UK government says it won’t change the rules on publishers taking videogames offline after selling them: ‘We have no plans to amend existing consumer law on digital obsolescence’

The UK government has again responded to a petition demanding it change the law to prevent developers and publishers from taking games that have already been sold offline, reiterating its position of no, it won’t do that.

Less than a year ago, the UK government responded to a petition by the Stop Killing Games campaign, demanding it change the rules on digital obsolescence to stop developers disabling games that had already been sold. At the time, the government said there was no requirement in UK law for game developers to support old software. But the petition was closed early due to the general election.

Now, with a new parliament sitting, another petition has been created, similarly demanding that “the government should update consumer law to prohibit publishers from disabling videogames they have already sold without recourse for customers to retain or repair them”. Going further, it argues that “most videogames sold can work indefinitely, but some have design elements that render the product non-functional at a time which the publisher controls,” which the petition claims is a form of “planned obsolescence”.

The petition, which was created by Lewis Evans, will run for six months, and has gained 12,956 signatures at the time of writing. The government responds to any petition that gains more than 10,000 signatures, and has done so here, issuing a lengthy reply in which it more or less reiterates the position of the previous government. Although it “recognises concerns raised by videogames users regarding the operability of purchased products,” it declares “we have no plans to amend consumer law on digital obsolescence”.

Going into more detail, the Government says videogame sellers “must comply with existing consumer law”, which includes 2015’s Consumer Rights Act (CRA) and 2008’s Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations (CPRs). The CRA mandates that a product or service supplied by a trader must be “of satisfactory quality, fit for a particular purpose and as described by the seller”—a necessity which extends to digital products. The CPRs, meanwhile “require information to consumers to be clear and correct” and prohibits misleading information which “cause the average consumer to make a different choice”.

According to the government, nowhere within this legislation is a standard requirement for “software companies to support older versions of their products” and that “there may be occasions where companies make decisions based on the high running costs of maintaining older servers for games with declining user bases”. There is a question here over whether ceasing support for a game entirely counts as ending support for an ‘older version’ of a product. But the more important factor in whether a developer pulling a game offline breaches existing laws is if the consumer was led to believe it would run forever.

Here, the government points out there may be cases where a game should remain available in some form. “If consumers are led to believe that a game will remain playable indefinitely for certain systems, despite the end of physical support, the CPRs may require that the game remains technically feasible (for example, available offline) to play under those circumstances.” This is essentially what Warner Bros is doing with Multiversus, although the company hasn’t specified whether the reason for that is to comply with such regulations.

In short, the UK government won’t change existing consumer protection laws because, in their view, sufficient protections already exist. Indeed, it says that if a consumer feels they’ve been misled into believing a live-service game would run longer than it does, they can take this to the relevant authorities, in this case Trading Standards or the Competition and Market Authority. It also recommends reporting such incidents to the Citizens Advice helpline, who can assist them in such complaints.

For my part, I don’t think developers should be required to support every game they make in perpetuity. That said, the issue over whether the live service nature of some games (and the potential pitfalls of a live service model) is clearly communicated to consumers at the point of purchase is less clear. This was pointed out by Stop Killing Games’ Ross Scott last year. Taking Ubisoft’s The Crew as an example, Scott stated it was “debatable” whether such information was sufficiently clear for consumers, as it’s “buried in the fine print” of the game’s EULA, while the box cover says only that the game “requires internet”.

Scott went on to say that “anything less than saying exactly when the game will cease functioning isn’t enough”, which doesn’t seem especially feasible. But clearer warnings about the risks involved in buying a live service game, beyond whether or not the game requires an Internet connection, does seem like a reasonable stance to take, and a line of enquiry that might yield better fruit than demanding a much broader overhaul of existing consumer protection laws. For its part, the UK government says it will “monitor this issue and consider the relevant work of the Competition and Market Authority (CMA) on consumer rights and consumer detriment.”