Rep. Ritchie Torres (NY-15) announced on October 15, 2026 that he will introduce the Power To The Players Act, legislation directing the Federal Trade Commission to establish regulations protecting consumers' ability to own and play the video games they purchase.
The bill targets the industry's shift to digital-only distribution, where games are typically sold as revocable licenses rather than owned products. Under the proposal, buying a video game would give the consumer ownership of the game rather than a license to play it, games with online functionality would be required to provide an offline mode before the servers supporting them are shut down, and consumers would retain the right to resell games they own.
Torres pointed to NBA 2K25 as a clear example of the problem: the game, which retailed for $69.99 for the standard edition and $99.99 for the All-Star Edition, will be delisted from digital storefronts on October 30 and will have its online servers shut down on December 31, only two years after its initial release.
'When you pay for a game, you should own it,' Torres said in the announcement. '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.'
The announcement frames the measure as preserving consumers' ability to keep playing purchased games with friends and family after publishers end support. The bill has been announced but not yet formally introduced; its path in the current Congress is unclear.
The proposal lands amid broader regulatory scrutiny of digital marketplaces and would, if enacted, force publishers to architect shutdown plans and offline fallbacks into live-service titles from the start.