New US law makes Nintendo, PlayStaion, more clarify if you actually own a game after buying

A new US law is making publishers like Ubisoft, PlayStation, Nintendo, and more all clarify if players will actually own a game after buying it from a digital storefront.

Over the past year, many players and even anime fans have been confronted with the reality of owning digital copies of their favorite games and TV series, and how easy it is for storefronts to take them away.

When Crunchyroll merged with Funimation, all previous Funimation users’ digital collections they spent money on were deleted. In April 2024, Ubisoft made The Crew unplayable as it closed its servers and even deleted it from player libraries.

Other companies like PlayStation and Nintendo have deleted games from player libraries as storefronts close, in the case of the Wii U and 3DS eShops, or due to issues of content licensing.

To combat this, Governor of California Gavin Newsom has signed a new law that will force all digital storefronts, including gaming and streaming services, to clarify if you will actually own a game after you buy it.

According to the bill, it aims to “prohibit a seller of a digital good from advertising or offering for sale a digital good… which a reasonable person would understand to confer an unrestricted ownership interest in the digital good.”

In non-legalese speak, it essentially forces digital storefronts that sell digital copies of products, like Nintendo, PlayStation, and Steam, to tell you if you will genuinely own the game or if it’s more of a “time-limited rental”.

This rule basically helps consumers understand that if they were to buy a game from a storefront, there’s a chance it might get deleted in the future, as we’ve seen in previous instances.

To notify buyers, storefronts are legally required to give a warning any time customers buy a product that may be deleted from their libraries.

However, this rule excludes storefronts which allow buyers to permanently download to an external storage source without an internet connection.

Of course, that means live service games will be in a grey zone, as technically you can download them and use them, however, their servers can be shut down anytime a publisher wants, rendering it unplayable.

This law is technically only applicable in California, however, it isn’t outside of the realm of possibility that this will spread to other states and countries. When the EU mandated all electronic devices use USB C, manufacturers universally switched.