On October 15, Ritchie Torres announced plans to introduce the Power To The Players Act. The official announcement describes a proposal directing the FTC to regulate purchased-game ownership and require an offline mode before supporting servers close. It also seeks transfer and resale rights. This is an announced legislative initiative, not an enacted law.
The useful question for players is concrete: which parts of a purchase will still work when the publisher stops operating its service? A convincing answer needs to cover more than the presence of a game icon in a library.
A receipt, a license and a working game are different things
The subscriber agreement for Steam describes its content and services as licensed rather than sold, and restricts transfers except where expressly permitted. That contractual starting point explains why a digital purchase cannot simply be treated like a disc handed to another person.
For this debate, it helps to separate three questions. Can you continue launching your copy? Can you retain the content and progress you paid for? Can you transfer access to someone else? Solving one does not automatically solve the others. An offline patch could preserve play while leaving resale completely unresolved.
NBA 2K25 will not become entirely unplayable
The shutdown notice from 2K sets October 30, 2026 for delisting and December 31 for server retirement. Existing owners can still redownload and use offline modes. MyCAREER and MyTEAM will become unavailable; Play Now, MyNBA, The W and MyWNBA retain offline functionality. Describing the whole game as disappearing would therefore be misleading.
The distinction matters even if the remaining modes are substantial. Someone who bought primarily for a career mode may value that loss differently from someone who only plays local matches. A preservation standard judged solely by whether any mode launches could miss the part of the purchase that mattered most to its buyer.
What an offline transition can look like
Ubisoft offers a practical example in Hybrid Mode for The Crew 2. Players can export online progression into a separate local save. Offline progress does not flow back into the online account, and exporting again overwrites the earlier offline save.
The official patch notes from Ubisoft distinguish retained exploration, events, vehicles and customization from unavailable online systems such as multiplayer activities, leaderboards and community sharing. That is a more useful description than an unexplained “offline supported” label.
Our takeaway is that a good end-of-service plan should describe the transition, not merely announce it. Does the player need to export anything before shutdown? Will a fresh installation work afterwards? Which purchases carry over? These questions would make an eventual preservation requirement testable rather than rhetorical.
Keeping installation files is another part of the problem
The developer documentation from GOG describes backup installers generated from published builds. Keeping an installer is a different safeguard from relying exclusively on a storefront to distribute the files again. It addresses access to a particular build, though it cannot by itself reproduce a missing server.
The GOG Preservation Program addresses another concern: keeping selected older games playable on modern systems. Meanwhile, the user agreement from GOG notes that games may have additional developer or publisher terms. Technical independence and legal permissions should therefore be examined separately.
The details that would decide its usefulness
Important implementation questions remain for the eventual legislative text and any resulting rules. Which releases would be covered? How would a meaningful offline version be defined?
How would a transfer avoid leaving two usable copies? What happens when a studio closes before preparing a final build? These are questions for scrutiny, not provisions we can attribute to the proposal.
For players, the sensible conclusion today is modest. The initiative puts long-term access on the policy agenda, but it does not immediately alter anyone’s library or rescue a closing service. Its eventual value should be judged by the practical handover it requires: playable files, usable saves and a clear account of what survives after the last official server goes dark.
Comments