The California Assembly Appropriations Committee voted 11-2 to advance AB 1921, the Protect Our Games Act, to the Assembly floor. The ESA’s campaign to kill the bill in committee didn’t work. Here’s what happened, what the bill actually requires, and what comes next.
AB 1921, backed by Stop Killing Games and authored by Assemblymember Chris Ward, would require companies selling server-connected games to give 60 days notice before shutting down, then either make the game playable without their servers or issue a full refund. It covers games sold on or after January 1, 2027. The Appropriations Committee, the financial gatekeeper in California’s legislative process, heard the ESA’s cost arguments and voted to advance the bill anyway. This is a follow-up to our earlier full breakdown.
Hell fucking yeah! Good to see traction for this in the states.
This is incredible!
Are they going to pass the POG act? Here’s hoping!
3:1 Newsome vetoes it.
They have the power to do so, so why didn’t they make it at least somewhat retroactive? There’s no real reason anything released in the past five years couldn’t have been included, for example. I can see giving extra time to dust some things off & update the code, but I don’t think it’s an unreasonable request.
From a business perspective, it allows rhe companies the time to consider the cost implicarions and sell the game at the appropriate price.
For instance, a companynthat sold lots 5 years ago and has minimal players now and would be required to refund everyone as they close would kill the conpany.
Future releases, they can add self hosted or community hosted servers as part of their code structure. They dont have to activste them until late in the game cycle.
Hopefully that becones the norm and more and more companies allow it, similar to how some allow modding. It can solve a bunch of gaming problems. Safer servers for kids. No obsolescence. More fine tuning of game settings.
Part of the fun of the first network games was their customisation options. It was more open and thus seemed like there were more possibilities.
A big issue could be technical debt.
It takes work to prepare something for “other eyes”
I’d hope for some effort from game devs that give a shit about keeping thier work alive. But for a “finished” game to go back and do the work could get tricky.
Yes you could just release docs and info but it’s not that easy sometimes.
Depends on the wording but a game sold after January 1st, 2027 could also be a five years old game that is still sold.
Wait gamers being not evil I don’t understand this
The toxic online kind of gamer is only a small minority of actual gamers, but they get a lot of the attention … because of the way they are.
