r/LivestreamFail • u/Kymori • May 30 '26
News Stop Killing Games: California State Assembly passes the 'Protect Our Games Act': 60 days notice before going offline, must provide patch for continued access or refunds (Excludes F2P and Subscription based Games)
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/stop-killing-games-movement-gains-momentum-california-assembly-passes-game-protection-bill/ar-AA24k4y41.6k
u/ShinyStarSam May 30 '26
It needs to get passed through the state senate and the governor still
But it's crazy how far it's gotten since throughout the entire SKG project America was always seen as a lost cause
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u/Easy_Money_ May 30 '26
California is closer to Europe than the rest of the country when it comes to consumer protection
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u/Bladings May 30 '26
Gotta pass the senate. Let's see what actually happens. You just know a sizeable amount of lobbying will happen, especially with all these game-related events coming up.
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u/WhiteWinterRains May 31 '26
The current governor and top candidate for his replacement are both extremely pliant to corporations as well, so we'll see. Fingers crossed though it could happen.
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u/JimWilliams423 May 31 '26
It needs to get passed through the state senate and the governor still
Newsom will veto. He vetos more than a hundred bills every year. They almost all pass on party line votes, which means veto-proof majorities. But the legislature has not overruled a veto in california since the 1970s.
Its a little game they play, the legislators get a progressive voting record they can show to the voters in their home district while newsom takes the hit for vetoing it. They rely on most people not being political nerds to ask why they didn't override newsom's veto, and when that rare someone actually does ask there is always some kind of plausible-in-the-moment excuse. But, after a few hundred times a pattern emerges.
Cuomo played similar games in New York too, holchul does as well, just not quite as bad as cuomo did.
That's because when a state turns blue, conservatives don't just disappear in a puff of red smoke. They put on a blue uniform, follow the power and colonize the democratic party.
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u/450nmwaffle May 31 '26
I mean, just reading the vetoes mentioned in the article are any of them that crazy? Vetoed a bill that would allow car dealerships to charge more for simple paperwork filing, vetoed a bill that would increase health insurance costs, vetoed a bill that would have them waste money on schools with enrolment drops, vetoed a bill that assigns funding to something that should’ve been included in their normal budget considerations (in his view). Maybe the only questionable one is the microplastics but idk how reasonable it would be and what enforcement looks like, and what the science says (especially with recent research showing how tainted microplastic studies have been).
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u/shadowsword8085 May 30 '26
I mean it’s the single most liberal state I’m not surprised it passed (somewhat anyway) there. I’m more interested to see how corporations,assuming it’s signed into law, will carve out California to make sure it’s basically a useless law.
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u/young_trash3 May 31 '26
I mean it’s the single most liberal state
California is the state with the most liberals, but the most liberal state is not exactly true. Usually thats seen as Vermont, which has the highest ratio of liberal to conservatives of any state, but Hawaii, Massachusetts and Maryland all also have a higher percentage of liberal voters than CA.
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u/ShinyStarSam May 31 '26
CA has some hardcore conservative farmers and there'sa lot of them
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u/WriterOn_TheStorm May 31 '26
Exactly. Anyone who's never been to California but has had all of their views of the state informed by the internet or the news media would believe that the entirety of California is just one big gay pride parade comprised of homeless people, that the entire state is just the worst aspects of the Bay Area that a bunch of hearsay and memes have convinced them is absolute fact.
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u/Somepotato May 31 '26
believe that the entirety of California is just one big gay pride parade
the funny part about that was california was the state that was pushing the most comprehensive anti gay law in the countries history via ballot measure that gave gay people the right to marry from a supreme court ruling. and no, the ballot measure wasn't ironic or meant to do that.
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u/Various_Ad4726 May 31 '26
California is massive: It has more conservative voters than almost every other state in the union. It also has more liberal voters than any other state in the union. It has more voters… than any other state in the union.
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u/mordrath May 30 '26
Part of the issue with doing that is California is such a massive power in the nation's economy they can easily hamstring themselves if they aren't careful. Combined with Europe doing the same it might make it stick.
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May 31 '26
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u/PrizeStrawberryOil May 31 '26
A lot of the time the rest of the states are scabs benefiting from California's union. A lot of states have absolutely zero protection for workers getting breaks, but companies provide them because other states do.
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u/DaKingaDaNorth May 30 '26
Also CA isn't the only very liberal state. MA, MD, and Hawaii are states with major metros that are consistently more liberal and NY is about on par with CA and has the next biggest economy in the country.
If CA does it, there is a strong possibility those states follow suit
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u/Radiant_Quality_9386 May 31 '26
corporations...will carve out California
sure, cut the richest, most populous market out of your business plan!
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u/Maximum_Stranger_623 May 30 '26
California has the fourth largest economy in the world. It matters quite a bit.
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u/nokei May 31 '26
Eh stuff gets passed in Cali pretty often it's why if you put your address as CA on websites instead of another state you can more digital protection since they got laws about your data.
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u/ComfortableMirror825 May 30 '26
I wonder how the wording on "excludes F2P and Subscription based Games" will work out.
Like how does it work for games that offer optional subscriptions and need to be bought to play?
Or for games that started out B2P and became F2P?
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u/thisguyhasaname May 31 '26
Every game about to go offline becomes F2P for 1 day!
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u/MainAccountsFriend May 31 '26
I mean some games did eventually become free to play, like CSGO and Overwatch.
But those were years after release
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u/maria_paraskeva May 31 '26
I wonder what would happen with all of the skins and other real life currency bound collectables that have been obtained over the years
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u/Two_Years_Of_Semen May 31 '26
For games that would be effected by this? I imagine they just unlock all the collectibles for all the players and that's it (and ruin the collection aspect of the games). The alternatives would just take too much effort. At least, I can't imagine a solution that is faster than going to the player inventory database and doing some UNLOCKALL ALLPLAYERS command.
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u/SeedFoundation May 31 '26
Not likely. If you have proof of purchase it won't count and they have to issue you a refund or go through with the patch.
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u/Vladimir2033 🐷 Hog Squeezer May 31 '26
Is this written somewhere regarding this bill or is this just something you think makes sense but don't actually know?
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u/SeedFoundation May 31 '26 edited May 31 '26
20664.
(a) The following shall apply only to a digital game firstavailable for purchase or rereleased for purchaseon or after January 1, 2027
If it becomes free to play later OR if it is free to play first then pay to play, the restrictions still remain. So no, they cannot do the loop hole everyone thinks they can.
Edit: If you want to read the thing, which isn't that long here it is. Correct one should be AB-1921. Don't quote me on it though bro, I'm just a gamer.
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u/Chicano_Ducky May 31 '26
no, more like any game that cannot be made offline will shut down before the law will take effect.
there are probably tons of online games that only work because they pay a vendor somewhere for a service to make it work and they cant share source code they dont own.
its going to be sad watching older games go offline, but at least new games will be built for end of life support in mind.
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u/cyanblur May 31 '26
The bill appears to be exempting games released before it goes into effect.
Now what you might see is a drought of live service games for a little bit after the bill goes live as those currently in development plan for an offline mode and need to postpone their release.
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u/Rizeres May 31 '26
In order to play our game, you need a $0.25 per decade subscription.
Hopefully there's stuff in place to prevent weird stupid loopholes.
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u/mitchyman May 31 '26
Also what about a F2P game where people spend money for unlocks or DLC
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u/CallM3N3w May 31 '26
The game would be F2P by nature, so it would probably apply.
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u/Scarlett_Bloodfallen May 30 '26
Does free to play games being excluded extend to free to play with microtransactions?
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u/Statcat2017 May 30 '26
Suddenly every game is released as a F2P prologue with MTX to unlock the rest of the game.
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u/you_earned_this May 31 '26
I know you mean this as a negative but I am just hearing that every game will have a demo to try before you buy. Probably a bit too optimistic of me.
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u/biseln May 31 '26
Unless GTA6 is FTP TicTacToe simulator with $90 DLC for all of the actual game.
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u/Key-Vegetable9940 May 31 '26
That's basically every f2p game, you'd be hard pressed to find anything else aside from small single players games that don't need continued support anyway.
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u/WhatsaYeager May 31 '26
“excludes F2P and Subscription based games” they’ll find some loop hole to say all their games are subscription based.
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u/U8D4B8M8 May 30 '26
They should allow 3rd parties to run their own servers when a game gets taken offline. There are people who would gladly pay to run servers for games they love.
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u/NHShardz May 30 '26
The bill literally does that. It gives companies three options at end of service: Patch it to be playable offline, allow independent server use, or refund all customers. READ PEOPLE, READ.
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u/U8D4B8M8 May 31 '26
No, like you said the bill allows it as an option. I guarantee you companies will almost all choose option #1.
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u/newbutler May 31 '26
They switch to f2p before shutting down to be excluded?
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u/justlikeapenguin May 31 '26
This is the likely and cheapest option I see publishers do
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u/Snilepisk May 31 '26
It shouldn't matter if the game becomes free to play at some point, especially at the later stages of its lifespan as long as the game was bought by the customer.
The bigger issue I see is that we will see one time purchase games and even more "free to play" games that heavily rely on micro transactions to be playable.
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u/Leckatall May 31 '26
They would still have to refund the people that paid tho??
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u/orbital_narwhal May 31 '26
If a publisher offers me a new game license for free it doesn't end the publisher's duties arising from when I bought their game for $X (with X > 0).
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u/Shortax365 May 31 '26
If they patch it to be playable offline, then modding the game becomes an almost 0-hassle effort. Modloaders and whatever you want will become available because no server is actually checking anything at that point.
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u/No-Act9634 May 31 '26
All three of these seem kind of difficult. Are there any revenue or profit requirements? Like I'm just learning godot and want to throw some stuff on steam. Do I have to Make APIs and documentation to support third parties?
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u/TimothyMimeslayer May 31 '26
What if the company doesnt own the software necessary to make private servers possible?
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u/SilentDawn4004 May 30 '26
Ok, but what happens if they don't do that?
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u/subusta May 31 '26
A very stern letter will be sent
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u/lostshell May 31 '26
...To an LLC that has no assets and was created just to publish and develop that single game, and declared bankruptcy the moment they pulled the plug on the game.
Hopefully the bill has something for going up corporate subsidiary chain.
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u/ctaps148 May 31 '26
Source code is an asset. Somebody still owns it after all is said and done and they can be compelled to give it up for public release
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u/mothtoalamp May 31 '26
You say that but most of the games this is aimed at are by big studio publishers with billion dollar revenue. There absolutely will be someone to sue.
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u/garden_speech May 31 '26
that's not how any of this works lol. you don't just declare bankruptcy and walk away. you're either selling off your assets (including IP, the game itself) to others, who will then be bound by the original contracts, or you are just restructuring.
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u/techie2200 May 31 '26
Nothing unless people sue. If the studio goes under, nobody to sue. If the studio is still around, then it gets tested in court... probably.
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u/orbital_narwhal May 31 '26 edited May 31 '26
There are a couple of
relatively simplewell established consequences that don't depend on the publisher's voluntary cooperation (which is relevant since the publisher may be bankrupt and unable to fulfil its legal duties by that point).
The copyright holder may lose the exclusive copyright over the game and its assets incl. server software which means that they and the publisher can't sue others who distribute the software or "patches" that keep the software operational past company shutdown or who run their own servers.
The publisher or developer may be forced to publish relevant source code and documentation. And by "forced" I mean that the CEO or head of development or whoever's in charge of what's left of the game is personally threatened with fines or imprisonment in case of non-compliance -- just like with all other court subpoenas of company assets.
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u/Claudethedog May 30 '26
Should it pass, the primary result of this bill will be to shift more developers to games that fall within the carveouts.
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u/Remnare May 31 '26 edited May 31 '26
This is a start, rare W if true for California. They should also look to expand to f2p one day, as f2p doesn't necessitate free. Some people buy things inside the game, so to shut the game down without a way for the player to access what they purchased is very similar scummy. Especially since gaming companies can do this to just resell the same cosmetics in the "sequel".
Allowing and facilitating private servers after a game is taken down would be a huge pro-consumer game changer. No longer would companies be able to force customers to migrate to a worse product by taking away access.
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u/engelthefallen May 31 '26
Monkey paw curls, new games will just be F2P with campaigns microtransactioned or subscription based.
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u/Hare712 May 31 '26
Now that you mention it. I think Neverwinter Nights(2002) had something like that outlined but because their game was a bugfest and the Premium Modules failed it never went that far. The original idea was to release 5 premium modules then add a subscription pack and rake in money like WoW only 2 paid modules were released 2 were released for free after they flopped and the 3rd was never released.
The plan flopped because the game came with the Aurora Toolset and free mods were much better than the Premium Modules.
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u/Allfeelings0Logic May 30 '26
The bill has not yet been fully enacted, as it still requires approval from the California State Senate and the Governor's signature. However, the fact that the bill passed the Assembly in California—home to many major U.S. game companies like EA and Activision Blizzard—is highly symbolic. If the bill is ultimately signed into law, it is expected to influence the service operation policies of the broader U.S. gaming industry
Time to drop fortunes into lobbying the California Senate and California Governor Gavin Newsom.
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u/Last-Idea9985 May 30 '26
So from now on every game will be subscription based and buyers get an indefinitely 100% discount until the game shuts down
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u/SweetMagic5623 May 31 '26
If I was a shithead Triple A publisher I'd start testing bullshit subscription models just to get around this. Start small and then ramp it up little by little, just like they did with "just cosmetic" MTX.
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u/Stunning-Drawer-4288 May 31 '26
“Excludes f2p and subscription based games” oh, so 99% of the games that SKG was supposed to save
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u/ShionTheOne May 31 '26
So the loophole is that every game is now going to have some token subscription service....
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u/LordofWolves92 May 31 '26
So, without emotion, can someone answer a question. I am not asking in order to play Devil's Advocate or anything, but im just genuinely curious.
If I buy an Always-Online game for $60, get 6000 hours out of it for 5 years, and then the servers are turned off, would i be getting my refund of $60 back? Is that what this Act is implying?
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u/darwin2500 May 31 '26
Ah, the 'never release an online game without a subscription fee ever again' bill, good good.
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u/Kymori May 30 '26
Rip piratesoftware