Just earlier this week, the “Stop Killing Games” movement initiated by players and some people in the game industry once again reached another very important milestone! The bill, which would prevent game companies from forcibly removing their games, has officially passed a vote in the California State Assembly.
According to the latest video released by the official YouTube channel of Stop Killing Games, California State Representative Chris Ward has announced that the bill numbered “AB-1921” was officially passed in a recent session with a vote of 43 to 16. An activist later confirmed in a post on Reddit that the bill had the support of 41 Democratic congressmen and 2 Republican congressmen, while 15 Republican congressmen and 1 Democratic congressman opposed it.
This is of course an extremely important moment for this movement about player rights. After the vote passed, Ward also confirmed that the bill will be sent to the state Senate and discussed at a committee meeting in June.
The “Stop Killing Games” movement originally originated from the YouTuber “Ross Scott” from San Diego. He launched the action in 2024 to protest Ubisoft’s complete shutdown of its multiplayer racing game “The Crew”. It then triggered a snowball effect on the Internet, and eventually gradually developed into the scale it is today.
“So if you live in California, please contact your state senator and tell them why this is important to you as a player or a developer. We are fighting for your consumer rights to ensure that you can enjoy the full rights to these games forever,” said Chris Ward.
The Stop Killing Games sponsoring team stated that the “AB-1921” bill will require game companies to proactively notify players at least 60 days before shutting down games that rely on server operations, and must also provide a way to “continue playing” or provide refunds. The so-called continuous play, in addition to the official initiative to provide offline mode, can also hand over the authority to set up private servers to the player community.
In addition to the United States, Stop Killing Games’ current citizen initiative in Europe has reached 1 million signatures in July 2025 and accumulated 1.3 million signatures in January this year. Earlier this month, local politicians in Europe also held in-depth discussions on issues related to game preservation, and are expected to provide responses in the next few weeks.
As Ward said, they still have a lot of work to do before they can fully achieve the goal of “allowing a game to continue operating after the publisher terminates service.” Just recently, Sony also announced that its multiplayer game “Stars of Destruction” will be completely shut down, following the footsteps of “Star Strike”, “Highmountain Guards” and “Adventure Anthem”, and 2K also confirmed a few weeks ago that it will shut down the online function of “Lego 2K Drive”.
Source: KOCPC Chinese