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Stop Killing Games, the consumer movement which has hit headlines several times over the past year, has landed its biggest win yet.
Last week, the California State Assembly passed the ‘Protect Our Games’ act, bringing the campaign a step closer to its goal. But it still faces stiff resistance from industry bodies like the ESA, the organisers of E3.
For those who don’t know, this entire movement was sparked by The Crew, which was permanently taken offline in 2024.
Effectively, campaigners want to stop publishers from disabling their games by shutting down servers, arguing there should be a way to keep playing these titles in perpetuity via some form of readily available offline mode.
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The aforementioned bill proposes new conditions publishers would have to adhere to should it pass the California Senate.
Among these are rules which would require publishers to notify players of any impending server closures 60 days before they’re disabled.
More importantly, it would legally require companies to provide some form of playable single player mode indefinitely, or at least arm users with a way to set up their own servers to host the game.
This would only apply to commercially available games, however, which would let free-to-play titles off the hook.
But the ESA argues the proposal is not feasible:
“Many games depend on evolving technology, licensed content, and online systems that change over time. Assembly Bill 1921 could force developers to spend limited time and resources keeping old systems running instead of creating new games, features, and technology. In the end, this policy doesn't reflect how games actually work today. This bill sets strict rules that could ultimately mean fewer new and innovative experiences for players.”
I’m torn on this one because while I do fully agree with the movement’s premise overall, I do think many players are underestimating the amount of work involved here.
As a free-to-play game, my beloved Honkai: Star Rail wouldn’t necessarily be affected by this new act, but I sometimes think about how difficult it would be to get that game running in an offline environment.
Even though it’s a wholly single player game, it’s designed around the premise that you’re always connected to the Internet, where all of your progress is synced and stored on the cloud.
Could it function offline? Yes, I’m sure it could – but I don’t think it’s as simple as just turning the servers off. I think the game would require re-developing from the ground-up to make that work.
And you have to consider, if a company’s disabling the servers to begin with, it likely means the game in question is no longer being played, meaning it’s difficult to justify any additional development at all.
But while I can certainly see this issue, I also don’t agree with software people have paid for effectively being taken away from them. I have a copy of The Crew on Blu-ray, and it’s worthless these days, which does seem silly considering the game included plenty of single player content in it – despite its always-online requirement.
I think the ESA is fighting this on behalf of game publishers because they don’t want to commit to the extra work outlined above. But if it wants to build these always-online experiences, perhaps it should be required to put in some failsafes for when the servers eventually go offline.
I’ll be interested to see where this all ends up. It’s clear this battle is not over, whatever the conclusion ends up being.