--- title: US Rep Announces Congressional Legislation to Protect... description: Rep. Ritchie Torres (NY-15) has announced the Power To The Players Act, legislation directing the FTC to establish rules ensuring consumers who buy video games... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/us-rep-announces-congressional-legislation-to-protect-video-game-ownership-61w1m2out twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: US Rep Announces Congressional Legislation to Protect Video Game Ownership | daily.dev og:description: Rep. Ritchie Torres (NY-15) has announced the Power To The Players Act, legislation directing the FTC to establish rules ensuring consumers who buy video games... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/us-rep-announces-congressional-legislation-to-protect-video-game-ownership-61w1m2out og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/61w1M2oUT.png og:image:alt: US Rep Announces Congressional Legislation to Protect Video Game Ownership og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # US Rep Announces Congressional Legislation to Protect Video Game Ownership **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 2 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Rep. Ritchie Torres (NY-15) has announced the Power To The Players Act, legislation directing the FTC to establish rules ensuring consumers who buy video games actually own them rather than a revocable license. The bill is prompted in part by NBA 2K25, which retailed up to $99.99 and will be delisted from digital storefronts and have its servers shut down just two years after release. The proposed law would require games to transfer ownership upon purchase, mandate offline modes before server shutdowns, and preserve consumers' ability to resell games they bought. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What is the Power To The Players Act and what would it require game companies to do? It is legislation announced by Rep. Ritchie Torres (NY-15) directing the Federal Trade Commission to establish regulations ensuring consumers own, rather than merely license, the video games they purchase. The bill would require games with online functionality to provide an offline mode before servers are shut down, and would preserve consumers' ability to resell games they bought. _daily.dev surfaces policy shifts like this for developers tracking digital ownership and licensing rules._ ### Why is NBA 2K25 losing online support so soon after release? NBA 2K25, which retailed for $69.99 standard and $99.99 for the All-Star Edition, will be delisted from digital storefronts on October 30 and have its online servers shut down on December 31, only two years after its initial release. This short lifespan was cited as a prompting example for proposed federal legislation on game ownership rights. _Follow daily.dev for how live-service shutdown timelines keep shaping consumer and developer expectations._ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 75 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-10-16). **TL;DR:** Discussion largely supports the intent of forcing companies to preserve access to purchased games, but most debate centers on whether requiring server binaries or offline modes is technically and legally workable, plus a side argument over whether Congress should prioritize this over bigger issues. **Sentiment:** 30% positive · 45% mixed · 25% skeptical **The case for** - Preserving access to purchased games (e.g. via documentation, APIs, or removing legal liability for fan-run servers) is seen as more achievable and reasonable than full source release. - Some argue AI-assisted reverse engineering will make server preservation feasible even without company cooperation. - Supporters note video games are a huge industry deserving consumer-protection attention just like other media. **The pushback** - Many argue requiring companies to release server binaries or source code is unrealistic since server code is often shared across titles, contains proprietary/third-party components, or is under NDA. - Skeptics doubt the bill will ever pass, citing the sponsor's historically low rate of getting bills enacted. - Some see this as a low-priority distraction given larger political/economic problems. - Concern that companies could exploit loopholes (e.g. pricing old games absurdly high) to avoid compliance. **By community** - hackernews (heated): Debate split between enthusiastic support for the ownership principle and strong technical pushback on the feasibility of mandating server code release, alongside a tangential fight over whether this issue deserves legislative attention at all. **Hottest debate:** Whether mandating offline modes/server preservation for online games (especially MMOs) is technically feasible without forcing companies to release proprietary source code. **Open questions** - What exactly would be mandated for online-only/MMO games if full server code release is impractical — binaries, documentation, or API specs? - Would removing legal liability for fan-run servers be sufficient instead of forcing disclosure? - How would the bill handle companies reusing shared codebases across live and discontinued titles? - Will this bill actually pass given the sponsor's track record? **Highlights** > Yeah, the idea of game companies (especially MMO or live service ones) being mandated to release server binaries or code is completely unworkable. Companies are not going to want to give away their main proprietary advantage that they've invested into. Games are already a high-risk investment and this would make it even higher risk because the little competitive moat between studios would be eliminated. The industry has been hit hard by layoffs and making gaming even less desirable for investment will further accelerate that. Any failed game (which is most games, because gaming is a hits driven industry) would be saddled with even more liability. Not to mention most commercial middleware is under NDA, so having their source become public would likely destroy those companies, too. I am not opposed to some mandatory disclosures at the time of sale - like "this multiplayer game requires centralized servers", etc. But straight up requiring server binaries is not going to be viable for a whole swath of online-only game studios like MMO/live service/subscription games etc. > — [Scaled on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50122299) > I would argue that server binaries are less important now in the age of AI. The ability to reverse engineer them is so accessible now. I think more importantly / more digestible is that you can't pursue legislation against people running their own game servers if you no longer offer the game yourself. > — [jjcm on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50122092) > I would say that it can be pretty simple to solve these problems. If a software company is going to implement a license server or a time limited certificate into a piece of software that will prevent the software from working, then they should be mandated to keep all customer payments in escrow and within 5 minutes of the software becoming unusable by the users, the money has to be returned, with interest and adjusted for inflation. > — [wang\_li on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50121354) > I doubt it will become law either way. Congress.gov says Rep. Ritchie Torres has sponsored 171 bills since 2021 and only one became a law, five passed the House and most of those were under Democrat majority. [1] [1] https://www.congress.gov/quick-search/legislation?congressGr... > — [Brybry on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50120838) > So, to be clear, you believe government should focus on one problem at a time to the exclusion of anything else or am I missing something? That's never been how government, of any form up to and including the utopian visions that people keep in their dreams, has functioned. I agree, we have much bigger fish to fry, but "I don't care about this issue so nobody should" isn't how you build a coalition to get the poverty addressed. A lot of politics is "hey Gamers, remember how I got you that thing you wanted? Well now I need support as I take on a bigger, more important topic". Inversely, saying "I don't care about your problem until another problem is resolved" tends to fray the group because you're quite literally telling people you don't respect them or their needs/wants. You should check out the book "Let This Radicalize You", great primer on how to organize and get actual results vs doomering on the internet. Addendum (reason for edit): Here's a list of other policy proposals and stances this guy is making: https://ritchietorres.house.gov/resources Draw your own conclusions, but he doesn't seem like he's 100% focused on gamer issues at present... > — [moate on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50121174) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50120101) · 124 points · 75 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Stop Killing Games Celebrates Major Win: Protect Our Games Act Passed](https://daily.dev/posts/stop-killing-games-celebrates-major-win-protect-our-games-act-passed-y7dzkkkli) · 80 LEVEL · 1 upvotes · 1 comments - [The California State Assembly passes AB 1921, Stop Killing Games' Protect Our Games Act](https://daily.dev/posts/the-california-state-assembly-passes-ab-1921-stop-killing-games-protect-our-games-act-dxeuyz9yu) · GamesIndustry.biz · 38 upvotes · 10 comments - [Stop Killing Games is a consumer-driven shake up for digital distribution as a whole \| Opinion](https://daily.dev/posts/stop-killing-games-is-a-consumer-driven-shake-up-for-digital-distribution-as-a-whole-opinion-lc9mprzt8) · GamesIndustry.biz · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [2026 has changed gaming for the worse, gamers just don't realize it yet](https://daily.dev/posts/2026-has-changed-gaming-for-the-worse-gamers-just-don-t-realize-it-yet-lqosmyurx) · XDA Developers · 1 upvotes · 0 comments --- [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/us-rep-announces-congressional-legislation-to-protect-video-game-ownership-61w1m2out) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"US Rep Announces Congressional Legislation to Protect Video Game Ownership","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/us-rep-announces-congressional-legislation-to-protect-video-game-ownership-61w1m2out","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/us-rep-announces-congressional-legislation-to-protect-video-game-ownership-61w1m2out"},"datePublished":"2026-10-16T16:48:35.848Z","dateModified":"2026-10-16T18:52:08.220Z","description":"Rep. 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