Gaming industry lobbyists, more specifically the Entertainment Software Association, which represents the US games industry, have attempted to strike down proposed Californian bill called the “Protect Our Games Act”, also known as AB 1921, which aims to have game owners notified ahead of time if the servers and support for a game they own will be shut down, as well as provide an offline version of the game, or to patch the game so servers are no longer necessary for it to run, or even offer a full refund for the purchasing of said game.
According to the Entertainment Software Association, “Many games depend on evolving technology, licensed content, and online systems that change over time. Assembly Bill 1921 could force developers to spend limited time and resources keeping old systems running instead of creating new games, features, and technology. In the end, this policy doesn’t reflect how games actually work today”. However, this was countered by Stop Killing Games organizer Moritz Katzner, who said they aren’t looking to keep servers running forever, but that games shouldn’t be shut down with no alternative given to customers who already purchased it, more specifically saying “The industry wants people to think this is a demand for eternal server support, with endless costs and complications. It isn’t. It’s much simpler: If a company sells people a paid game, it should not be able to destroy the game’s ordinary use later without notice or remedy.”
Game preservation has become an increasingly important topic among the gaming community, with many seeing classic games disappear due to a variety of reasons, such as servers or digital storefronts a game was sold on being shut down. It doesn’t help that many publishers own these IP’s and do nothing with them, while still attacking any efforts made by fans to keep a game alive, as seen with Nintendo for example and its campaign against emulators of old games, such as when they went after the company behind the Switch emulator “Yuzu”, with Nintendo America filing lawsuit in February 2024 against Tropic Haze LLC, the creators of the Yuzu emulator, which ended with the LLC having to pay $2.4 million to Nintendo. This is despite the fact that emulators are technically legal- it gets complicated when accounting for copyrighted software however. Regardless, Nintendo and other companies’ targeting of emulators and other forms of game restoration/preservation has fallen under immense criticism.