Sam Crich, a partner at the Yorkshire-based law firm Eaton Smith Solicitors, explores potential regulations around ongoing access to online video games.
November 2025 saw the words “Crash Bandicoot” being said in the UK parliament for the first time. The trigger for this was a debate around the Stop Killing Games movement, a campaign demanding action to stop the practice of developers and publishers shutting down online-reliant games that people have paid for.
The movement began with a decision by Ubisoft to retire The Crew, an always-online game published in 2014 that had both single player and multiplayer modes. The game was designed in a way where it fundamentally relied upon hosted servers to operate even the single player elements.
As a gamer, I personally agree with the Stop Killing Games movement in some respects. But as a lawyer, I am getting increasingly annoyed by the lack of nuance involved in the arguments on both sides.
For non-gamers, the debate might seem unimportant or largely irrelevant. But this is an issue that strikes at the core of modern digital consumerism. Let me provide a hypothetical example by drawing an analogy with another tech industry. What if you spent £1,000 on purchasing an AI system, only for it to be withdrawn and made unusable after only one year? What if you had no right to a refund? No right to complain?
The implications are clear: This is not just a video games issue.
The right to play
At the very core of the debate lies a deceptively simple question: When you buy a game, is it yours to play when you want to?
The question is often misstated as: Do you own your game or not? But that is the wrong question. I don’t own a game in the same way that I do not own The Lord of the Rings, but I still have a copy of the book. We have never owned games – we only have a license to use them. The real question is actually: Does your licence to play the game have a dependency on server availability?
Games with an always-online requirement tend to fall into three camps: multiplayer-only titles, games that offer a combination of single player and multiplayer modes, and single player only titles.
For single player only games, the question must be asked of why they need to be online in order to work when it should be possible to make them standalone titles. There might be benefits to an online component, but an always-online requirement shouldn’t be implemented just so that the game can be pulled from the market at any time in order to drive players towards purchasing a sequel.
Planned obsolescence has been found to cause harm to consumers in the mobile phone market – French authorities hit Apple with a €25 million fine over software updates that slowed down older iPhones, and the company settled for $500 million over a similar class-action lawsuit in the United States. France has since passed laws to require manufacturers to include a “repairability rating,” an equivalent of which I can imagine being ported into the video games industry in some form when it comes to managing players' expectations around how long they might be able to enjoy a single player game that relies on network connectivity.
For games that can be played in single player modes as well as online modes (with or without multiplayer), the situation is a bit more complicated. These games might be designed in a way that means the single player experience relies on hosted aspects, and those hosted aspects might be set up in that way to make the multiplayer experience better or to ensure consistency between different game modes.
For these types of games, it will depend on how they are developed in the first place as to whether they can be played in an offline setting. That means there will be choices made here by studios, usually on a cost/benefit basis, which will affect whether a game can be played offline. Choices in development, then, are the thing that we need to consider if government regulation is to be the answer.
And speaking of possible regulation, the main problem or harm the law could address is to do with money, not preservation. There is currently very little in the way of legal protections for consumers who have potentially invested hundreds of pounds in a game that is subsequently pulled offline and made unplayable. It is currently left to the goodwill of developers or publishers as to whether players are provided with a refund. While refunds are not necessarily the main request of the Stop Killing Games movement, this is the only real aspect that consumer law would consider.
Unless the developers have claimed that a game will be available for a specific period of time, the law does not expressly protect consumers from games being withdrawn. Personally, I would like to ensure that video games are recorded for history and preserved, but as with most art and media, this is in the hands of the creators.
What studios need is a path forward
Clear, standardised sunset practices that protect revenue models without erasing playable history seem to be required at this point in order to provide certainty in an industry that, to date, has lacked much external regulation and consumer protection. The Stop Killing Games movement is not asking for eternal servers, it is asking for honest design, honest marketing, honest stewardship, and some level of accountability.
Specific information requirements should be coupled with outcome-focused regulation, as is the way for many forward-looking laws regulating technology. The EU's GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is one such example of outcome-focused regulation: This law prevents abuse of the information provision mechanism, which might otherwise be used to achieve less desirable outcomes.
Thinking generally about what seems reasonable in the context of Stop Killing Games, there are a few specific guidelines that could be followed:
- Premium-priced video games should come with an expectation that players will be able to play them in full for at least two years from the date of purchase. The requirements could be lessened for budget-priced games (perhaps those costing £20 or less).
- A game that doesn’t benefit from being online should not be made in a way that makes it impossible to be played offline.
- An always online game should provide benefits to players as a result – whether that’s regularly updated content or a well-maintained multiplayer service.
- It will always be possible to say in advance whether or not a game is provided on an always-online basis or not – players can and should be given information in advance in order to make an informed buying decision.
- The commercial model that games are sold under does not require an up-front lump sum purchase in every case – video games can be sold on a subscription basis, and many games thrive under that model. Hence players could offer to pay for continued hosting on a personal or group basis.
Given the above, there are three key outcomes that should be targeted. First, if a game can be made to be played offline, or doesn’t provide meaningful benefits to consumers by being online, ensure that it is made without connectivity requirements and allow for the possibility of fines where this is actively abused.
Second, if a game must be provided on an always-online basis, then manage players expectations accordingly and ensure that they have appropriate rights to protect them from unfair harm.
Third, if a game cannot be maintained for its minimum support period, players should be given a pro-rata refund to take into account the amount of time they were able to play the game during that period and additionally the whole or a portion of any further in-game financial investment.
Potential solutions and regulations
What kind of regulations or solutions could resolve these issues? Below are some ideas on how the industry could introduce reforms, as well as possible legislation that could be brought in.
Shift the commercial model to reflect SaaS. If players pay on a usage or time-spent-playing basis – a model that many games already use – the potential for harm is reduced and the argument against liability for refunds should be stronger. Couple that with managed expectations and I see this as the most obvious and simple solution. Games companies would have to get used to the Netflix model of revenue rather than release day pay-days, and gamers wouldn’t have to accept anything radically different from how many games are provided today.
Minimum supported periods. While it can be hard to predict support costs post-launch, it isn’t impossible. In my opinion, there should be a legal minimum support period of 12 months for each and every game (a mandatory refund window), then developers can be left to determine whether they want to offer longer-term support above that minimum. This should only apply to games that charge a lump sum for up-front access and not to those that charge a fixed subscription sum on a monthly basis.
Refund mechanisms. Legislation could dictate a pro-rata refund mechanism to take into account how long a game was available before being shut down, if this is less than the minimum support period. Insurance could then be used to cover for this liability.
Full disclosure and priced-in arrangements. Give players the choice. Tell them that there is no guarantee a new game will be around for more than 30 days after release – it's something they might be willing to accept if the uncertainty is reflected in a low price. Equally, developers might more easily justify a premium price tag for a game that has robust guarantees around minimum support periods. Not all players look for games to play forever. Sometimes a game might have just two hours of gameplay (Thank Goodness You’re Here being a great example) and might leave players feeling completely satisfied. The price has to match the promise.
Parsed experiences with a minimum viable offline mode or graceful degradation. If the always-on version of a game has more functionality or better graphics, players might be annoyed if they lose access to features or suffer from a slightly degraded experience – but that is still a better situation than losing the game entirely. For instance, the multiplayer mode could be withdrawn, but still the single player modes (or LAN match-ups) could be retained. This is something which has happened before in games and would present a much fairer outcome than a total loss of access.
Rights to privately host. This is the big one that players would like to see. Many games already allow players to host their own instance of a game so that they can play it privately with friends. Instead of a game being withdrawn because of the cost of maintaining servers, players would in many cases take on that burden themselves. The argument raised against this usually goes into security issues or the risk of grooming, but in reality those risks are minimal. The big objection here is the loss of control over code – but that risk, again, is overstated.
Open source legacy release plan. Developers that are not overly concerned about people accessing the source code for a game could allow users to have licenced access to it. This is an option open to most, although less attractive in cases in which a game is based on an in-house, proprietary game engine. However, with games being increasingly made in Unreal, Unity, Godot, and other common game engines, I anticipate that this solution will become increasingly attractive (especially if the alternative is to be fined).
Certification or marks such as “End of Life Support Plan included” or “Preservation Friendly”. There is no reason why developers or publishers cannot compete with each other on the length of support periods. Assuming they are the same price, if I am faced with having to choose between buying one first-person shooter game with an end of life support plan versus one that has no guarantee or plan for support, I am likely to choose the former. Given that players are already savvy to these issues, presenting them with the choice feels like the right way to go, and presents a good free-market solution.
Third party cloud/shared preservation networks. If you don’t want to let players host a game, there is no reason why we can’t arrange for a third party to do this. Within the software industry there already exist source code escrow services, and there is very little reason why the same thing couldn’t be provided for video games. Obviously, the original makers of the game should not be liable for the goings on within servers that they have no control or visibility over (and legislation should provide more certainty on that point to provide the necessary comfort). But allowing a third party to host code that is required to keep games operational seems like a win-win in terms of protecting source code from disclosure to end users while ensuring a game’s playability.
Require an end of life plan setting out each of the above. Ultimately, there is not going to be a good one-size fits all solution for all video games, and so I can imagine a future where games must be sold with a disclosure or document setting out the considerations of each of the above points. For instance, some game makers might choose to go with the refund/insurance approach, whereas larger publishers might go with just a minimum supported period with no refund mechanism. Having a standard form setting out the key remedies that consumers have in relation to a specific game would help improve consumer agency when making buying decisions, as well as helping game makers consider how to manage a game’s end of life.
Consumer education and/or market pressure. Many gamers are children, and although a large number might fall into the 25–35 age bracket, age does not equate to understanding of rights. If consumers become more aware of their rights – and what end of life measures might apply to the games they plan to play – then they will be put into a much better position to make informed decisions about the potential risks involved in their purchase.
If the games industry wants to build lasting trust in its player base, it must take action to prevent unfair treatment of consumers. The alternative would be to sit back and wait for a less nuanced set of outcome-focused regulations to be dictated by governments – and historically, the video games industry has sought to avoid such external intervention.
