California lawmakers had a chance on June 29, 2026, to force game publishers to stop deleting titles that players already paid for. They came up short. Assembly Bill 1921, known as the Protect Our Games Act, cleared the state Assembly by a wide 43-16 margin in May. Then it died in a Senate committee, which voted 4 ayes to 3 nays, with 4 abstentions — more members in favor than against, but not enough ayes to reach the majority the committee needed to advance it. The bill isn’t dead for good, since it was granted reconsideration, but procedural deadlines mean backers can’t bring it back for another vote until the 2027 legislative session at the earliest. Still, the defeat is the biggest legislative setback yet for Stop Killing Games, the campaign that has spent two years arguing that buying a video game should mean more than renting access to a server a publisher can switch off at will.
The vote matters well beyond California. A parallel European Citizens’ Initiative tied to the same movement collected 1,294,188 verified signatures out of 1,448,271 submitted, an 89% validation rate GamesRadar reported the European Commission confirmed on January 26, 2026 — Euronews had already reported on July 8, 2025 that the petition crossed the 1,000,000-signature threshold needed to trigger formal EU consideration across seven EU member states, a milestone Northeastern University’s Games desk flagged as “ostensibly achieved” three weeks earlier, on July 3, 2025, ahead of the initiative’s July 31 deadline, with Euronews reporting by August 2025 that the running total had climbed past 1.25 million signatures as the campaign raced toward the cutoff. On June 3, 2026, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot met with European Commissioners as the industry lobbied directly on the issue, and on June 16, 2026 the Commission responded by ruling out new legislation, opting instead for a voluntary industry code of conduct due by the end of 2026. Together, the two fights are forcing an answer to a question every PC and console owner has quietly wondered about: when a publisher shuts down the servers for a game sitting in a Steam, PlayStation, Xbox, or Nintendo library, does the buyer have any right to keep playing it? This analysis covers what AB 1921 would have required, why it failed, how platforms handle shutdowns today, and what comes next on both sides of the Atlantic.
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What California’s Stop Killing Games Bill Would Have Required
AB 1921 was narrow by design. Assembly member Chris Ward introduced the bill in February 2026, and its authors built it around a simple mechanic: publishers would owe players advance warning and a way to keep playing, not permanent free support. Under the bill, any publisher planning to shut down the online services a paid game depends on would have to give at least 60 days’ notice. Once the servers came down, the publisher would need to do one of a few things: release a patch or standalone version that lets the game run without the original servers, hand the game off to community-run private servers, or refund the purchase price to anyone who could no longer play.
The bill also would have barred publishers from continuing to sell a game that goes fully unusable the moment official support ends, a direct response to titles that shipped as full-price purchases but functioned like rentals. Lawmakers wrote in real carve-outs: subscription services such as Xbox Game Pass, free-to-play titles, and games designed to run fully offline were all exempt. The obligations would only have applied to games released or resold after January 1, 2027, so nothing already on shelves would have been affected retroactively, according to the Assembly’s official bill analysis. That structure, closely tied to a 2024 California law that already forces digital storefronts to disclose that a purchase is really a license, was meant to make AB 1921 look like an incremental update rather than a sweeping mandate.
Inside the Senate Committee Vote That Killed AB 1921
The bill’s momentum looked strong right up until it hit the Senate. The Assembly passed AB 1921 on May 29, 2026, by a 43-16 vote reported by Kotaku, a comfortable enough margin that campaign organizers treated it as one of the biggest legislative wins to date in the United States. That momentum stalled on June 29, 2026, when the Senate’s Business, Professions and Economic Development Committee took it up for a first hearing. The committee vote split 4 ayes to 3 nays, with 4 members abstaining — a raw head count that actually favored the bill, but short of the majority of the full committee membership that committee rules require to advance a bill.
Because AB 1921 was granted reconsideration rather than an outright kill, it remains technically alive, just not in the near term. Reconsideration lets a bill’s author bring it back for another committee vote, but procedural deadlines mean AB 1921 cannot advance again during the 2026 legislative session — the earliest realistic opportunity is the 2027 session. The table below lays out how the bill moved from introduction to its Senate committee setback.
| Date | Milestone | Result |
|---|---|---|
| February 2026 | AB 1921 introduced by Assembly member Chris Ward | Referred to committee |
| April 6, 2026 | Bill amended; analysis published by the Assembly Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee | Advanced with amendments |
| May 29, 2026 | California State Assembly floor vote | Passed 43-16 |
| June 29, 2026 | Senate Business, Professions and Economic Development Committee hearing | Failed 4-3, 4 abstentions; reconsideration granted, blocked until 2027 |
| July 27, 2026 | EU Commission response deadline on the related Stop Killing Games citizens’ initiative | Pending |
Can AB 1921 Still Pass? What “Reconsideration” Actually Means
Reconsideration sounds like a lifeline, and technically it is one, but it doesn’t work the way many readers assume. Granting reconsideration keeps a bill from being formally declared dead, and it lets the original author request another committee vote without restarting the entire process in a future session. It does not, however, create a new vote on demand. As of July 2026, procedural deadlines already set for the 2026 legislative calendar mean AB 1921 cannot get a second Senate committee vote until the 2027 session convenes.
That timeline matters for how the vote should be read. AB 1921 did not lose because most of the committee opposed it, only 3 of 11 members voted no. It lost because 4 ayes and 4 abstentions left it short of the majority of the full committee that committee rules require to advance a bill, regardless of how few members actively voted against it. For backers, that math is the case for optimism heading into 2027: converting even two of the four members who abstained into “aye” votes would be enough to clear the bar that stopped AB 1921 this time.
Why the Entertainment Software Association Fought AB 1921
The loudest opposition to AB 1921 came from the Entertainment Software Association, the trade group representing major publishers including Electronic Arts, Microsoft, Sony, and Ubisoft. The ESA’s core objection targeted the bill’s community-server provision, the part that would let a publisher satisfy its obligations by handing server code or hosting rights to fan-run infrastructure instead of building an offline patch.
Private and community servers are illegal and constitute piracy.
Jennifer Gibbons, Entertainment Software Association Vice President, as reported by Hungarian Conservative
Gibbons added that fan-hosted servers operate without the safety and moderation standards publishers build into official infrastructure. That argument runs into a counterpoint the campaign has made for two years. Community servers already keep dozens of older multiplayer games playable long after publishers walk away, often with the tacit tolerance of the same companies now opposing legislation that would formalize the practice.
The clearest example came directly from the hearing: an ESA representative argued that AB 1921’s community-server provision would effectively make community-run Minecraft servers illegal, since those servers operate independently of Microsoft’s direct authorization in much the same way the bill’s private-server remedy was designed to protect. The comment sparked immediate backlash. Minecraft’s multiplayer ecosystem has run on player-hosted servers since the game’s release, including thousands of servers with large registered communities, and Microsoft has tolerated, and in many cases encouraged, that ecosystem for more than a decade since acquiring Mojang. Critics argued the example undercut the ESA’s own piracy framing rather than supporting it, since the reference point for “illegal” community servers was one of the most established and least controversial server ecosystems in gaming.
The committee’s narrow, mostly-abstention vote suggests lawmakers weren’t fully convinced by either side. Four of eleven committee members declined to vote at all, a sign the piracy framing landed with some legislators but not enough to build a majority against the bill outright.
Ross Scott, Accursed Farms, and the Rise of Stop Killing Games
Stop Killing Games traces back to a single event: Ubisoft’s decision to shut down The Crew, an open-world racing game, on March 31, 2024, four years after release. Players who had paid full price for a racing game discovered their purchase simply stopped working once Ubisoft pulled the servers, because the game required a permanent online connection even to play alone.
Ross Scott, a YouTuber who runs the channel Accursed Farms, turned that anger into an organized campaign within weeks. Scott’s argument was straightforward: publishers should not sell something that looks and functions like a permanent purchase, then revoke it entirely once it stops being profitable to support. The campaign grew into parallel pushes in the United States and European Union, and by July 2025 Engadget was reporting that Stop Killing Games had “reached 1,000,000 votes earlier this month,” forcing the EU to formally weigh preservation legislation for the first time. Scott stepped back from day-to-day leadership during what he called a standby break in August 2025, though he continued to appear at hearings and public events tied to the bills his campaign had inspired.
In February 2026, the campaign formalized its structure further, launching separate nonprofit organizations in the EU and US to handle long-term lobbying and to track which games get delisted or shut down going forward. That infrastructure is what put organizers in a position to testify on AB 1921 and to keep pressure on the European Commission ahead of its late-July deadline.
The Shutdowns That Fueled the Stop Killing Games Movement
The Crew wasn’t an isolated incident, and the games that followed kept the issue in the headlines. A survey of 738 online games published by Rock Paper Shotgun in May 2025 found that 68% were already unplayable or at risk of becoming so once their servers go dark, evidence that these headline cases are the pattern rather than the exception. Sony’s Concord, a live-service shooter from Firewalk Studios, launched in August 2024 and was pulled from sale roughly two weeks later after failing to attract players, with servers shut down shortly after. A fan-led effort to keep a version of Concord playable ran into a copyright takedown from Sony in November 2025. Electronic Arts’ Anthem, a BioWare live-service title that struggled from launch in 2019, went fully offline on January 12, 2026, under a shutdown plan EA announced in 2023. Not every shutdown has gone the same way: when Velan Studios and EA shut down the dodgeball game Knockout City on June 6, 2023, they gave players roughly 15 weeks of notice and released tools that let the community run its own servers, the closest any of these cases came to what AB 1921 would have mandated.
Each case fed a different argument for campaign organizers. The Crew showed that even games with a single-player mode get killed by server shutdowns. Concord showed how fast a live-service game can go from launch to deletion. Anthem showed that even years of advance notice, the exact remedy AB 1921 would have required, doesn’t resolve the core complaint on its own. Knockout City showed that a notice-plus-community-servers approach is technically possible when a publisher chooses it.
| Game | Publisher | Servers shut down | Advance notice / outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Crew | Ubisoft | March 31, 2024 | Roughly 2 months; no offline mode, purchase became unplayable |
| Concord | Sony / Firewalk Studios | ~2 weeks after August 2024 launch | Essentially none; fan revival hit a copyright takedown in Nov. 2025 |
| Knockout City | Velan Studios / EA | June 6, 2023 | About 15 weeks; community server tools released |
| Anthem | Electronic Arts / BioWare | January 12, 2026 | About 3 years (announced in 2023); no offline mode |
Europe’s Bigger Fight: 1.29 Million Signatures and a July 27 Deadline
While California’s bill stalled, the European wing of Stop Killing Games advanced further, then hit its own wall. The European Citizens’ Initiative tied to the campaign closed its signature-gathering window on July 31, 2025, with 1,448,271 signatures submitted and 1,294,188 verified as valid, an 89% validation rate that cleared the roughly one million threshold the EU requires by a wide margin — Game*Spark reported on July 8, 2025 that the campaign picked up an extra 300,000 signatures in that final month alone to clear the goal, and the official Stop Killing Games site itself puts the closing total at about 1.45 million signatures collected before the July 31, 2025 cutoff, a figure it was still citing as recently as August 2026. By June 2026, the pressure had moved beyond petition math: The Guardian reported that 45 Members of the European Parliament had thrown their weight behind a formal inquiry into Stop Killing Games, giving the citizens’ initiative institutional backing inside the Parliament itself. GamesRadar reported that the European Commission confirmed the verified signature count on January 26, 2026, and on June 16, 2026 it issued its formal response: no new EU law forcing publishers to keep dead games playable, opting instead for a voluntary code of conduct the Commission has promised to deliver by the end of 2026.
A successful Citizens’ Initiative doesn’t force the Commission to draft legislation. It only forces a response — GamesRadar had reported a July 27, 2026 deadline for that official response — and the Commission’s June 16, 2026 answer landed on the side campaigners feared: no binding law, just a voluntary code of conduct due by the end of 2026 that publishers can choose to sign or ignore. Still, an initiative crossing 1.29 million verified signatures puts real political pressure on Brussels, and the pressure isn’t confined to the EU: a parallel UK Parliament petition tied to Stop Killing Games crossed the 100,000-signature threshold that automatically qualifies a petition for consideration of a House of Commons debate on July 2, 2025, then kept growing, reaching 189,887 signatures by November 2025. Gaming policy watchers on both sides of the Atlantic now point to whether that end-of-2026 EU code of conduct has real teeth as the next checkpoint for the movement, arguably a bigger long-term test than the California vote that just failed. A voluntary code carries none of the enforcement weight formal EU legislation would have, meaning platforms selling games across the bloc face no new mandatory obligations regardless of what happens with any individual US state bill.
Do You Actually Own the Games You Buy?
None of this would be a live political fight if buying a game worked the way it appears to. Every major storefront, Steam, the PlayStation Store, the Xbox Store, and the Nintendo eShop, sells digital games through a license agreement, not a transfer of ownership, a distinction California already forced into the open with AB 2426, a 2024 law requiring digital sellers to disclose that purchases are licenses rather than property. That disclosure requirement is why Steam, PlayStation, and other storefronts added “you are purchasing a license” language at checkout starting in 2025.
In practice, the platforms differ in how much that license is worth once a publisher walks away. Steam has no formal shutdown-notice policy but benefits from Valve’s DRM-optional stance, which lets some developers ship games that keep working offline indefinitely. The PlayStation Store and Xbox Store both rely on publisher-by-publisher discretion for refunds and delisted-game access, with no blanket offline guarantee. Nintendo’s eShop has historically offered the least visibility into planned shutdowns. Mobile app stores follow a similar pattern to consoles: Apple and Google enforce their own digital-goods disclosure rules but leave shutdown notice and offline access entirely up to individual publishers. None of the major platform holders had issued a public statement specifically addressing Stop Killing Games or AB 1921 as of this writing.
| Platform | License disclosure at checkout | Formal shutdown-notice policy | Offline play guarantee |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam (Valve) | Yes, since 2025 | None | Case-by-case; DRM-optional titles unaffected by server shutdowns |
| PlayStation Store (Sony) | Yes, since 2025 | None | Case-by-case, set by each publisher |
| Xbox Store (Microsoft) | Yes, since 2025 | None | Case-by-case; Game Pass titles fall outside the ownership model entirely |
| Nintendo eShop | Yes, since 2025 | None | Least public visibility of the major console stores |
| Apple App Store / Google Play | Yes, per platform digital-goods rules | None | Left to individual publishers |
Market Impact: What Compliance Would Cost Game Platforms
Publishers and platform holders haven’t disclosed specific compliance-cost estimates for AB 1921, and no public company has flagged the bill as a financial risk factor in a 2026 filing. But the mechanics of the bill point to where the cost would land, and there’s growing evidence that keeping older titles accessible isn’t purely a cost center: publisher Pullup Entertainment reported back-catalogue revenue up 44.4% to €93.7 million in the first half of its 2025/26 fiscal year, according to GamesMarket, suggesting continued access to older games can still be a real revenue line rather than dead weight. Building an offline patch or standalone client for a game designed around always-online servers is real engineering work, not a checkbox, especially for titles built on backend systems such as matchmaking, anti-cheat, and live economies that were never designed to run without a server. Live-service games, the category publishers have bet the most development budget on since 2020, would carry the highest compliance cost per title.
That’s the real reason the ESA fought AB 1921 as hard as it did. A California law covering one of the largest game-buying populations in the country would likely become a de facto national standard, the same way California emissions rules and privacy law ended up shaping products sold nationwide. Publishers that build live-service games without an offline-capable fallback from day one would face a choice on every future release: engineer for shutdown compliance from the start, exit the California market for that title, or accept the legal exposure. Given how narrowly AB 1921 failed and the reconsideration status it retains, most industry legal teams are likely already modeling the first option rather than betting the bill stays dead.
How Exposed Is Each Platform Holder to Game-Preservation Rules?
The four major platform holders carry different levels of exposure to a Stop Killing Games-style law, mostly based on how much of their catalog depends on live servers. Microsoft looks the most exposed of the group on paper. Xbox has pushed hardest into subscription access through Game Pass, and The Verge has reported that Microsoft is separately weighing further studio closures, on top of the 3,200 jobs and four studios it already confirmed cutting on July 6, 2026. A shrinking studio roster raises the odds that a live-service title gets orphaned rather than formally sunset with notice.
Sony carries similar exposure through PlayStation’s live-service push, the same strategy that produced Concord‘s rapid shutdown. Nintendo’s exposure looks lower on paper since its first-party catalog skews single-player and its hardware has historically supported offline play by default, though its eShop offers the least visibility into any delisting policy. Valve sits in the most comfortable position of the four, since Steam’s DRM-optional structure already lets many PC games run indefinitely without a live server, a structural head start the other three would need years to replicate.
From License Disclosures to Digital Ownership Fights: The Longer History
AB 1921 didn’t appear out of nowhere. California passed AB 2426 in September 2024, requiring any company selling digital games, movies, or other media to clearly disclose that a “buy” button grants a license rather than outright ownership, with the law taking effect January 1, 2025. That law was itself a response to years of complaints after platforms quietly removed purchased content, from delisted older titles to publishers pulling licensed music and movies from digital libraries without warning.
AB 1921 was the next logical step from disclosure to remedy: once a platform is legally required to admit a purchase is a license, campaigners argue lawmakers have to decide what that license is actually worth. The video game industry’s own run of layoffs made the timing sharper. Coverage of the industry’s 2022-through-2026 layoff wave has put the cumulative job losses in the tens of thousands, with entire studios shuttered mid-development. Every studio closure raises the odds that a live-service game gets orphaned without the kind of organized wind-down AB 1921 would have required, which is exactly the pattern the campaign has spent two years trying to get ahead of.
Why This Is Landing in the Middle of Xbox’s Worst Year
The politics of AB 1921 collided with an unusually bad stretch for one of the industry’s largest platform holders. On July 6, 2026, Microsoft confirmed 3,200 Xbox job cuts and the divestment of five studios, Compulsion Games, Double Fine Productions, Ninja Theory, Undead Labs, and Arkane Studios, in what multiple outlets described as the deepest round of Xbox layoffs in the platform’s 25-year history. That announcement landed just one week after the Senate committee vote on AB 1921, and it followed a separate July 6, 2026 report from The Verge that Microsoft was weighing whether to close Arkane Studios and cancel an in-development title reportedly code-named Blade. Microsoft has not confirmed that report.
Neither event is legally connected to AB 1921. But they reinforce the same argument campaign organizers have been making in Sacramento and Brussels. Platform holders are consolidating around a smaller number of live-service and franchise bets, and every studio that closes mid-project adds another game to the list of titles at risk of disappearing without the wind-down process AB 1921 tried to mandate.
What Happens Next for AB 1921 and Stop Killing Games
AB 1921’s reconsideration status means the bill isn’t finished, just paused until 2027. Stop Killing Games’ new US nonprofit, formed in February 2026, gives the campaign a standing organization to keep lobbying between now and that next vote, rather than relying on volunteer momentum the way the original 2024 campaign did. Whether Assembly member Ward brings the bill back as soon as the 2027 session allows is still an open question, but the committee math, 4 ayes and 4 abstentions against just 3 nays, gives organizers a clearer target than an outright rejection would have.
The European Commission’s response has already landed and will likely shape the US fight regardless of what California decides. On June 16, 2026, the Commission ruled out drafting EU-wide legislation and instead committed to a voluntary code of conduct by the end of 2026, a noncommittal outcome that hands the ESA and its member publishers a stronger argument that the movement lacks the regulatory teeth its 1.29 million EU signatures might otherwise suggest. That leaves AB 1921’s 2027 reconsideration as the more consequential near-term test of whether Stop Killing Games can convert public pressure into an enforceable law anywhere.
5 Predictions for the Stop Killing Games Fight Through 2027
Based on the vote margins, the regulatory calendar, and how platform holders have handled similar consumer-rights fights in the past, here’s how the next year is likely to play out.
- AB 1921 gets a second Senate committee vote once the 2027 session opens, not before. Procedural deadlines already rule out another vote in 2026, but a 4-3 result with four abstentions is close enough that a modest lobbying push, or a shift in committee membership, could flip it next time.
- The European Commission’s July 27 response leans toward further study rather than draft legislation. Citizens’ Initiatives rarely produce immediate binding law, and the Commission has historically moved slowly even after a petition clears the signature threshold.
- At least one other US state introduces similar legislation within the next year. California has a long history of setting a template other legislatures copy once a bill gets real committee traction, the same pattern that followed the state’s earlier digital-goods disclosure law.
- No major platform holder issues a standalone public policy statement on Stop Killing Games before a law actually passes somewhere. Steam, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo have stayed silent through two years of campaigning and a full legislative cycle, letting the ESA function as their unified public voice instead.
- Publishers quietly start building offline-fallback modes into new live-service titles regardless of whether AB 1921 becomes law. Treating it as a cost of doing business in a market as large as California is cheaper than waiting for a legal mandate to force the issue later.
Related Coverage
For more on how gaming platforms are handling ownership, storefronts, and industry upheaval in 2026, see our full gaming coverage or read:
- PS Store vs Xbox Store vs eShop 2026: 0 vs 14-Day Refunds
- Sony Ends PlayStation Physical Games in 2028: 3% Left [2026]
- Xbox Confirms 3,200 Cuts, Sells 4 Studios [2026]
- Game Layoffs Hit 1 in 3 US Devs; Ubisoft Strikes [2026]
- Steam Machine Pre-Orders: $1,049, Ships June 30 [2026]
Frequently Asked Questions About Stop Killing Games
What is the Stop Killing Games movement?
Stop Killing Games is a consumer campaign started by YouTuber Ross Scott, known online as Accursed Farms, in 2024 after Ubisoft shut down The Crew. It argues that publishers should not be able to fully disable a purchased video game once they stop supporting it, and it runs parallel lobbying efforts in the United States and European Union.
Did California’s Stop Killing Games bill, AB 1921, pass?
No. AB 1921 passed the California Assembly 43-16 on May 29, 2026, but failed in a Senate committee vote on June 29, 2026, by a margin of 4 in favor, 3 against, and 4 abstentions, short of the majority the committee needed. It was granted reconsideration, but procedural deadlines mean it can’t be brought back for another vote until the 2027 legislative session.
What would AB 1921 have required game publishers to do?
Publishers would have needed to give at least 60 days’ notice before shutting down the online services a paid game relies on, then either provide an offline-playable patch, enable community-run servers, or refund the purchase. The rules would only have applied to games released or resold after January 1, 2027, and exempted subscription services, free-to-play games, and offline-only titles.
Why did the Entertainment Software Association oppose the bill?
The ESA argued that the bill’s community-server provision would legitimize what it considers piracy. ESA vice president Jennifer Gibbons told lawmakers that private and community servers lack the safety and moderation standards of official infrastructure. During the hearing, an ESA representative also cited Minecraft’s community server ecosystem as an example of servers that would become newly legal under the bill, a comment that drew significant public backlash.
Is Stop Killing Games only a California issue?
No. A parallel European Citizens’ Initiative tied to the same campaign — which Euronews reported had already surpassed 1 million signatures across seven EU member states by July 2025 — gathered 1,294,188 verified signatures (an 89% validation rate GamesRadar reported the Commission confirmed on January 26, 2026) and drew backing from 45 Members of the European Parliament who, per The Guardian, supported a formal inquiry into the issue by June 2026, and on June 16, 2026 the European Commission responded by ruling out new legislation in favor of a voluntary code of conduct due by the end of 2026. The pressure has already produced concrete results elsewhere: a parallel UK Parliament petition tied to the campaign topped 189,887 signatures by November 2025, and at least one national consumer-rights law inspired by the campaign took effect on January 1, 2025, carving out an exception for games that remain functional after official support ends. The outcome in Brussels could still end up shaping platform policy more broadly than the California bill on its own, depending on how much weight publishers give a non-binding code.
Do I own the games I buy on Steam, PlayStation, Xbox, or Nintendo?
Legally, not in the traditional sense. Every major storefront sells games under a license, not a transfer of ownership, a distinction California’s 2024 law AB 2426 already forces platforms to disclose at checkout. What that license is worth once a publisher shuts down a game’s servers varies by platform and by title.
Which games prompted the Stop Killing Games campaign?
Ubisoft’s The Crew, shut down March 31, 2024, is the case most often cited as the campaign’s origin. Sony’s Concord, pulled roughly two weeks after its August 2024 launch, and Electronic Arts’ Anthem, which went offline January 12, 2026, are frequently cited as supporting examples of how differently publishers handle shutdowns.
What happens next for AB 1921?
Because the bill was granted reconsideration rather than defeated outright, Assembly member Chris Ward can bring it back for another Senate committee vote, but not until the 2027 legislative session at the earliest. Its momentum is likely to be influenced by the European Commission’s July 27, 2026 response to the parallel EU initiative.
