Buying a video game should mean being able to play it, right? Apparently, that comes with an asterisk these days. In a relief to that, US Representative Ritchie Torres has announced the Power To The Players Act, a proposed bill that aims to give gamers stronger ownership rights over the games they buy. Essentially, it would target revocable game licenses and require offline modes before publishers shut down supporting servers. There’s a catch, though: the proposal still needs to be formally introduced and make its way through Congress. So, nobody needs to start celebrating just yet.
The idea behind the Power To The Players Act is simple: if someone pays for a game, they should have a reasonable way to keep playing it. Torres wants consumers to have the right to own, play, and transfer their games. The proposal would also require publishers to provide an offline mode before shutting down a game’s supporting servers. Think of it this way: if a publisher pulls the plug on a game, the single-player campaign shouldn’t automatically go down with it. The exact rules remain unclear, however, because the final bill text hasn’t been made public.
Torres points to NBA 2K25 as an example of the problem. Now that NBA 2K27 is also here, the two-year-old game is scheduled to leave digital storefronts on October 30, 2026, while its online servers are due to shut down on December 31. Once that happens, certain features will become unavailable, potentially leaving players with a much more limited experience. Imagine paying full price for a game, only to discover that part of it comes with an expiration date. Torres argues that this makes modern game purchases feel more like rentals than ownership. And with digital libraries replacing physical shelves, that’s becoming a harder problem for gamers to ignore.
The proposal also aligns with the Stop Killing Games movement, which campaigns against publishers making games unplayable after ending support. The concern goes beyond multiplayer matches disappearing. Some games rely on company servers for basic functionality, meaning a shutdown can leave even paying customers locked out. The Power To The Players Act seeks to address that problem while also challenging the broader licensing model behind digital purchases. But it’s still early days: the bill needs to be formally introduced, debated, and passed before any of these protections become law.
Of course, making old games playable isn’t always as simple as flipping an offline switch. Some rely on online infrastructure, licensed content, or systems that were never designed to work without a server. Publishers may argue that maintaining these games indefinitely is costly or technically impractical. The final legislation will need to account for those realities without leaving players empty-handed. And even if the bill passes, that doesn’t automatically mean digital games will become freely resellable like used discs.
Still, the proposal raises a question the gaming industry has spent years dodging: if players pay for a game, should a publisher get to decide when they can no longer play it? The Power To The Players Act isn’t law yet, and plenty could change before it gets anywhere close. But at least the debate is moving beyond refund policies and subscription cancellations to something more fundamental.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.