New Bill Would Make Game Publishers Answer for What 'Buy Now' Really Buys
A proposed law would push the FTC to police digital game ownership, here's what it could mean for the money you've already spent on your library.
What’s actually new
Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) has announced plans to introduce the Power To The Players Act, which would direct the Federal Trade Commission to write rules protecting your ability to keep playing video games you’ve already paid for. There’s no bill number or legislative text yet, and nothing changes for your library today. But the target is a real and growing gap between what “buy” implies and what publishers can take away.
The dollar example driving this
Torres’s office points to NBA 2K25 as the case in point. The standard edition sold for $69.99; the All-Star Edition ran $99.99. According to the announcement, the game gets pulled from digital storefronts on October 30, 2026, and its online servers shut down December 31, 2026. Delisting alone doesn’t erase access for people who already own a copy, but once the servers go dark, anything requiring an online connection stops working, regardless of what you paid up front.
Torres’s framing: “When you pay for a game, you should own it.” He calls a game that disappears when a company flips off its servers “a rental disguised as a sale.” That’s the consumer argument in one sentence, you paid a one-time retail price that looked like a purchase, but the actual product lived on a timer you couldn’t see.
Why this is bigger than one basketball game
This isn’t isolated. A July 2026 YouGov survey found 51% of U.S. console gamers still prefer physical discs, and 81% of those players said permanent ownership was the main reason. That preference is about to get harder to act on: Sony has said it will stop producing physical discs for new PlayStation games starting in January 2028. And even disc ownership doesn’t fully solve the problem anymore, many physical games still need internet downloads and live servers to run at all.
The same “what did I actually buy” question is also playing out in streaming video. A proposed class-action lawsuit against Amazon alleges the company markets digital movies and shows as “purchases” when access really depends on licensing deals that can change. Nothing’s been proven in court, but it’s the same structural issue: money changes hands at the moment of “purchase,” and the terms of what you keep can shift later, quietly, through a licensing agreement you never saw.
What it would mean for your bill
If this becomes law and the FTC follows through with rulemaking, the practical upside for consumers would be clearer rules around game ownership, server shutdowns, and possibly resale or transfer rights for digital titles, the kind of protection that currently exists for a used disc but not for an account-locked download. That could change the real cost-per-year math on digital purchases, since a $70 game that stops working in two years is a worse deal than the sticker price suggests.
What to do about it
For now, treat digital-only purchases as access, not ownership, when you’re deciding whether something’s worth the price. If long-term play matters to you, favor physical copies where available, check whether a game needs always-on servers before buying, and hold off on pricier special editions of online-dependent games until shutdown dates are public. This bill is a signal of where policy may be headed, not a change you can bank on yet, Congress still has to pass it, and the FTC’s rulemaking would come after that.