The American consumer rights organization Stop Killing Games (SKG) has recently suffered setbacks in two key legal battles in Europe and the United States, but it said it will not give up and will continue to promote stronger legal protection for paid online games. SKG accused the gaming industry lobby groups of spreading panic and false information, and has launched new actions in other states in the United States. It has also launched an open recruitment, hoping to attract more industry insiders to participate in legislative hearings to fight lobbying forces.
On the U.S. side, the Protect Our Games Act from California, known as AB 1921, was stalled in the state Senate by a narrow margin of three votes, failing to gain majority support. The bill originally required that for online games sold as a one-time purchase and "only playable online", publishers should notify users at least 60 days in advance before ending official server support, and stop selling related games during this period. At the same time, they must provide certain remedies, such as adding an offline mode or providing a full refund; subscription-based and free-to-play games are not within the scope of its supervision.
The direct background of AB 1921 is the incident in 2024 when Ubisoft shut down the servers of the online racing game "The Crew". At that time, approximately 12 million physical and digital games were completely unplayable due to server shutdowns, triggering a large number of lawsuits and strong backlash, and also contributed to the birth of the SKG rights movement. After this controversy, a Ubisoft executive once stated that "players need to get used to not really owning the game," further fueling controversy and forcing the company to add an offline mode to the sequel "The Crew 2" in response to criticism.
SKG has also previously lobbied the European Commission in hopes of pushing for legislation similar to AB 1921. Although the initiative eventually gathered around 1.3 million signatures in support, the European Commission opted not to legislate, instead proposing to discuss only a non-binding industry agreement with game publishers and consumer groups later this year. The decision, taken after a closed-door meeting between the European Commission and Ubisoft and other European game publishers, was seen by SKG as an important defeat in the battle.
During consideration in the California Senate, AB 1921 voted in the Business, Career and Economic Development Committee: 4 Democrats were in favor, 3 Republicans were against, and the remaining Democrats abstained, resulting in the bill not passing. SKG took aim at the lobbying efforts of the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), specifically the organization's representative Jennifer Gibbons's general attack on "private dedicated servers" during a hearing.
Allowing players to operate private dedicated servers is seen as one of the main remedies to maintain game playability after official server shutdowns. However, when senators brought up community-built Minecraft and Call of Duty servers during the hearing, Gibbons claimed that the servers "are illegal and have no connection to parent company Microsoft." She said at the meeting: "Yes, we think this is piracy." Later, in an interview with PC Gamer, ESA confirmed again that the association believes that private servers infringe relevant intellectual property rights.
This statement caused strong controversy in the industry. The official "Minecraft" website actually publicly provides relevant documents for setting up private servers, and according to the game's End User License Agreement (EULA), players are allowed to run private servers under certain conditions. SKG further criticized ESA in its community for providing false or misleading information to lawmakers unfamiliar with the gaming industry, such as repeatedly describing SKG as a movement that demands "official servers to be permanently online," a label that SKG itself does not subscribe to.
At the same time, the publisher and ESA claim that it is "not realistically feasible" to continue guaranteeing playability of the game after the copyright on licensed content has expired. However, there are currently many games that allow players who have purchased digital content before the license expires to continue to use related games or content later, which calls the above statement into question. SKG believes that industry lobbying forces are taking advantage of the information asymmetry of legislators to strive for maximum freedom for themselves, but at the expense of player rights.
Faced with the defeat of AB 1921 and European initiatives, SKG attributed the main reason to a serious lack of funding and lobbying resources. The organization stated that it will increase its fundraising efforts in the future and actively cooperate with developers and other game industry practitioners, hoping to promote legislation in more states in the United States and potentially at the federal court level. Currently, SKG has launched an open call to invite developers and industry insiders who are willing to provide professional opinions at legislative hearings and refute industry lobbying arguments to sign up. The relevant registration form is open to the public through an online form.