The Protect Our Games Act is a proposed US law that would stop publishers from quietly killing online games their customers already paid for. Pennsylvania State Senator John Kane has circulated a co-sponsorship memorandum outlining the bill, with the eventual goal of bringing it before the United States Senate with backing from all 50 states.
Key takeaways
- ✓Pennsylvania Senator John Kane is circulating a co-sponsorship memo for the Protect Our Games Act.
- ✓Publishers would need to give 60 days' notice before discontinuing an online game.
- ✓Developers would have to choose offline mode, a server-independent patch, or a refund.
- ✓Any refund must equal at least 25% of the game's highest price in the prior 12 months.
- ✓A similar push already failed in California under the Stop Killing Games banner.
The idea is straightforward: too many players have bought a game outright, only to find it unplayable months or years later when a publisher flips the switch on its servers. Kane’s proposal would put legal guardrails around that practice for the first time at this scale, giving buyers a genuine say in what happens to a game they own once a company decides to move on.
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What the Protect Our Games Act would actually require
Under the memorandum, game developers would need to give customers at least 60 days’ notice before discontinuing a title or making changes that affect how it functions, including shutting down online servers. That warning period alone would be a meaningful shift, since many shutdowns currently happen with little more than a brief announcement and a short countdown.
More significantly, the bill would force developers to choose one of three paths before pulling support. They could leave the game fully playable offline, release a patch that lets players keep using online features without relying on the original company’s servers, or refund buyers outright. None of these options is a token gesture; each would require real engineering or financial commitment from the publisher involved.
The refund option comes with specific conditions attached. Any payout would need to be based on the highest price the game was sold at during the 12 months before it stopped operating, and it could not fall below 25% of that listed price. That detail matters because it prevents a publisher from discontinuing a game right after a deep discount and then offering only a token few dollars back to affected players.
Why Pennsylvania, and why now
This isn’t the first attempt at legislation like this in the United States. A similar effort recently failed in California, part of a wider push tied to the grassroots Stop Killing Games movement that has been campaigning internationally for stronger consumer protections around game preservation. That California setback hasn’t ended the broader campaign; it has simply shifted the fight to a new state.
Pennsylvania now looks like the next battleground. Kane’s memo is aimed at his Senate colleagues first, a standard early step for building support before a bill is formally introduced. It’s not yet law, and it hasn’t even reached the formal proposal stage in Washington, but the ambition behind it, seeking participation from every state, signals this is meant as more than a symbolic gesture.
The timing lines up with growing frustration among players who have watched live-service titles vanish entirely once a publisher decides the revenue no longer justifies the server costs. Games that once felt like permanent purchases have increasingly turned out to be temporary licences to access someone else’s infrastructure, and that gap between expectation and reality is exactly what this bill targets.
How this compares to the wider preservation push
The Protect Our Games Act sits alongside the international Stop Killing Games campaign, which has pushed for similar consumer rights protections in Europe and beyond. That campaign argues players should retain some form of access to games they’ve bought, even after official support ends, rather than losing them entirely to a corporate decision.
It’s a similar spirit to community projects built to keep games playable after official support ends, though those efforts rely on independent developers reverse-engineering solutions rather than publishers being legally obligated to help. A law like this would shift that burden back onto the companies that built the games in the first place, rather than leaving fans to patch the gap themselves.
It also arrives at a moment when governments are paying closer attention to how games are regulated more broadly, from consumer protection to player safety. Readers following another gaming law working its way through legislatures will recognise the pattern: policymakers are increasingly willing to intervene in an industry that has largely regulated itself until now.
What it means for players and publishers
For players, the appeal is obvious. A guaranteed offline mode, a workaround patch, or a fair refund would replace the current situation, where a shutdown notice often means a game simply disappears with no recourse. That’s a meaningful change for anyone who has sunk hours, or money on in-game purchases, into a title that later gets shut down without warning.
For publishers, the calculus is more complicated. Building an offline mode or a server-independent patch after the fact requires engineering resources that may not have been budgeted for, particularly for smaller studios or games built around always-online architecture from day one. Some developers may argue this changes the economics of running live-service games altogether, since ongoing server costs are often the reason titles get shut down in the first place.
Whether the Protect Our Games Act gets further than its Californian predecessor remains to be seen. It still needs formal introduction and broader state-by-state support before it has any legal weight. But the fact that lawmakers keep bringing variations of this idea back suggests the pressure around game preservation isn’t going away, regardless of how this particular attempt fares.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Protect Our Games Act?
It’s a proposed US bill, currently being circulated by Pennsylvania Senator John Kane, that would require game publishers to give 60 days’ notice before shutting down an online game and offer players an offline mode, a server-independent patch, or a refund.
Has the Protect Our Games Act been passed into law?
No. It is still at the co-sponsorship memorandum stage in Pennsylvania and has not been formally introduced as a bill in the US Senate.
How is this different from the Stop Killing Games campaign?
Stop Killing Games is an international grassroots movement pushing for similar consumer protections, including in Europe. The Protect Our Games Act is a specific US legislative attempt inspired by that same broader push for game preservation.
Why did a similar law fail in California?
Details on the exact reasons for California’s rejection haven’t been fully confirmed publicly, but the setback there hasn’t stopped the wider campaign, which is now looking to Pennsylvania as its next opportunity.
