The Power to the Players Act: Do You Own Your Games?
A bill with the best name in gaming policy just dropped: per The Verge, Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) introduced the Power to the Players Act, which would direct the FTC to write regulations guaranteeing that when you pay for a game, you own it — rather than holding a revocable license to play it.
The poster child: NBA 2K25
Torres picked a living example. 2K is delisting NBA 2K25 from storefronts at the end of this month and shutting its servers on December 31 — after which the game buyers paid for becomes substantially unplayable. This is not a hypothetical; it is this quarter's business model in action.
What the bill would require
- Ownership, not license: FTC regulations treating a purchased game as consumer property.
- An offline mode before shutdown: developers must provide a way to play without company servers before pulling the plug.
The offline-mode requirement mirrors Pennsylvania's Protect Our Games Act, which would demand an offline mode, an independent online mode, or a minimum 25 percent refund when titles sunset.
The quote that will outlive the bill
"A game that can be taken away the moment a company pulls the plug is not a purchase. It is a rental disguised as a sale." Whatever happens in committee, that sentence is now the standard framing for every delisting announcement — including 2K's, this month.
Context and odds
The timing follows Sony's plan to phase out physical game discs by 2028, which moves the whole industry toward server-dependent digital ownership at exactly the moment legislators noticed. The road from bill to law is long, and similar efforts (like Europe's push around software ownership) show progress is possible but slow. Meanwhile, the practical takeaway for players is unchanged: buy digital titles you care about with eyes open, and remember that launch labels tell you what you are actually getting. Policy news like this lands in guides because it changes what your library is worth.