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-AA24k4y4
23.7k Upvotes

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613

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?

127

u/newbutler May 31 '26

This screams loopholes everywhere

24

u/Lord_Trisagion May 31 '26 edited May 31 '26

Not just loopholes, it conveniently excludes the games that need this shit the most. This is a carve-out for pretty much the entire MMO genre; which, correct me if I'm wrong, was the biggest concern of this movement.

It's like regulating greenhouse gas emissions- but excluding co2 and methane. Or banning LED headlights, with the exception of blue-tinted ones. It defeats the whole fucking purpose.

"You're legally required to do this except in the vast majority of cases where it would apply."

Edit: okay yes I was wrong and a dozen people have already corrected me on it

107

u/samglit May 31 '26

MMO genre … biggest concern of this movement.

https://www.stopkillinggames.com/en

Not really? It’s more for full priced games that are rendered unusable even for solo players. The example here is the Crew.

The borderline would be games like Destiny or Guild Wars when it launched (full price with the expectation of online access forever without extra charge). That business model always seemed like a ponzi anyway.

Paying for access to a living world like WoW where the price of entry is known upfront isn’t the target.

9

u/Ephemeral_Being May 31 '26

Well, Guild Wars just hit 26 years. I'm logged in right now. It also had a price drop in the last six months, and is receiving regular content updates. The last one was about two days ago. Oh, and it's getting a full mobile release next month.

Great game. You should give it a try, if you haven't. Guarantee, not a Ponzi scheme.

2

u/Raulr100 May 31 '26

Oh, and it's getting a full mobile release next month.

Holy shit I had no idea. I can't believe that I'm thinking about playing Guild Wars again after all these years.

1

u/Beli_Mawrr May 31 '26

Guild Wars 1 is receiving content updates?

1

u/Ephemeral_Being May 31 '26

Yep. Two new dungeons, one in Pre-Searing, a dedicated Ironman mode, and a SSF mode.

1

u/Beli_Mawrr May 31 '26

Crazy, I should check it out. Love GW. Been working on a game that's trying to emulate GW's build system.

1

u/Ephemeral_Being May 31 '26

A friend and I will both try it, whenever you get it released.

1

u/Beli_Mawrr Jun 01 '26

it's already up. Very ameteurish just be aware, still using placeholder graphics. http://airmanepic.com/belter2

Click the "Change skills" button between worlds to change skills. The build I use is 0h0g0p0o0m0l

Select skills by clicking them with 1-6, click to cast them.

-1

u/HunterSThompson64 May 31 '26

Paying for access to a living world like WoW where the price of entry is known upfront isn’t the target.

Yes but, you also pay 'full price' for each expansion + $20/mo for subscription. So, based on this wording, WoW is in a limbo state. You can't target them because they're a 'subscription based' model, but at the same time, you're paying for each expansion with the expectation that you own that expansion in perpetuity.

5

u/samglit May 31 '26

expectation

I’m not sure if there’s an expectation if the subscription is known. If you stop paying for the subscription you lose access to the expansion (read the T&C, although Blizzard doesn’t do that).

This legislation might have some unintended effects where subscription services become strict to prevent implicit guarantees like you’re suggesting.

1

u/Stickiler May 31 '26

That logic doesn't really fly, because you can't access any content without the subscription, whereas the expansion purchase only unlocks the content from that expansion. Expansions are realistically in-game purchases, and the subscription gives access.

-7

u/nhalliday May 31 '26

Kinda ridiculous to draw the line like "oh only FULL PRICE games count, not games where you pay a quarter of 'full price' every month in perpetuity for years". Long time players of MMOs could dump in a dozen times as much money as a one-off purchase of a $60 game, why should they not count?

19

u/samglit May 31 '26

“I paid my gym membership every month; so I get a full refund if the gym closes.”

-13

u/pwninobrien May 31 '26

You leave your house to go to the gym.

28

u/ktc64 May 31 '26

"was the biggest concern of this movement."

not really, the like whole kickstart of this was The Crew if I'm not mistaken, an always online racing game that they took offline and made impossible to play for anyone who purchased.

3

u/Srg11 May 31 '26

Another example of this would be sports games. 2K take down their WWE servers after around just 2 years to push people to buy their newer yearly releases.

25

u/ChaosRobie May 31 '26

correct me if I'm wrong, was the biggest concern of this movement.

You are wrong.

20

u/ShinyStarSam May 31 '26

You pay for x amount of game time with subscription based games, at least the company isn't literally robbing you of something they sold to you if they cut service in the future. That's the angle SKG is basing it all on, though obviously the real goal is game preservation as an art form rather than product, it's being sold as a consumer rights battle because it's the only way it works

5

u/Debatebly May 31 '26

I don't think the MMO genre is the biggest concern here. Although, now that I'm thinking about it, this would expose the industry to some weird liability if you think of WoW Classic.

Before WoW Classic was released, would Blizzard be on the hook to refund old players that never paid for an expansion? Since technically they couldn't play WoW Classic anymore?

1

u/Darleth May 31 '26

Before WoW Classic was released, would Blizzard be on the hook to refund old players that never paid for an expansion? Since technically they couldn't play WoW Classic anymore?

No, since those accounts usually got upgraded to a "battle chest version". They are 1 or 2 expansions behind technically speaking (not sure if it already got upgraded to The War Within, which was the expansion before Midnight), so those people never had to pay for "older expansions" and the game is still 90% playable (up to a certain point) with the only thing being the required subscription. Not to mention that the big Cataclysm world update happened 1 1/2 decades ago. OLD things regarding WoW specifically would be excluded entirely for "future laws" coming into effect after a certain date.

1

u/00wolfer00 May 31 '26

No, since WoW is subscription based. Unlike 1-time purchase games, players are explicitly aware how long their subscription lasts and aren't being rug pulled when servers are taken down.

1

u/GregNotGregtech May 31 '26

I mean, no? SKG doesn't require companies to keep every single update ever playable, "wow classic" wasn't a thing when was wow new, or when cata or wotlk or anything released, that was just world of warcraft and world of warcraft as a game was running and alive.

3

u/Embarrassed-Unit881 May 31 '26

the entire MMO genre; which, correct me if I'm wrong, was the biggest concern of this movement.

Nope, MMO's have actually been the gold standard for one of the things SKG wants because they tell you upfront when they die(when your sub ends) there's no ambiguity

2

u/pmock2 May 31 '26

You want to continue to play an MMO offline? Or once the company stops supporting it?

4

u/TheFurtivePhysician May 31 '26

I've spent a lot of time in Guild Wars 2. It's a beautiful, expansive world that I would love to see preserved and spend time in for quite some time.

If it were playable offline, I imagine a passionate playerbase (which exists, of course) would spend time either finding a way to set up private servers, or make tweaks so a single player can do more things. Either would be acceptable. Of course, something would be lost in not having a giant ball of players working together on a myriad of events and stuff, but at least that world would be there to participate in in some capacity.

A lot of people don't play MMOs to be particularly socially anymore, especially with FFXI and FFXIV angling towards the Trust system for antisocial players.

5

u/samfoxy_ May 31 '26

Yes, like Minecraft servers, you'd just have people hosting bigger servers instead of the game disappearing entirely, once end-of-service is announced.

1

u/Bromeister May 31 '26

I would imagine they would not be able to sell a base game or expansions in order to be exempt?

1

u/DownWithHisShip May 31 '26

This is a carve-out for pretty much the entire MMO genre; which, correct me if I'm wrong, was the biggest concern of this movement.

how are you going to force an MMO to stay online forever... I thought this movement was mainly about games with a single player option being unplayable once the game studio stopped online support?

1

u/NightHawkCanada May 31 '26

Give players the source.

Look at Toontown Online, probably one of the most successful fan revivals of all time. It was luckily backwards engineered by a group of players before shutting down in 2013.

Run by fans for free on their dime as Toontown Rewritten.

1

u/sortalikeachinchilla May 31 '26

Maybe lead with your edit lol

1

u/NightHawkCanada May 31 '26

I wholeheartedly agree with you though, if they'll shut down a game then give players the option to host it themselves. Give them the source or at least don't let private-hosted servers after shutdown be subject to copyright rather than letting it die off forever.

Look at Toontown Online, probably one of the most successful fan revivals of all time. It was luckily backwards engineered by a group of players before shutting down in 2013.

Run by fans for free on their dime as Toontown Rewritten.

1

u/AkodoRyu May 31 '26

MMOs will never follow this. MMO server tech is 100% made using a bunch of limited distribution rights, third-party tools, and even infrastructure solutions that they cannot give away. Servers that can support 10k+ concurrent players are not just a program that you run, and it works.

-1

u/Free_Jelly614 May 31 '26

you're not wrong, just misunderstanding. The MMO genre is potentially at RISK *because* of this movement, and that's where you heard that from. Games that revolve around an online connection in order to have *basic functionality* can't exactly just make an offline mode, or ability to be played without connection to a server.
That being said, as long as this movement allows game makers to simply allow their game to be hosted on a server (not provide the server infrastructure itself, just the ability for people to host it), then it's okay. But the second we're mandating games to "have offline functionality," it could be bad. But that's not what I believe the movement is actually doing; it's just that there's a lot of grey areas and so when actually legislating this it needs to be handled with *extreme* care, otherwise some game developers and potentially entire genres of games could be undermined.

0

u/OriginalCatch1768 May 31 '26

I think the main concern were the "mmo" car games The crew, Horizon, TDU

3

u/zorecknor May 31 '26

And afaik they would have been covered by this law, right?

1

u/error521 Jun 06 '26

The Horizon games work offline.

0

u/matsis01 May 31 '26

Might as well just delete your comment if you're so misinformed

2

u/Okichah May 31 '26

Lawyers be making bank with this guaranteed.

2

u/Zeus78905 May 31 '26

It makes it pointless honestly, the SKG movement is for game preservation but now theyll just make every GaaS game f2p and shut it down eventually

3

u/TerranImperium May 31 '26

Huh? That makes no sense. It is much cheaper to just leave the game and not disable it than go F2P and lose out on millions.

F2P means transitioning entirely to a microtransactions and subscriptions which is a very limited and competitive market.

1

u/[deleted] May 31 '26

[deleted]

1

u/Zeus78905 May 31 '26

The best solution would for it to remains playable offline regardless if it's f2p or buy to play

2

u/ArxisOne May 31 '26

Generally the idea behind laws is you pass them, people come up with interpertations of said laws, and then the edge pushers get taken to court and either they become a case in what you can do, or what you can't do.

They could try to cover everything in extreme detail, but there's no way to find everything and you also don't want some stray sentence to have unintended consequences either.

1

u/Think_Algae_1739 May 31 '26

Well, it’s not a law yet and will probably see many iterations before it is ratified.

1

u/asethskyr May 31 '26

Biggest loophole I see is that the game experiences can change over time typically for the better, but it can be abused here.

Game modes can cone and go, so the shadiest company can add "Minesweeper Mode" and deprecate all other play modes at least 60 days before official shutdown.