s servers should legislation along these lines come into force.