Stop Killing Games stopped: California’s game-preservation bill stalls in the Senate
The Protect Our Games Act, which would force publishers to keep paid games playable after shutdown, just failed a key California Senate committee vote, killed largely by abstentions. Here’s what the bill would’ve done, who fought it, both sides of the private-server clash, and why the movement says it’s “not even close” to over.
The fight to stop publishers from making your paid games unplayable just hit a serious roadblock. A landmark California bill backed by the Stop Killing Games movement failed a key Senate vote, stalling it for now.
It’s a real setback, but it’s not the knockout the headlines suggest, and the campaign is already vowing to come back swinging. Here’s exactly what happened, and what it means for the games you own.
What the bill would have done
First, what was actually on the table, because it’s something a lot of gamers have wanted for years.
The bill is AB 1921, the Protect Our Games Act, introduced by California Assemblyman Chris Ward. Its goal: stop the increasingly common nightmare where you pay full price for a game, then lose access forever when the publisher flips off the servers.
Specifically, it would have required publishers to give players 60 days’ notice before shutting down a game, and then do one of three things:
Provide a version of the game that works independent of the publisher’s servers (an offline version)
Patch the existing game so it keeps working after shutdown
Or refund the player the full original purchase price
It would’ve applied to games released after January 1, 2027, with free-to-play and subscription games excluded. In short: if you bought it, you’d get to keep playing it, or get your money back.
What just happened
Here’s the setback, and the mechanics matter.
After clearing the California State Assembly by a healthy 43-16 vote in May, the bill moved to the State Senate. There, in a June 29 committee hearing, it failed to advance. The vote: four yes, three no, and the rest of the committee abstained.
That’s the part worth understanding. In a committee vote, an abstention works just like a no, a bill only moves forward if it gets a majority of yes votes. So all those senators who declined to vote effectively killed it, without ever having to go on record against it. As a campaign volunteer put it, “Not enough yeses means the bill stops here for this session.”
The underdog detail: they did it on zero dollars
This part reframes the whole loss, and it’s worth knowing.
The campaign was blunt about the David-and-Goliath nature of the fight. “This was our first attempt, in our first year, in the United States, with a US budget of zero dollars,” a volunteer wrote. “No paid staff in California. No war chest. No in-person lobbying operation.”
In other words, this wasn’t a fully-resourced campaign that got its idea rejected on the merits. It was an unfunded, volunteer-run effort that ran out of time to even put lobbyists in the building, going up against an organized, well-financed industry group. Seen that way, losing by abstentions on the first try looks less like a rejection and more like getting outspent before the real fight even started.
So it’s “stopped”, but how stopped?
Let’s be precise here, because the framing matters.
This wasn’t the government banning game preservation, or a governor vetoing it. It was a single state bill stalling in committee because not enough senators backed it this session. The bill isn’t dead forever, it’s stalled for now, and can be reintroduced.
It’s also worth remembering this was a California state bill, not a federal law. Though, because California is such a massive market, a law there often becomes the de facto national standard, companies usually change their practices everywhere rather than build California-only systems. So a win here would have rippled nationwide, which is exactly why the industry fought it so hard.
The private-server fight: both sides
This is the most contentious piece, and now both sides are on the record, so here’s the full clash.
The Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the main trade group for big publishers, opposed the bill. Their broad argument: a law like this “could force developers to spend limited time and resources keeping old systems running instead of creating new games,” and modern games rely on “evolving technology, licensed content, and online systems that change over time.”
The flashpoint was private servers, the idea that, after shutdown, fans could run their own servers to keep a game alive (the way communities already do for games like Minecraft). Stop Killing Games accused the ESA of telling senators that allowing this would be illegal, calling the claim “misleading to flatly false.”
The ESA then responded directly, and gave its actual reasoning. Private servers, it argues, “infringe on the intellectual property (IP) rights of game publishers,” and the bill treating them as a legitimate option “raises concerns about a publisher’s ability to enforce their IP rights.” The group also raised a player-safety angle: private servers “operate with no oversight from the publisher and do not uphold the same trust and safety standards,” which it says could create “an unsafe environment for players.”
So here’s the genuine disagreement, laid out plainly. The movement says publishers are fearmongering to protect a profitable status quo, and that the bill simply “gives companies options: preserve ordinary use, patch the game, or refund the purchaser.” The industry says forcing publishers to bless fan-run servers tramples their IP rights and removes safety oversight. Both points are real, it’s a legitimate clash between consumer ownership and intellectual-property control, and where you land depends on which you weigh heavier.
Why this fight exists at all
For anyone new to this, here’s the backdrop, and it’s genuinely infuriating for gamers.
Stop Killing Games was started in 2024 by Ross Scott, after Ubisoft shut down The Crew, a 2014 racing game players had paid full price for. When the servers went off, the game became completely unplayable, even though much of it was effectively single-player. People who’d bought it were left with nothing.
That’s the core grievance: increasingly, you don’t really own the games you buy, you own a revocable license that a company can switch off whenever it’s no longer profitable to maintain. Other examples pile up fast, like Babylon’s Fall, a $60 game shut down within a year with no refunds.
What “doing it right” can look like
It’s not all horror stories, though, and one example shows the system working.
When Warner Bros. shut down its Super Smash Bros. competitor MultiVersus in 2025, it didn’t just vanish. Players who logged in during a set window got their save files updated so an offline version stays playable, with all their earned and purchased content intact. That’s essentially the kind of outcome the bill wants to make standard, a graceful shutdown that lets you keep what you paid for, instead of a server flip that erases it. It proves publishers can do this when they choose to.
The movement isn’t backing down
Here’s why this “stop” might be temporary.
The campaign’s response to the defeat was defiant. “We are not stopping,” a representative said. “Not even close.” They laid out a real plan: come back next session with an in-person lobbying presence, proper funding, and a long list of developers and organizations signed on in support.
And they’re going wider. The group says it intends to introduce similar bills in other state legislatures, and is “seriously looking at the federal level.” Their warning to the industry group: “The ESA is about to learn what it is like to fight on many fronts at once.” This loss in California, in other words, may just scatter the fight into a dozen new ones.
The bottom line
Here’s where things actually stand.
Did Stop Killing Games lose this round? Yes. The Protect Our Games Act stalled in the California Senate, killed quietly by abstentions after passing the Assembly, and that’s a genuine blow to the idea of legally guaranteed game preservation, for now.
But “stopped” isn’t “over.” It was an unfunded first attempt that’s now promising to come back resourced, the bill can return, the movement is expanding to other states and eyeing federal action, and the underlying problem, paying full price for games that can be switched off forever, isn’t going anywhere. As long as publishers keep pulling the plug on games people paid for, this fight is going to keep finding new arenas. The servers may go dark, but this movement clearly has no intention of doing the same.
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Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.
Hat Tips:
Video Games Chronicle (June 30, 2026), Chris Scullion, verified for the State Senate committee vote (4 Democrats yes, 3 Republicans no, rest abstained), the abstention-equals-no mechanics, the “zero dollars / first attempt” campaign statement, the ESA’s full response on private servers (the IP-infringement and player-safety arguments), the “misleading to flatly false” accusation, the MultiVersus graceful-shutdown example, and the multi-state/federal expansion plans
Game Rant and Insider Gaming (May–June 2026), verified for the Protect Our Games Act / AB 1921 details (60-day notice, the three remedies), the 43-16 Assembly passage, Chris Ward as sponsor, and the free-to-play/subscription exclusions
Wikipedia (June 2026), verified for the movement’s 2024 founding by Ross Scott, the Ubisoft The Crew origin, the Babylon’s Fall example, the January 2027 applicability date, and the California-effect national-standard context