Rep. Ritchie Torres just dropped the Power To The Players Act, a federal shot across the bow at the licensing scam that lets publishers treat every digital purchase like a revocable rental. The bill directs the FTC to rewrite the rules so buying a game means actual ownership, with the right to play it and transfer it, not some EULA that evaporates the second servers go dark. NBA 2K25 serves as the timely Exhibit A: the $70 title launched in 2024, gets delisted October 30, and loses its servers December 31—rendering the grind-heavy modes millions paid for unplayable after barely two years.
The legislation also mandates functional offline modes for server-dependent games before support ends, echoing the stalled Protect Our Games Act out of Pennsylvania. Torres framed it plainly in his announcement and Kotaku interview: "When you pay for a game, you should own it... 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." Sony’s planned phase-out of physical discs by 2028 only sharpens the urgency. This isn’t nostalgia for cartridges—it’s a direct challenge to the EULA loophole that killed First Sale Doctrine applicability for digital goods.
Industry pushback is already baked in. Most federal bills die in committee, California’s similar effort collapsed under lobbying, and tech giants plus the ESA have every incentive to bury this in red tape. Reddit threads show the usual mix of cautious hope and weary cynicism: some call it a rare W, others note the lack of cosponsors and the technical headaches of forcing offline patches on live-service titles. Torres, a Bronx native who grew up on GTA and Resident Evil, is betting families who saved for these games deserve better than vanishing libraries. Receipts are mounting; whether Congress actually moves them is another story.
