Power To The Players Act: FTC Digital Game Ownership Rules Could Reshape Xbox, Steam and PlayStation

On October 15, 2026, U.S. Representative Ritchie Torres (NY-15) announced plans to introduce the Power To The Players Act, a proposed federal bill that would direct the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to establish formal consumer protections for video game buyers. While coverage from outlets such as GAMINGbible has framed the proposal around frustration with PlayStation and the shift away from physical discs, the announced legislation is not a Sony-specific penalty. Instead, it targets the broader digital video game market—meaning its proposed rules would carry major implications for Xbox, PC storefronts, and game publishers across the board.

What the Power To The Players Act Proposes​

According to the official announcement from Representative Torres's office, the Power To The Players Act is designed to close the legal and practical gap between purchasing a game and actually owning it. Rather than leaving digital libraries entirely at the mercy of publisher server schedules and storefront licensing terms, the bill would instruct the FTC to craft regulations around three core pillars:

• True Ownership Over Revocable Licenses: Purchasing a video game would legally confer ownership of that game to the consumer, rather than merely granting a revocable license to play it.
• Mandatory Offline Modes Before Server Shutdowns: Games built with online functionality would be required to provide a playable offline mode before the publisher shuts down the supporting servers.
• Right to Transfer and Resell: The regulations would preserve consumers' ability to transfer and resell the games they purchase, extending second-hand market concepts into the digital era.

In his October 15 statement, Torres argued that a game that can be taken away the moment a company pulls the plug is "a rental disguised as a sale," adding that "consumers must have the right to own, the right to play, and the right to transfer the games they buy."

Proposal vs. Enacted Law: Where Things Stand​

It is important to separate legislative ambition from current law. Representative Torres has announced plans to introduce the Power To The Players Act, and the announcement does not yet include a bill number, statutory text, or technical definitions for how digital resale or offline patching would be enforced.

For any of these protections to take effect, the bill must first be formally introduced, survive committee review, pass both chambers of Congress, be signed into law, and then undergo formal FTC rulemaking. Until that happens, existing platform terms of service remain fully in force.

Section Summary: Representative Ritchie Torres announced plans on October 15, 2026, to introduce the Power To The Players Act. The proposed bill would direct the FTC to mandate consumer ownership of purchased games, require offline modes before online servers shut down, and protect the right to transfer or resell games.

The NBA 2K25 Example: Delisting vs. Server Sunset​

To illustrate why consumer advocates are pushing for federal intervention, Torres's office pointed directly to NBA 2K25—a title that retailed for $69.99 in its Standard Edition and $99.99 in its All-Star Edition, only to face storefront removal and server shutdowns just two years after release.

However, looking closely at the publisher's official support documentation reveals an important technical distinction between a game being delisted, having its servers shut down, and becoming completely unplayable. According to the official NBA 2K25 Server Sunset support notice (published September 3, 2026, and updated October 2, 2026), the retirement of the game unfolds in distinct stages:

Why does NBA 2K25 still draw fire from lawmakers if it retains offline modes like Play Now and MyNBA? Because in modern sports and live-service titles, marquee single-player progression modes—specifically MyCAREER and MyTEAM—are tethered directly to 2K's central servers and Virtual Currency economy. When the servers go dark on January 1, 2027, players don't just lose head-to-head online matchmaking; they lose access to the primary career and team-building modes they may have spent up to $99.99 (plus microtransactions) playing.

Combine that partial gutting of premium releases with pure live-service titles like Anthem and XDefiant—which GAMINGbible notes can vanish entirely when publishers move on —and it becomes clear why server dependency is at the center of the preservation debate.

Section Summary: While NBA 2K25 is being delisted on October 30, 2026, and losing its online servers after December 31, 2026, 2K's support notice confirms existing owners can still redownload the title and play specific offline modes (Play Now, MyNBA, The W, MyWNBA). However, server-tethered modes like MyCAREER and MyTEAM will become completely inaccessible on January 1, 2027.

Why This Matters for Xbox and Windows PC Gamers​

Although much of the public uproar has focused on Sony—including a June 2026 class-action lawsuit in California's Northern District Court alleging Sony failed to properly disclose that digital purchases do not grant permanent ownership, as reported by Fortune and Polygon —the underlying licensing model is nearly identical across the entire industry.

For Windows PC and Xbox players, digital distribution has been the dominant reality for years. PC gamers on Steam, the Xbox App for Windows, Battle.net, and the Epic Games Store have operated in an almost exclusively disc-free environment for well over a decade. If the Power To The Players Act were to pass and result in binding FTC regulations, it would raise massive architectural and economic questions for the PC and console ecosystems alike:

1. Engineering End-of-Life Offline Modes: How would developers decouple cloud-dependent games from their backend infrastructure? Many modern PC and Xbox titles rely on remote servers not just for matchmaking, but for anti-cheat verification, profile progression, world state calculation, and DRM authentication. Requiring an offline mode before turning off the lights would force studios to design local server emulators or offline progression patches as part of their standard development lifecycle.
2. Digital Resale and Account Locking: Currently, when you buy a digital game on the Microsoft Store or Steam, that license is permanently bound to your single user account. Mandating a consumer right to "transfer and resell" digital games would require storefront operators to build secondary license-transfer systems—and would immediately collide with how publishers price games during seasonal digital sales.
3. Storefront Delistings vs. Library Access: Even without new legislation, major platforms generally allow users to redownload delisted games they already bought, as 2K's support notice confirms for NBA 2K25. The real battleground isn't whether you can download the executable files onto your SSD; it's whether those files will actually boot into a functional game once the authentication or progression server refuses the handshake.

What Players Should Watch Next​

Until Representative Torres releases the formal legislative text of the Power To The Players Act, several critical questions remain open. Will the requirement for an offline mode apply retroactively to existing live-service games, or only to titles sold after the rules take effect? How would the FTC treat free-to-play games supported by paid cosmetics versus $70 to $100 upfront purchases?

For now, the announcement marks a notable shift: the debate over game preservation, server sunsets, and digital licensing has officially moved from community forums and courtroom filings onto the floor of Congress. Whether you play on a custom Windows rig, an Xbox, or a PlayStation, the fight over what "Buy Now" actually means is just getting started.