Consumers receive a license to access and use a game, not an unrestricted ownership interest in the underlying work,” the ESA wrote.
We know. That's the problem.
Hurray for the POG Act, it's very pog.
this post was submitted on 15 May 2026
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Feels like many times I’ve heard in my life:
“We’d like to change this law.”
“You can’t change this law. See, it’s written here: It’s the law.”
“I’m…not contesting what it is. I’m saying I want to change it. We set it in place, we can make changes to it.”
“…But that’d be…against the law…”
"It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When His Salary Depends Upon His Not Understanding It."
That logic works just fine if you have all the money and lawyers.
Something for Newsome to veto.
Not if they don't start properly lobbying
Funny this first thing I saw after your comment was this:
Governor election this year!
Hopefully it's Tom Steyer as he's a self-proclaimed "class traitor."
I hope that we get a Star Trek Offline from this. I want to play the game, without FOMO and humanity making me feel miserable.
I wonder if those companies hold on the Online only part, until they stop supporting it and only then flip the switch. Because they want you to come online, and spend the money as long as the game is supported.
Should go back to the days of having good self hosted servers and a server browser. Can still have matchmaking and even peer to peer multiplayer, but we should be able to self host servers and build communities for games we play
The subscription model exemption is interesting. Blizzard could shut down WoW and that would be it (I know private servers exist - I'm talking in terms of their responsibility). I wonder if that would push more publishers into subscription models to bypass the law if it passes. Like ARC Raiders could be $1 a month and then when they kill it, they kill it without legal objection.
To be fair, the ESA does raise a good point about licensed music, though. That's like GTA4. A lot of the music was removed on PC because of license expiration and people were mad, but they can't legally keep it in the game if it's expired.
Will be interesting to see how all the chips land in the SKG movement.
They can't legally keep it in the game if the license expired but these clauses should be retroactively altered such that this clause only applies to games that continue to be sold. Units that have already been sold previously should not receieve updates to remove the music just because the license is expired. Instead, if the game is no longer being sold by the publisher/developer, even if they choose to make updates to the game available, music removal should not be mandatory. The set amount of units are already sold. Whether the game is updated or supported beyond the music expiry license should not be part of the license agreement, and should be only based on whether it continues to be sold or not.
Ok, you said licensed music should be removed for games that continue to be sold and then later said music should not be removed even if they choose to make updates:
this clause only applies to games that continue to be sold
even if they choose to make updates to the game available, music removal should not be mandatory
You then go back on the second comment:
Whether the game is updated or supported beyond the music expiry license should not be part of the license agreement, and should be only based on whether it continues to be sold or not
Maybe I'm getting confused on sold vs updated as in either case that's a product being maintained. And I think you can already license music indefinitely, but you have to pay the copyright owner a lot more money. But to say expiry should not be part of a licensing agreement is a wild take.
Not that I'm complaining, but that's just piracy.
A game can be updated after a music license expires AND after the game is no longer being sold. The update should not be forced to include music removal if the update happens after the expiry date of the music license, but only if the game is no longer for sale.
In other words, the publisher can push an update to people who already bought the game with no mandatory music removal. They just cannot continue to sell the game after the music license expires if they do not renew the license. License renewal should be forced to be at the same rate as originally set, and these licenses should be regulated to ensure fairness. Because it is immensely common for a music license to suddenly increased on license renewal for no apparent reason other than greed.
Considering how literally evil record label companies are, second only to Disney, in consideration of ruining copyright law, I would even say music piracy is practically a moral obligation at this point. The artists and song writers know how beneficial music piracy is to gaining a larger paying audience, but record label companies cannot help themselves bending over thousands to pick up tenths.
AFAIK, no, you cannot get an indefinite music license for synchronization. Game licenses for music are stupidly overcomplicated, but basically the terms usually amount to either a time expiry in years, or a units sold expiry. I have never heard of or seen a music license that is for more than 1 million units or is longer than 10 years, unless the record label company directly made or funded the game themselves maybe. And as video games continue to be morbidly profitable, that number will only go down, forcing more renewals.
"Oh, your game is popular and our song is in it and about to expire? Well now it costs you double and only lasts for 1 year this time. What are you going to do? Remove your song and deal with the backlash? You cant pin it on us, because we dont care and the players will say its a cop out. See you next year when we triple the license cost."
A game can be updated after a music license expires AND after the game is no longer being sold. The update should not be forced to include music removal if the update happens after the expiry date of the music license, but only if the game is no longer for sale.
Ok, so this is literally just your own wishful thinking. So, based on what you are wanting, the anti-SKG lawyers have a REALLY good point:
A game goes offline officially and private servers or something fan-made pops up. The devs STILL have to pay for the music licensing for all time now. Thankfully, that's not how any of this works or will work. That's crazy stupid.
What are you talking about? Is this a genuine "I love pancakes." "Oh so you hate bicycles?" moment, or is this on purpose?
If the music license expires, the game cannot be sold with the music still in it. If the developers or publisher wants to keep selling the game, they need to either remove the music or renew the license.
If the developers decide to not sell the game anymore, they should still be allowed to update the game without having to remove the music. The game is no longer for sale, the people that already bought the game can keep the game that they bought, with the music they bought the game with. Fixing a security issue or a bug in the game should not come at the expense of removing licensed music just because the update is delivered after the music license has expired, as long as the game is no longer for sale.
Private servers and fan-made updates never even enter the equation.
Yeah, that's not how any of this works. I apologize for the caps, but just so I can make this clear for you: YOU DIDN'T BUY THE MUSIC
The devs/publisher licensed the use of certain music in their games for a specific duration. I feel like I'm just having to tell you this again and again. Your idea of "well, they could have just...", no. It has nothing to do with bugfixes or security issues. It has to do with the license expiring. If they don't have a valid license to the music it must be removed (ex. GTA4).
If the music license expires, the game cannot be sold with the music still in it. If the developers or publisher wants to keep selling the game, they need to either remove the music or renew the license.
If the developers decide to not sell the game anymore, they should still be allowed to update the game without having to remove the music.
AGAIN, THIS IS NOT A THING. Please keep comments based in reality and not your "perfect world" thoughts on what reality should be. Reality.
Incredible.
I thought it was on purpose but now I think you might just genuinely not have read my comments, or wildly misunderstood them.
I will not be continuing this conversation with you, I have not the time nor desire. Feel free to double check my comments, or don't. I don't care to correct you again nor do I care to respond anymore. I have made my suggestion abundantly clear.
Absolutely incredible. Well done. Truly, you leave me utterly speechless.
Yeah, I think it's best if you stop talking too. I seriously just do not have the time to correct you and then read through your comments where you say the same misguided shit again. Unfortunately, you are too stupid to understand how you are wrong. This is something that it is not my job to correct.
That’s like GTA4. A lot of the music was removed on PC because of license expiration and people were mad, but they can’t legally keep it in the game if it’s expired.
Just a little offtopic here: They could have made it so, if you provide a game disc to extract and feed the music into the PC version. I mean that is what fans are doing with their own open source PC ports of console games in example. But I don't know if the license agreements prohibit even that.
I'm sure it would be argued and the RIAA would try to file a lawsuit against publishers doing that saying it is contributing or enabling piracy in some way. Personally, I would think that's a stupid argument, but publishers I'm sure would do their best to avoid any legal drama if they can.
That is a similar argument about emulation contributing to piracy. Providing your own disc does not mean its piracy. In general the argumentation itself is "stupid" in my opinion too, but not ungrounded. I mean in case of the PC ports requiring a specific ROM or ISO file with a specific hash means, its not your own copy of the game you need to get from somewhere. That is in fact contributing to piracy.
But in case Rockstar does it by reading files directly out of a disc you provide, not requiring one specific ISO file, then the argument of contributing to piracy falls flat. And yes, I think you are right. Not only needs this extra development time and cost, and hinders their developers to work on something different. They would most likely try to avoid any such risks.
I guess our only hope is the community taking this in their hands and doing mods or custom tools to do this.
Great to hear and generally support this move. I wonder if Jan 1st 2027 is a little too soon though?
The licensing argument never made sense to me. Wouldn't that impact sales of the game, not people who already own it being able to play?
Not being able to sell in California is a huge loss though. I agree January 1st is a little too soon, but better to have a little bit of pain now to make things better later.
Is your first sentence responding to my second paragraph? If so, I'm not sure I understand.
The opposing stance to this makes the argument that licensing makes this law not feasible. But if a company's license runs out, they can't sell the game anyway, in California or otherwise, regardless of if this law passes. So what does it even have to do with the idea that companies should leave a game in a responsibly playable state? Which is what the core of Stop Killing Games wants.
No, I was commenting on just the first paragraph. January 2027 is too soon for any game that's currently in development to be reasonably expected to pivot by then, and the same goes for any game that's already available and expects to have a long tail on its sales, so it's sort of like lighting the fuse on a bomb. The licensing argument is stupid nonsense, and they know it.
What pivoting?
It changes the plans of shuttering a server, not offering a new one. Any such independent play patch soils only be released when a company is ready to end servers.
A new game previously intended to be released December 31st of this year, caught off guard with just one day of warning, could still release without changing a thing. The game will have servers for years to come, presumably.
It actually requires a pivot, because if you want to account for making a game playable at end-of-life, you normally have to plan that from the start, to make sure the game is structured in a way that allows for easy switching. If all you plan is actually to turn off the servers, well, that's the current situation.
Making sure the game ends gracefully means either releasing dedicated server binaries, implementing P2P (or Splitscreen) multiplayer or disabling multiplayer, and repurposing/rebalancing previously online content to work in the new setting. That's not easy to do if you never wasted a thought on those things in development, especially with a skeleton crew of developers which have been working on other stuff for years at this point.
Don't get me wrong, I can't wait to see this legislation come into effect, but even I have to acknowledge that a game that has been worked on for years and goes live in January 2027 is probably not designed for this.
Highgaurd didn't even last a month, and they definitely didn't have the funds left over to make that game self hostable while they were in their death throes, even if they wanted to.
Funny thing is this particular bill also applies semi-retroactively. The original version was worded
The following shall apply only for server-connected games published for sale on or after January 1, 2027
but in the April 6 revision that ultimately advanced, that was changed to:
The following shall apply only to a digital game available for purchase on or after January 1, 2027
I'm heavily in favor of SKG, but this particular bill isn't workable on this schedule. It's not what SKG has been petitioning for.
I don't think it's unreasonable to say that if a game is available for sale, it should be in a reasonably playable condition. So if a company wants to continue selling their game beyond 2027, they should begin making end-of-life plans or face penalties. I think that's the goal here.
It's important to remember that this bill isn't trying to enforce endless support, rather that game companies end support in a responsible way that doesn't essentially brick the game.
Should change it to apply to any and all games published after the bill is passed.
Realistically, its a big ask for publishers to retroactively apply to their older games, but I do think they should still legally be required to do so for old games they don't sell anymore. Its not realistic to ask that though, so it is understandable that it wouldn't be included.
crying onto a wad of money I c-can't believe sniff they want me to pay developers sniff after the release date. It's not fair, IT'S JUST NOT FAIR! THINK OF THE C-SUITES!! PLEASE! WE CAN ONLY AFFORD 14 NEW ROLLS ROYCE VEHICES THIS YEAR! THEY MIGHT LOSE THE NEW-CAR SMELL WHILE THEY STILL OWN IT!
The older a game is, the more work it would take to retroactively fix them. Its not realistic to expect this especially when some publisher catalogs span more than a decade. Getting the old server code to work and then verifying that it isnt going to delete system files when uninstalling it or something by accident takes time and money away from new development.
Instead, if they plan End of Life into the product from the beginning, the time and cost of doing it is drastically reduces to basically nothing. A few weeks of forethought and planning to avoid potential years of development work fixing old bromen games is a trade I am willing to accept.
Again, I wish they would release old server files and let us figure out how to get them running, but I understand there are limitations that prevent that.
But like, why is this my concern? If your neighbor burns their house down, should they blame you for not replacing the batteries in their smoke alarms?
All these companies made a choice to kneecap their games when they sunset the network services - why should I, or anyone, feel any pity that they are being called out for it? I paid a company for a good, I should be able to use that good perpetually. If you buy a car, and 5 years later a forced ota update bricks going into reverse, is that okay? Should I feel bad that Toyota needs to un-fuck their customers after the backlash? 'oh we would love to fix it, we really would, but it would be so much work to do so' - how is that an acceptable excuse?
All my games up until the 2000s had server/client support, and I can (and do, occasionally) still play them. They then created the problem of 'don't worry, we'll host it (until we won't anymore)', and then want mercy instead of fixing it? I'd laugh but I may pass out before I can regain my composure.
I agree with you but it is not realistic to expect that. And SKG has the same take I do.
It is not realistic to expect the business to stop what they are doing and create this huge cost undoing the damage they did when it is much easier to convince lawmakers to just enforce it going forward. Its harder for the businesses to argue against it because they cannot claim such an immense cost fixing their old catalog. Do I wish they would fix everything? Yes of course. But in this world that was never going to happen. SKG has the best option we have right now.
Thanks, Pirate Software.