Stop Killing Games Just Took a Big Step Forward

The “Stop Killing Games” movement has the potential to be a major paradigm shifter in modern gaming. In the current marketplace, the ubiquity of live service and perpetually online games has raised the cost for developers and publishers who have to keep servers going and content flowing instead of just delivering a single complete package. As a result, many games that haven’t turned the profit their developers wanted have been subsequently shut down — taking the time and cash invested by players with it. This has left players across the globe frustrated, as the games they purchased and wanted to keep playing became unavailable due to corporate decisions made years after the fact.

That frustration has translated into consumer rights groups moving against video game companies to ensure that companies have to abide by specific guardrails with their game development. While a lawsuit in France against Ubisoft could upend how game development and publishing work in the age of perpetually online titles, a new bill moving through the California State Assembly would impact how publishers go about trying to pull their online games. Seeing the bill move forward is a huge win for the “Stop Killing Games” movement and could become a crucial step towards reworking the way the industry handles “failures” like Concord or Highguard.

How Bill AB 1921 Could Change The Gaming Landscape

Bill AB 1921, otherwise known as the “Protect Our Games Act,” is moving forward in the California legislature. The bill is focused on game protections, with a focus on making sure companies can’t just shut down a game with no warning. The bill proposed conditions for commercial games that are being shut down, including publishers being required to give players a 60-day warning before pulling the plug on the servers.

It would also require all games to still be functional on at least some level — even if the online servers are down, the games should still be able to work in single-player mode, with in-person multiplayer, or be capable of operating on local servers. The idea is to prevent events like what happened with Concord, which was delisted and had its servers shut down less than two weeks after it debuted. Notably, this rule would only apply to games that are legally purchasable. Free-to-play games would be exempt from this rule, which — if the bill passes the California Senate — would go into effect on all games released or re-released after January 1st, 2027.

This bill would effectively prevent companies from having perpetual online games that are no longer accessible once the live service is concluded. This means more games would be designed with the intention of being complete experiences. While these are fairly straightforward suggestions for game development going forward, they do present a lot of potential changes for the industry at large.

The “Protect Our Games Act” Would Be A Major Shift For Developers And Players

If this bill goes into effect, the “Protect Our Games Act” would have pretty quick ripples across game development, given how ubiquitous forever games are nowadays. For players, it’s hard to really see a downside. This bill would ensure that games remain online even if the publisher is no longer actively developing them, making sure that the world’s players fall in love with (and paid for) remain accessible. It would likely result in game developers putting more emphasis on single-player and local multiplayer experiences, which can help games escape the perpetual loop that many live service games can fall into. It also ensures that players retain the right to access the entertainment they paid for.

For developers and publishers, it’s more of a mixed bag. Development and publishing costs would likely be impacted, as the games would need additional time to create a baseline game that can exist in perpetuity, even if the updates and online servers go down. This may increase the cost of development — but it also comes with the caveat that publishers would be less inclined to delist games that had “flopped,” giving them time to become more profitable over time. This would have potentially opened the door for games like Highguard, which were unceremoniously pulled from online stores and delisted, to find new life. While the game wasn’t the massive success the developers were hoping for out of the gate, keeping it online in a base mode and continuing to maintain at least enough maintenance to ensure online play would have given the development team time to refine the gameplay and potentially give players a wider window to discover the title. It would also encourage developers to step away from live-service as a core selling point, which would correspond with players largely becoming frustrated by that gaming model.

This kind of law would be a big deal, especially if it grows from online petitions and specific courts in California and France to spread to the larger gaming ecosystem. It would have a major impact on developers and publishers — especially those who focus on live-service games. It may end up dealing some blows to the industry and make certain companies reevaluate their investments in game development. In the long run, though, these changes seem like they would be great for consumers and would be workable for developers. It would ensure that years of work by game designers aren’t lost to the whims of the ever-volatile marketplace and that the games themselves could be played and rediscovered for years to come. The Stop Killing Games movement has been gaining momentum, and this victory highlights just how popular the idea is becoming in the mainstream.