Buying a digital game should give players ownership and a way to keep playing after its servers close, under legislation US Representative Ritchie Torres plans to introduce. His proposed Power To The Players Act would direct the Federal Trade Commission to write rules protecting those rights.
The New York Democrat's October 15 announcement says games with online functionality would have to provide an offline mode before their supporting servers shut down. It also calls for consumers to be able to own and resell games, instead of buying a revocable license to play them.
Those are proposed protections, not rights newly granted to players. Torres has announced his intention to introduce the legislation. In an interview with Kotaku, he did not confirm any cosponsors or Republican support. The proposal would still need to pass through Congress before becoming law.
Ownership beyond a checkout warning
Torres is seeking more than clearer wording on a store page. California's AB 2426, effective January 1, 2025, already addresses how digital purchases are described. As law firm Linklaters explains, it requires sellers using purchase language to disclose when customers are receiving a license instead of unrestricted ownership. Subscription services, free goods and permanent offline downloads are exempt.
That law focuses on telling customers what they are buying. Torres's announced proposal would change what buyers receive, pairing ownership and resale rights with an offline-play requirement when online support ends.
The distinction is important for games that depend on a publisher's servers: a warning about a revocable license does not itself preserve a playable version when those servers disappear. An offline mode could preserve access, though it would not necessarily reproduce every online feature.
Torres's office cites NBA 2K25 as an example of the problem, pointing to its planned October 30 delisting and the end of online service at the turn of the year. A store removal stops new purchases; a server shutdown affects the modes existing owners can use. Kotaku reports that the shutdown will disable the game's most popular modes, not that every part of it becomes unplayable.
The announcement does not detail how an offline requirement would apply to different kinds of online games or how digital resale would work. Those implementation questions remain unanswered, and the proposal does not change players' existing purchases today.