Stop Killing Games has come a long way in a very short period of time, from longshot consumer campaign just two years ago to European Parliament presentation and international NGOs in 2026. Despite those successes, it’s still facing pushback from the game industry itself, which is once again warning consumers—in dire tones, I’m sure—that they should be careful what they wish for.
In April, Stop Killing Games endorsed the Protect Our Games Act—formally known as AB 1921—which if adopted (it’s still working its way through the California legislature) would compel game makers to notify owners in advance of coming server shutdowns, and either provide a version of the game that can be used without online services, patch the existing game so servers are no longer required, or provide a full refund.
“AB 1921 is narrow. It applies to paid games going forward and gives companies options: preserve ordinary use, patch the game, or refund the purchaser,” Katzner wrote. “The industry wants people to think this is a demand for eternal server support, with endless costs and complications. It isn’t. It’s much simpler: If a company sells people a paid game, it should not be able to destroy the game’s ordinary use later without notice or remedy.”
In the past the ESA has also lobbied hard against other efforts to preserve access to games. In 2024, the organization’s lawyers argued against a DMCA allowance for libraries and museums to provide remote access to games. “I don’t think there is at the moment any combination of limitations that ESA members would support to provide remote access,” an ESA spokesperson said at a US Copyright Office hearing, citing the risk that too many people could request access to play the games for fun, rather than research. The Copyright Office ultimately sided with the ESA over the Software Preservation Network representatives advocating for the exception.
The ESA’s statement on Stop Killing Games, while overwrought, is not unprecedented, or even limited to American lobbying groups. In 2025, Video Games Europe, essentially the EU version of the ESA, issued basically the same warning, saying that Stop Killing Games’ demands could expose gamers to “unsafe community content” and “would curtail developer choice by making these videogames prohibitively expensive to create.”
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