California Protect Our Games Act Stalls in Senate Committee Following Industry Pushback While Stop Killing Games Campaign Prepares for National Expansion
A major consumer rights initiative targeting the video game industry recently stalled in the California legislature after facing intense pushback from industry representatives. Assembly Bill 1921, better known as the Protect Our Games Act, failed to make it past the Senate Business Professions and Economic Development Committee. The final tally landed at 4 yes votes and 3 no votes with the rest of the committee members choosing to abstain. Moving a bill forward requires an absolute majority from the committee. Because of this rule those abstentions functioned essentially as pocket vetoes and brought the legislative progress of the bill to a dead stop for the current session.
The bill failed shortly after some highly controversial testimony from Jennifer Gibbons, a lobbyist for the Entertainment Software Association. That organization operates as the official trade group representing major global publishers. According to the broadcast of the committee at exactly the 56 minute and 24 second mark of the stream, Gibbons made a specific claim regarding the legality of community servers:
"Running private servers, such as those operated by the community for Minecraft, is illegal under current frameworks."
She pointed specifically to community operated servers for games like Minecraft as examples. Organizers of the Stop Killing Games campaign quickly flagged this statement as a misleading fear tactic. They argue these claims are designed specifically to sway busy lawmakers who simply do not have the technical background to verify the information in real time.
Lawmakers designed the Protect Our Games Act to stop publishers from leaving digital purchases completely unplayable after pulling official support. The Entertainment Software Association aggressively opposed the statutory mandate. They claimed that requiring any sort of end of life plan would actually force developers to rebuild their existing software completely from scratch. The group also argued it is literally impossible to keep online games running once official servers shut down asserting that games featuring licensed music or real world brands could never remain playable once sales concluded.
This setback in committee has not stopped the momentum of the Stop Killing Games movement. Organizers actually view the effort as a massive proof of concept. Though they are only in year 1 of their United States campaign the fully remote volunteer run team pushed the legislation through the entire State Assembly by a strong 43 to 16 margin on a budget of exactly zero dollars. In the end the grassroots coalition came within 3 votes of passing the Senate committee. It was a serious volunteer effort that forced a heavily funded industry lobbying machine to deploy major resources just to stop them.
The campaign organizers are not backing down. They are already laying the groundwork to return for the next legislative session this time equipped with secure funding and professional in person lobbying representation. The group also plans to expand well beyond California. Organizers are currently preparing to push similar consumer protection bills through other state legislatures and they are actively exploring ways to introduce legislation at the federal level.
Backing a multi front legislative battle requires structural growth. Right now the Stop Killing Games movement is rolling out a massive recruitment drive to build its capacity. At the same time the group is helping to launch a sister advocacy organization called Stop Killing the Internet which focuses on protecting digital ownership and user access across the larger web ecosystem. These organizers believe their consumer movement holds a fundamental advantage over the industry lobby. Lobbyists have to win every single legislative fight just to maintain the status quo but consumer advocates only need a single victory to establish a lasting precedent for digital ownership.
Source: Reddit
