Gamers deserve meaningful ownership rights, the ability to transfer or resell games, where legally permitted, and protections against games becoming completely unplayable when online services shut down.

This isn’t just about today’s games. It’s about preserving gaming history for future generations.

The proposed bill directs the Federal Trade Commission to establish strict regulations ensuring that when consumers purchase a video game, they receive true ownership rather than a temporary rental disguised as a sale.

In addition to securing full ownership, transfer rights, and resale capabilities for players, the legislation mandates that games with online functionality must provide an offline mode before supporting servers are deactivated. This requirement aims to prevent instances where popular titles become completely unplayable after publishers end live server support.

If enacted into law, the bill would mark a major victory for consumer protection advocates and set a sweeping precedent across the broader digital economy, fundamentally reshaping how digital software and entertainment media are sold nationwide.

source: Office of Representative Ritchie Torres. (2026). Rep. Torres Announces Power To The Players Act, Legislation to Ensure Gamers Own Their Games.

📢 Contact your members of Congress and ask them to support the legislation.

Find your representative: https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative

Find your senators: https://www.senate.gov/senators/

Stop treating purchases like rentals. Protect game ownership.

#PowerToThePlayers #StopKillingGames #GamePreservation #RightToOwn #GamingCommunity

When BSide, studio that developed the gacha game called CounterSide, announced that they would stop releasing updates and move the game into “maintenance mode”, it wasn’t long before the game’s small community felt where it’s heading. Consequently, a group formed with the goal of keeping the game in a playable state by developing a local server.

(Important note: at the time BSide was actively working on another game called StarSavior. Although it had not yet been officially announced that CounterSide was entering maintenance mode, the game had effectively stopped receiving updates, and StarSavior was already being prepared for launch. According to rumors that appeared after, BSide moved the entire CounterSide team to work on the release of StarSavior.)

After some time, BSide has announced End of Service at August 26, 2026. It was this announcement where the first official mention of the CounterSide Reboot Project appeared.

Initially, we operated discreetly and kept a low profile, as we didn’t want to attract BSide’s attention and risk receiving cease and desist. However, after some internal discussion, we decided to email the devs and ask for permission to work on a local server. With reasonable conditions of keeping the project non-commercial and noting that intellectual rights on the game belong to BSide, they’ve gave us the green light. It was a big day for the game’s fans. We could act in the open, and a lot of new people joined us.

After investing a lot of time into the project, efforts, and in some cases, admins’ and developers’ own money, we received a termination letter from BSide. In short, the gist of this letter was as follows:

“Yeeeah, we’ve granted you the permission, but at the time we had no idea what to do next. Now, when we found out that a lot of people actually love CounterSide, we’ve decided to direct all our efforts toward CounterSide Reboot Project, that we’ve come up with recently because StarSavior failed to meet our expectations. You’ve done a good job reminding us about the existence of the game that we’ve abandoned, but stop whatever you’re doing and don’t compete with us. Sincerely, your BSide.”

Predictably, it caused a split among the project’s members. The administrators shut the project down, while a portion of the team left to form a new group and continue the work.

Over the course of a few months, the new team made significant improvements to the local server. While it wasn’t perfect and required a lot of work to fully replicate the game’s features and feeling, the primary goal of keeping the story playable and saving the player’s account progression was been achieved.

CounterSide servers were shut down at August 27, 2026(devs fucked up and announced the EoS at August 26, 2026).

A week later, at September 2, 2026, the first post in CounterSide: A’s Twitter(aka the Reboot Project) appeared.

As you might guess, we were in the way of BSide’s grand plans to profit twice from one game, so they sent the lead developer Cease and Desist, bringing work on the project to a halt.

Looking back, it becomes clear what happened. BSide went all in on StarSavior, it didn’t live up to their expectations. And since they had already announced CounterSide EoS, backtracking would’ve be really awkward - so the idea emerged to remake CounterSide and profiting from it again. And because this is technically not the same game as CounterSide, players are likely going to have to start from scratch: all time, money and efforts they’ve put into the original game, are void.

I love CounterSide, but after witnessing such a scummy behavior from the devs, I have little desire to play StarSavior(which is set in the same universe as CounterSide), or even CounterSide: A. How can I be sure that they won’t pull off the same stunt again?

I’m writing this post to share my perspective on the whole story, so more people know about what happened, and how devs tried to kill the game and all attempts to save it. Since CounterSide is a pretty niche game, I suspect few people outside of its core fanbase are aware of this story. And I don’t want BSide to sweep it all under the rug.

I don’t know what kind of game CounterSide: A is going to be. I assume they will partially rewrite the code and the story, and replace the game’s assets with higher resolution ones. Of course, you’ll have to start your progress from scratch.

What I know, is that no one asked for the reboot, no one asked for their accounts to be wiped, and no one asked for the game’s story to unfold the way it did. We just wanted the game to improve so that we could keep playing it.

Stop killing games.

(Note: events in the first half of this post took place a while ago, so their chronology or specific details might be a little off—though this does not affect the substance of the matter or the conclusions. If you recall the timeline of events more accurately, please feel free to correct me in the comments.)

Hi All,

Half of the online games that have been switched off since 2018 were gone within 2 years of release. I only noticed because I started writing them down, and the list grew into a site.

It has 74 shutdowns since 2018, each one linked to where the publisher or the press announced it. You can also add the games you own and it tells you which ones look risky. It's saved in your browser, so there's no account.

Two things I didn't expect. 22 of the 74 were games people paid for, not just free-to-play. And half of the ones already gone were switched off within 2 years of release.

It's free with no ads. There's an optional £2 a month for email alerts. I used Claude Code to build it. The list is still small, so I'm sure I've missed some. If you know one, tell me the game and a source and I'll add it.

Let me know your thoughts!

and does anyone know if it will become retroactive for consoles like xbox

Hot take:
Made a post last year, covering how the so called ‘Games media’ were covering the movement.
Then on of the mods replied - they support us, they are in our discord.

Instead of calling out the abysmal coverage and or supporting the media that was risking their relation with game companies.

It was decided with we will play it like a rich political party.

What happened?

We got destroyed like jobbers.

1.4 million votes will always and I mean Always lose to lobbyists.

In this world, we have to stop being push overs. We have to play it smart and loud.

Like recklessben vs lego resellers or people fighting data centers in their town.

If the games media doesn’t support the movement, name em and boycott.

I have seen in Canada almost no major ‘media’ has covered it. They barely mention it.

Who are major outlets, got to game awards website get the list of outlets that vote.

Everyone in their country needs to unfollow them on socials.

We need small irl events across the world. That’s how cities are now afraid to openly install flock cameras.

Its the same with Roblox, when roblox banned schlep - most major outlets in US/Canada were advertising and pushing the big egg event.

We can’t out politic or out lobby these billion dollar corps. Nor do politicians care about humans. Only human money.

Anyone else agree before anyone ask yes I'm still pissed over f13 being shutdown on Xbox nearly two years later

​

https://youtu.be/IZajYXLGZGQ?si=oDthhkrQWTmO0XGE

We need an American version of this law!

They are really killing this game

Hi everyone,

Ring of Elysium (Tencent / Proxima Beta, free on Steam) was shut down permanently on 1 December 2023. A lot of us miss it, and I’d like to understand the legal side of a hypothetical situation before anyone does anything.

Suppose a group of fans wanted to run a free, non-commercial community server so people who already own the client could play again. There would be no money of any kind, no Tencent files or assets distributed by us, and nothing touching the old live service or any player’s old account data.

The EULA’s Section 7(c) prohibits “emulation” and “mirroring our servers”. But Section 21 lets Tencent terminate the EULA if they stop providing the Services, and Sections 6 and 7 are not among the clauses that survive termination. For users outside the US, Hong Kong law applies.

Would this still be a legal problem in countries like Turkey, and does “free and non-profit” change the risk? Has anyone seen what actually happens in a case like this with another dead game (takedown, nothing, legal letter)? I’m not a lawyer, so experiences and pointers are welcome. Thanks!

Like a lot of people here, I hate seeing a game disappear because its servers go offline... and the only way to play it was to connect to their servers... Dauntless was one I really didnt want to lose, so I’ve been working on an unofficial fan revival project called Dauntless Forever.

It’s still a work in progress, but I’m back in hunts using my Strikers again, and that feels pretty damn good lol.

There’s a launcher that handles downloading and setting up the supported versions. If you want to check out the project or follow its progress, it’s here:

https://github.com/addison2k/DauntlessForever

I figured this community would appreciate seeing some progress toward keeping it playable. It doesn’t solve the bigger problem, but I’d love for fewer games to need projects like this just so people can keep playing them.

I think AI might be a solution to bring a lot of games back, but I have no idea it works. It seems really possible though with everything going on. Would something like this be possible?

Mario Kart Tour shutdown just like the Ubisoft's The Crew, where the game is online only. And we know what happens when online only games get when the servers shut down.

Hey reddit, as the title already says. It would be awesome if someone could provide me the game files. Maybe some of you guy still haven’t deleted them? Hope is high. 🫠

I mean didn't we already buy the game?, so I don't think it's fair if the servers shut down and we can't play it anymore.

Sorry for the bad grammar😔