Misguided California bill would harm video game makers, players | Opinion
Immersive, online video games have transformed entertainment, bringing millions of players together from around the globe. But now, a proposed California law is threatening the modern gameplay experience by misunderstanding how online services work.
Under Assembly Bill 1921, the Protect Our Games Act, when a game publisher decides to shut down a “server-connected” digital game, developers would be forced to choose between 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.
The legislation would apply to both new video games and existing games that are remastered or re-released.
The bill, authored by Assemblymember Chris Ward, D-San Diego, intends to provide consumers with a guarantee that if they pay for access to play an online game, they will keep that access for as long as they want. But this bill shows a fundamental lack of knowledge about how games are built and maintained today.
Behind every online game is an enormous, invisible infrastructure. There are large teams working to uncover bugs, push product patches and update game content. Moderators enforce codes of conduct to facilitate positive experiences for players. And servers, designed to accommodate millions of players, must be maintained.
When a game’s popularity fades, that infrastructure continues to run, for a fraction of the audience, at nearly the same cost.
Additionally, many of today’s popular games include licensed music, likeness rights and branding that might be time-limited. A legal requirement to keep games playable indefinitely will put game publishers in an impossible situation where they are either renegotiating licenses in perpetuity or altering games to change the creator’s original intent and gameplay experience.
This proposal essentially keeps games alive long after their natural lifecycle, draining resources and energy from creating what comes next. Every dollar spent on outdated systems is a dollar not spent on building a new one. Maintaining legacy systems is inefficient and expensive, and those costs get passed on to consumers.
If every game becomes a permanent obligation, companies will make fewer of them — especially the ambitious, online worlds that today’s players love most.
AB 1921 bill creates an entirely new, unprecedented category of consumer products. We don’t expect innovators to continue supporting their very first car model, their original smartphone or an outdated operating system software, but this bill suggests that online video games should last forever. This comes at great expense to the original creators and is in direct conflict with the basic principles of America’s longstanding copyright laws.
This bill may sound consumer friendly, but it ultimately hurts both players and creators. Many games today are live, connected experiences that depend on online communities and evolving content. Not to mention, nearly two thirds of video game software companies in the U.S. operate with less than 10 employees.
You cannot demand “forever” from video game developers without hampering their ability to create new games that provide the kinds of experiences players love and have come to expect.
AB 1921 doesn’t just misunderstand games. It undermines the very thing it claims to protect.
Stanley Pierre-Louis is president and CEO of the Entertainment Software Association.
This story was originally published June 9, 2026 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Misguided California bill would harm video game makers, players | Opinion."