Browse this category by subcategory.gaming
Pokemon
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gaming
Three collections, 67 guides, and the same problem underneath all of them
This section holds three collections about three unrelated games. Wow Talent is 30 guides on talent builds in World of Warcraft Classic. PXP is 29 guides on parallel experience in MLB The Show Diamond Dynasty. Pokemon is 8 guides on type matchups and damage.
Building those collections turned up the same obstacle three times, and it is the reason this page exists. The numbers that every guide in every one of them depends on are not published by the companies that make the games.
| Collection | What the hub found |
|---|---|
| PXP | San Diego Studio publishes no thresholds, no per-action values and no multipliers anywhere: not in the manual, not on the game site, not in a patch note. The most cited community source disagrees with its own calculator on four hitter values. |
| Wow Talent | Blizzard removed its own 2006 patch notes. The numbers the entire cluster runs on survive only in community archives, and the current hotfix header names six live versions running four different talent systems. |
| Pokemon | The damage formula in every guide, including the one on this site, is a reconstruction. No official document states it. |
Each collection hub deals with that inside its own game. This page deals with the general case: where game numbers come from, who is actually required to publish any of them, what happens to a game when the company stops running it, and what regulators have started to do about all three. It is about games as products and as artifacts rather than about how to play any particular one.
Why this is not a niche complaint
The Entertainment Software Association, working with YouGov, surveyed 13,545 Americans aged 5 to 90 between 11 and 25 February 2026. It found that 212.3 million Americans play video games every week, up 3 percent on the previous year, with an average player age of 37. Median in-game spending came out at $20 a month.
On the money side, the same association reported United States consumer spending on video games of $60.7 billion in 2025, the second highest figure on record, of which $52.3 billion was content, $5.4 billion hardware and $2.95 billion accessories.
One thing that figure cannot tell you. The $52.3 billion content line is defined to include full games, downloadable content, microtransactions and subscriptions, all bundled together. There is no published split. So the share of American game spending that goes on in-game purchases rather than on buying games is not a number anybody outside the industry can calculate, which is a fair introduction to the rest of this page.
Every number in a game guide comes from one of four places, and they are not equally reliable
When a guide tells you a drop rate, a damage formula, a threshold or a stat cap, that figure came from somewhere. There are only four somewheres, and knowing which one you are reading is the difference between a number you can plan around and a number that was true two patches ago.
| Source | What it is | How it fails |
|---|---|---|
| Official documentation | A patch note, a manual, a support article or a published table from the developer | It can be deleted or rewritten, and the old version is gone |
| Datamining | Constants read out of the game files by people who unpack them | Files change silently, and unused or test values look identical to live ones |
| Community measurement | Statistics gathered by playing: thousands of drops logged, damage numbers recorded | Sample size, selection bias, and no way to tell a tuning change from noise |
| Folklore | A number that has been repeated so long that nobody remembers where it started | It may never have been true |
Telling them apart
The test is the same one this site applies everywhere. Ask what would have to be true for the number to be wrong.
- Official documentation. The page names a version, a patch or a date, and links to the developer. If the link is to a wiki that cites the developer, that is one step removed, and worth following, because the underlying page is sometimes gone.
- Datamined. The page gives an exact number with more precision than any player could measure. A drop rate of 7.69 percent is one over thirteen; nobody arrived at that by farming. Precision is the signature.
- Measured. The page gives a sample size, or a range, or says approximately. Good measurement is honest about its interval. A page giving a round number with no sample is either datamined or folklore.
- Folklore. Nothing is named. The number appears in identical form on several sites with no earliest instance and no source, and it usually ends in a five or a zero.
The failure mode that catches careful readers. A datamined constant is usually correct at the moment it was read and carries no expiry. When the developer changes it in a patch, the old figure does not become visibly wrong. It stays online, precise and confident, on a page that never said which version it described. That is exactly what happened across the World of Warcraft Classic cluster, where six live versions run four different talent systems and most guides do not say which one they mean.
Two of the tools on this site are honest about this, and it is worth noticing why
The Palworld breeding calculator states on its face that it uses the internal breeding power values from the game. That is a datamined source, correctly labeled. The Diamond Dynasty PXP calculator says it uses current public values and thresholds, which is the honest description of figures that exist only because players measured them. The Blooket pack odds calculator is doing probability arithmetic on odds nobody has published at all.
Labeling the source is not a disclaimer. It is the only thing that tells a reader in two years whether a page is still worth trusting.
The rule about publishing odds is drawn around the storefront, not around the game
There is no general obligation on a game company to publish anything about how its game works. There are, however, four specific places where a duty exists, and the pattern they make is strange: identical monetization can be legally required to disclose its odds on one platform and free to say nothing on another.
| Who imposes it | What it requires | Who it binds |
|---|---|---|
| Apple | Disclose the odds of receiving each type of item, before purchase | Apps distributed through the App Store |
| Clearly disclose the odds in advance of, and close in time to, the purchase | Apps distributed through Google Play | |
| China, Ministry of Culture | Publish the odds, and keep the drawing records for at least 90 days | Online game operations in China |
| Federal Trade Commission | Disclose loot box odds and virtual currency exchange rates | One company, by consent order |
| ESRB | A label saying randomized purchases exist | Not the odds themselves |
| United States law generally | Nothing | Nobody |
The platform rules, quoted
Apple states it in the App Review Guidelines, at the section on in-app purchase: Apps offering loot boxes or other mechanisms that provide randomized virtual items for purchase must disclose the odds of receiving each type of item to customers prior to purchase.
Google states it in its Developer Program Policy in almost the same terms: Apps and games offering mechanisms to receive randomized virtual items from a purchase including, but not limited to, loot boxes must clearly disclose the odds of receiving those items in advance of, and in close and timely proximity to, that purchase.
Both rules are contractual. They bind what is distributed through those two stores. A game on a personal computer storefront, a console store or a publisher launcher is under no equivalent obligation, which means the same game with the same mechanic can be required to publish its odds in one place and not in another.
China wrote it into regulation nine years ago, and added a record-keeping duty nobody quotes
The Ministry of Culture notice on strengthening regulation of online gaming operations was issued on 1 December 2016 and took effect on 1 May 2017. Its item six requires operators to display promptly the name, properties, content and quantity of all virtual items that might be drawn, as well as the odds of drawing or putting them together, on the official website or on the drawing page.
Item seven goes further than any Western rule. Operators must announce the results of random drawings, and store the relevant records for relevant departments inquiries; and the period for keeping records is not to be less than 90 days. That is an auditability requirement, not just a disclosure one, and no United States or European rule has an equivalent.
The strongest United States requirement is an order against one company
In January 2025 the Federal Trade Commission settled with Cognosphere, the operator of Genshin Impact, for $20 million. The allegations were that the company misrepresented loot box odds, concealed the real cost of obtaining rare five-star prizes behind a multi-tiered virtual currency with unusual exchange rates, marketed to children while misrepresenting age requirements, and collected data from children under 13 without parental consent.
The order requires the company, going forward, to be required to disclose loot box odds and exchange rates for multi-tiered virtual currency, to be prohibited from selling loot boxes using virtual currency without providing an option for consumers to purchase them directly with real money, and to be prohibited from letting children under 16 buy loot boxes without a parent affirmatively consenting.
Read the third column of the table again. That order binds one company. No competitor selling the same mechanic on the same platforms is subject to any of it. The most demanding odds-disclosure obligation in United States law is not a law at all; it is the settlement of one enforcement action, and it reaches exactly as far as the defendant.
The label that exists tells you randomization is present, not what the odds are
The ESRB introduced an interactive element on 13 April 2020 called In-Game Purchases (Includes Random Items), assigned to all games that include purchases with any randomized element, including loot boxes, gacha games, item or card packs, prize wheels and treasure chests. The stated purpose was that consumers could make more informed decisions before buying rather than finding out afterwards.
It is a presence flag. It carries no probability, and no ESRB rule requires one. And compliance with even that is poor: a study published in Royal Society Open Science in 2023 found that 71 percent of popular games containing loot boxes on one major mobile storefront did not display the required label at all.
One studio publishes every drop rate in its game, has done for a decade, and is still trading
Sections 02 and 03 could leave the impression that not publishing is a technical or commercial necessity. It is neither, and there is a control case that settles the question.
Digital Extremes publishes the complete drop tables for Warframe as an official document, with exact percentages, broken down by mission type, location and reward rotation, covering mods, relics, resources and blueprints. The document carries its own update date. At the time of writing it read last updated 25 June 2026.
The level of detail is not a summary. Individual rows read like this:
| Location and mission | Rotation | Item | Published chance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mercury, Apollodorus, Survival | B | Parry, rare | 7.69% |
| Jupiter, Ganymede, Disruption | A | Hexenon x5, uncommon | 27.78% |
Two example rows read from the published Warframe drop tables. The full document runs to many thousands of rows and is linked in the sources section.
Why this matters more than it looks
Notice the first figure. 7.69 percent is one in thirteen. That is a datamined-looking number, published officially, which is the whole point: the studio simply prints the constant rather than leaving people to infer it from ten thousand runs.
So the arguments against publishing do not survive contact with the counter-example. It is not technically hard, because the numbers already exist as constants in the build. It does not destroy the game, because the game is still running and still updating the document ten years on. It does not require a regulator, because nobody made them do it.
The honest conclusion. Withholding drop rates, damage formulas and progression constants is a choice about how a game is presented, not a constraint. That is worth stating plainly, because most writing about this treats the absence of published numbers as a fact of nature rather than as a decision that at least one studio has made the other way and lived with.
The PXP hub works through what happens when the numbers are withheld: the community measures them, the measurements disagree, and the disagreements are invisible to a reader because every page states its figure with the same confidence.
Thirteen percent of classic American video games are still in print. That figure is measured, not estimated
The most quoted statistic in game preservation is that 87 percent of classic games are critically endangered. It comes from a real study with a real method, and the method is worth knowing, because the figure is more specific and more useful than the headline.
The study is the Survey of the Video Game Reissue Market in the United States, by Phil Salvador, published on 10 July 2023 by the Video Game History Foundation with the Software Preservation Network. Its finding, in its own words:
Only 13 percent of classic video games published in the United States are currently in release.
Survey of the Video Game Reissue Market in the United States, 10 July 2023What was actually measured
- Scope. Games released in the United States between 1960 and 2009. Classic means released before 2010, the cutoff chosen because that is when digital distribution took hold.
- Sample. 1,500 games drawn at random from a games database, giving a margin of error of 2.5 percent at 95 percent confidence, plus roughly 2,500 more titles in targeted platform studies, for a total over 4,000.
- The test. A binary yes or no on whether the game is currently in release. A re-release, remake or remaster counted, including announced but unreleased versions, provided the new version was not substantially different from the original. Games available only as expensive collector items, as raw source code, or on defunct platforms did not count as available.
The number nobody quotes is how sharply it varies
| Ecosystem | Share still in print | How the study describes it |
|---|---|---|
| PlayStation 2 | 12% | Active |
| Game Boy family | 5.87% | Neglected |
| Commodore 64 | 4.5% | Abandoned |
| Everything released before 1985 | Under 3% | From the general sample |
| Best five-year window in the whole study | Never above 20% | Across five decades |
Platform figures from the study explainer. The Game Boy library was studied in full separately, prompted by the closure of two console storefronts in 2023. The ecosystem labels are the study own categories.
The pattern is age, not obscurity. Twelve percent for the PlayStation 2, the healthiest ecosystem measured, is the ceiling rather than the floor. And the best any five-year period in fifty years of history managed was one game in five.
What the figure does and does not say. It measures commercial availability, not whether a copy exists anywhere. A game can be perfectly well preserved in an archive and count as unavailable, and the study is careful about that distinction. The phrase critically endangered is the foundation framing of the same measurement rather than a separately measured variable, and this page uses the 13 percent figure where precision matters.
A library may preserve a dead game and let you play it, but only inside the building
Section 05 measures what is gone. This section is about what the law permits anyone to do about it, and the answer is more generous in one direction and more restrictive in another than most people assume.
The relevant law is section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which prohibits circumventing technological measures that control access to a copyrighted work. Every three years the Librarian of Congress, acting on a recommendation from the Register of Copyrights, grants exemptions. The video game exemptions are at 37 CFR 201.40(b)(19), as amended in October 2024.
Three things it allows
| Provision | Who it covers | What it permits |
|---|---|---|
| (b)(19)(i)(A) | Any individual | Where the copyright owner has ceased to provide the authentication server needed to play, copying and modifying the program to restore personal, local gameplay on your own computer or console |
| (b)(19)(i)(B) and (ii) | Eligible libraries, archives and museums | Preserving the game in a playable form, without commercial advantage, provided it is not made available outside the physical premises |
| (b)(19)(iii) | The same institutions | Circumventing console operating software, only as far as necessary for the preservation above |
The first row is the one almost nobody writes about. If you lawfully bought a game and the publisher has shut down the server that authenticates it, federal regulation expressly permits you to modify the program to get it running again for your own local play. That is an individual right, in the Code of Federal Regulations, right now.
Being an eligible institution is defined too, and the definition is unglamorous and practical: the collections have to be open to the public or routinely available to unaffiliated researchers, there has to be a public service mission, trained staff or volunteers have to provide the normal professional services, the materials have to be lawfully acquired, and reasonable digital security measures have to be in place.
The thing it does not allow, and the decision that kept it that way
Preservation groups asked, in the ninth triennial rulemaking, to remove the premises limitation so that a researcher could access a preserved game remotely. The request was refused. The final rule was published on 28 October 2024 at 89 FR 85437, on the recommendation of the Register of Copyrights dated 18 October 2024.
The reasoning, as published:
The Register concludes that proponents did not show that removing the single-user limitation for preserved computer programs or permitting off-premises access to video games are likely to be noninfringing. She also notes the greater risk of market harm with removing the video game exemption premises limitation, given the market for legacy video games.
Exemption to Prohibition on Circumvention, 89 FR 85437, 28 October 2024Opponents argued, as the same document records, that there would be a significant risk that preserved video games would be used for recreational purposes, that an expanded exemption would give preservation institutions too much discretion over how they provided remote access, and that removing the premises limitation would adversely affect the existing market for older games.
The asymmetry this creates is stark. The Video Game History Foundation opened a library in early access on 30 January 2025 with more than 1,500 out-of-print games magazines, full-text searchable, free, remotely, worldwide, on a fair use basis. It can put fifty years of writing about games in front of anyone with a browser. It cannot let the same person play a preserved game from home. Documentation travels; the artifact does not.
The next cycle is open, and the window is short
The tenth triennial proceeding began with a notice of inquiry published on 9 June 2026 at 91 FR 34795. The dates section is specific: written petitions for new exemptions and for renewal of current exemptions had to be received by 11:59 pm Eastern on 24 August 2026, with comments responding to renewal petitions due by 28 September 2026.
The exemptions granted in 2024 run to October 2027. Anything renewed or newly granted in this cycle would run from October 2027 to October 2030. Which means the premises limitation described above is settled law for the next year at least, and the question of whether it changes after that was decided by whoever filed before that August deadline.
1.29 million verified signatures across 24 member states produced a voluntary code of conduct
The strongest available measure of how much influence players have over whether a game keeps working is a European Citizens Initiative called Stop Destroying Videogames, and the outcome is now on the record.
An initiative of this kind requires a million verified statements of support across at least seven member states before the European Commission has to respond formally. This one, registration number 2024/000007, became only the fourteenth valid initiative in the history of the mechanism.
| Stage | Date | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Validated signatures | 1,294,188 | Thresholds met in 24 member states |
| Submitted to the Commission | 26 January 2026 | The fourteenth valid initiative ever |
| Meeting with the Commission | 23 February 2026 | Executive Vice-President and Commissioner level |
| European Parliament public hearing | 16 April 2026 | |
| Parliament plenary debate | 21 May 2026 | |
| Commission reply adopted | 16 June 2026 | Document C(2026) 4110 final |
What the Commission said
The Commission considers that a proposal to the European Parliament and the Council for a legal act establishing an obligation for publishers that sell or license video games to consumers in the European Union to keep them in a playable state, as requested by the ECI, would not be proportionate.
European Commission, C(2026) 4110 final, 16 June 2026What it offered instead is a single sentence, and it is the whole substantive outcome:
The Commission intends to explore with the industry the possibility of elaborating a self-regulatory code of conduct to promote better standards for the sunsetting of games.
The same documentWith two dated commitments attached: to begin stakeholder exchanges by the end of 2026, and to present its report on the application of the Digital Content Directive by the end of 2026.
The United Kingdom reached the same answer sixteen months earlier
A parliamentary petition titled Prohibit publishers irrevocably disabling video games they have already sold collected 189,887 signatures, opened on 14 January 2025, closed on 14 July 2025 and was debated in Parliament on 3 November 2025. The government responded on 3 February 2025 through the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and the summary response was two sentences:
There are no plans to amend UK consumer law on disabling video games. Those selling games must comply with existing requirements in consumer law and we will continue to monitor this issue.
Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 3 February 2025The fuller response pointed at the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and the unfair trading regulations, and made one point that connects directly to the next section: that if software is offered for sale that is not supported by the provider, then this should be made clear.
Two jurisdictions, independently, sixteen months apart, reached the same conclusion. Neither will require a publisher to keep a game playable. Both point to existing consumer law. Both land on disclosure and voluntary industry codes as the remedy. Nearly 1.5 million signatures across the two campaigns moved the position in neither. Whatever anyone thinks about that outcome, it is now a settled fact rather than an open question, and any page describing the campaign as pending is out of date.
California now makes a storefront say that you did not buy the game
Both governments in the previous section landed on disclosure. One American state had already legislated exactly that, and it took effect on 1 January 2025.
The provision is section 17500.6 of the California Business and Professions Code, added by Assembly Bill 2426. It makes it unlawful to advertise a digital good using the words buy or purchase, or any similar term suggesting unrestricted ownership, unless one of two things happens at the point of sale.
- The seller obtains an affirmative acknowledgement from the buyer that they are receiving a license to access the digital good, with a complete list of restrictions and conditions, and notice that access may be unilaterally revoked; or
- The seller provides a clear and conspicuous statement to the same effect, with a hyperlink or a scannable code leading to the full terms.
Digital good is defined to include a digital audiovisual work, a digital audio work, a digital book, a digital code, and a digital application or game.
The exemptions are as informative as the rule
| Exempt | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Subscription services granting access only for the duration of the subscription | Nobody thinks they own something they rent by the month, so no disclosure is needed |
| Free digital goods | No purchase, no misrepresentation of a purchase |
| Goods available for permanent offline download, without an internet connection | The carve-out that rewards a game which can survive its own publisher |
Read that third row against everything above. A game you can download once and run forever without a server is exempt from the disclosure, because in that case the word buy is not misleading. A game that phones home is not exempt, because it can stop working when the company decides. The statute encodes precisely the distinction that the preservation study measures and that the copyright exemption tries to remedy.
Why this is the most quietly significant item on the page. It is the first American law to put the sentence you are licensing this, not buying it, onto a storefront at the moment of the transaction. It does not require anyone to keep a game running, and it does not help with a game already sold. It only requires that the claim on the button match what the customer actually receives, which turns out to be the one thing every regulator in this area has been willing to ask for.
Half a billion dollars over a button layout, and what actually reached the players
The largest consumer action in this area was not about odds or preservation. It was about the interface, and it produced the only figures on this page that describe money moving back the other way.
In December 2022 the Federal Trade Commission announced two separate outcomes against Epic Games over Fortnite.
| Action | Amount | What it was for |
|---|---|---|
| Civil penalty | $275 million | Collecting personal information from children under 13 without verifiable parental consent, and defaulting live text and voice chat to on |
| Consumer refunds | $245 million | Dark pattern billing practices |
The Commission described the interface problem in one line: Fortnite counterintuitive, inconsistent, and confusing button configuration led players to incur unwanted charges. The alleged conduct also included letting children make purchases without a parent consenting and locking the accounts of customers who disputed charges with their card issuer.
Where the $245 million actually went
- December 2024. A first round of more than $72 million.
- June 2025. A second round of more than $126 million, sent as 969,173 checks and electronic payments over two days.
- Cumulative to that point. Nearly $200 million of the $245 million.
- The claim window. Reopened, then closed. The deadline to file was 9 July 2025 and no new claims are being accepted.
Refund figures from Federal Trade Commission announcements and its Fortnite refunds page. Further payments were expected after claim validation; no later announcement was found at the time of writing, so the verified cumulative figure remains the one above.
The Commission said what the problem was five years ago
In August 2020 the Commission staff published a perspective paper following a workshop on loot boxes. Its two findings read as a summary of everything on this page: that loot box marketing techniques may encourage players to overspend or mask the real costs to players through confusing terms or inadequate disclosures, and that participants called for meaningful disclosures to help players make informed decisions, additional research and consumer education, and improved industry self-regulation.
Six years later, the score is one consent order and two platform policies. No statute. The regulatory answer to a market of 212 million weekly players in the United States alone is a settlement binding one company, two contractual rules imposed by two app stores on their own distribution, an industry label that flags randomization without odds and is ignored 71 percent of the time on one storefront, and a state law about the word buy. That is the complete list.
Three collections, and which one you need
Each has its own hub covering the game itself. Counts are current as of 19 August 2026.
Wow Talent
30 guides on talent builds in World of Warcraft Classic, for leveling, dungeons and player versus player.
- Start with the Wow Talent hubThe version routing layer: six live versions running four different talent systems, and why most guides do not say which one they mean.
- Classic WoW Talent CalculatorClass, activity, level and playstyle to a recommended distribution.
PXP
29 guides on parallel experience in MLB The Show Diamond Dynasty: thresholds, values, multipliers and how long a parallel actually takes.
- Start with the PXP hubThe provenance layer: every official statement, and the demonstration that no publisher figure exists at all.
- Diamond Dynasty PXP CalculatorGame-by-game PXP with difficulty and online bonuses, against current public thresholds.
Pokemon
8 guides on type effectiveness, dual typing and the damage formula.
- The full type chartAll 18 types, what each is strong against, weak to and resists.
- How damage is calculatedEvery variable in the formula, in plain language.
- The best type combinationsIncluding the dual types that have never appeared.
- Nine common matchup mistakesWhere most losses to type disadvantage actually come from.
The tools
- Pokemon Type Calculator and the damage calculatorDual-type effectiveness, and a damage range from level, stats and modifiers.
- Palworld Breeding CalculatorBuilt on the internal breeding power values, which the tool says on its face.
- Blooket CalculatorPack odds, token spend and the probability of pulling a target, on odds nobody publishes.
- 40K Damage CalculatorExpected hits, wounds, failed saves and damage through the tenth edition sequence.
- Uma Musume race and inheritance calculatorsRace outcomes, and blue-factor lineage planning.
- All gaming calculatorsTwelve tools, including Blox Fruits, FFXI skillchains and Terminus.
The other eleven sections of the site are on the blog hub.
Questions this section gets, with the document named
Are game companies required to publish drop rates?
Not by any United States law. Apple and Google both require odds disclosure for apps distributed through their stores, China has required it by regulation since 2017, and one company is required to do it by a Federal Trade Commission order. A game on a personal computer storefront, a console store or a publisher launcher is under no obligation at all.
Does the ESRB label tell me the odds?
No. The In-Game Purchases (Includes Random Items) element, introduced in April 2020, tells you that randomized purchases exist in the game. It carries no probability, and no rule requires one. A 2023 study found 71 percent of popular loot box games on one mobile storefront were not displaying the label at all.
Where do the numbers in a game guide come from?
One of four places: official documentation, datamined constants read out of the game files, community measurement from thousands of logged results, or folklore that has been repeated until nobody remembers its origin. Precision beyond what anyone could measure is the signature of datamining; an honest range with a sample size is the signature of measurement.
Does any studio publish its drop rates voluntarily?
Yes. Digital Extremes publishes the complete Warframe drop tables with exact percentages by mission, location and rotation, and keeps the document updated. It is the control case that shows withholding the numbers is a choice rather than a technical or commercial necessity.
How many old games are still available to buy?
Thirteen percent of classic games published in the United States, measured in a 2023 study of over 4,000 titles released between 1960 and 2009. It falls to 12 percent for the PlayStation 2, 5.87 percent for the Game Boy family, 4.5 percent for the Commodore 64 and under 3 percent for anything before 1985.
Is it legal to modify a game to get it working after the servers shut down?
For your own local play, federal regulation expressly permits it. The exemption at 37 CFR 201.40(b)(19)(i)(A) covers a lawfully acquired complete game where the copyright owner has ceased to provide the authentication server, solely to restore personal, local gameplay on your own computer or console. It does not permit distributing the result.
Can a library let me play a preserved game from home?
No. The exemption for libraries, archives and museums requires that the game is not made available outside the physical premises. Preservation groups asked for that limitation to be removed in 2024 and the request was refused, published at 89 FR 85437 on 28 October 2024.
Why was the remote access request refused?
The Register of Copyrights concluded that proponents had not shown off-premises access was likely to be noninfringing, and noted the greater risk of market harm given the existing market for legacy games. Opponents argued that preserved games would be used recreationally and that remote access would affect that market.
What happened to the Stop Destroying Videogames campaign?
It succeeded procedurally and failed substantively. It gathered 1,294,188 validated signatures across 24 member states, was submitted on 26 January 2026, and the European Commission replied on 16 June 2026 that a legal obligation to keep games playable would not be proportionate, offering instead to explore a voluntary code of conduct with the industry.
Did the United Kingdom do anything?
A petition with 189,887 signatures was debated in Parliament on 3 November 2025. The government had already responded in February 2025 that there are no plans to amend consumer law on disabling video games, and that existing consumer law applies.
Do I own a game I bought digitally?
Generally you hold a license rather than ownership, and since 1 January 2025 California law requires a storefront to say so. Section 17500.6 of the Business and Professions Code bars advertising a digital good with the word buy unless the seller obtains an acknowledgement, or gives a clear statement, that the buyer is receiving a license that may be unilaterally revoked. Goods available for permanent offline download are exempt.
How much did Fortnite players actually get back?
Nearly $200 million of the $245 million refund fund had been paid out as of June 2025, including 969,173 payments in that round alone. The claim deadline was 9 July 2025 and no new claims are being accepted. The separate $275 million was a civil penalty for privacy violations and did not go to players.
The documents behind everything above
Every figure on this page is tied to the body that publishes it, with the date. All links verified 19 August 2026.
- How much of game history is still in print. Phil Salvador, Survey of the Video Game Reissue Market in the United States, Video Game History Foundation with the Software Preservation Network, 10 July 2023, version 1.1, source of the 13 percent finding and the sample of 1,500 titles at 2.5 percent margin of error. Method, scope and the platform breakdowns from the study explainer and the foundation summary page.
- The library that can host magazines but not games. Video Game History Foundation library launch, 30 January 2025, for the 1,500 out-of-print magazines and the stated fair use basis.
- What the copyright exemption permits. 37 CFR 201.40, current text, for paragraph (b)(19) in full, including the individual right at (b)(19)(i)(A), the on-premises limitation, and the definition of an eligible library, archive or museum.
- The refusal to allow remote access. Exemption to Prohibition on Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems, final rule, 89 FR 85437, published and effective 28 October 2024, source of the Register conclusion and the opponents arguments. The underlying recommendation of the Register of Copyrights is dated 18 October 2024.
- The next cycle. Notice of inquiry initiating the tenth triennial rulemaking, 91 FR 34795, 9 June 2026, source of the 24 August 2026 petition deadline and the 28 September 2026 comment deadline. Proceeding page at the Copyright Office.
- The European initiative and its answer. Stop Destroying Videogames, European Citizens Initiative register, registration 2024/000007, for the 1,294,188 validated signatures and the 24 member states, and the Commission announcement of 16 June 2026. Both quotations are from the reply itself, C(2026) 4110 final, 16 June 2026.
- The United Kingdom petition and response. Prohibit publishers irrevocably disabling video games they have already sold, 189,887 signatures, with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport response of 3 February 2025 and the debate date of 3 November 2025.
- Platform odds rules. Apple App Review Guidelines, section 3.1.1, and the Google Play developer program policy on real-money gambling, games and contests. Neither page carries a revision date, and Apple describes its guidelines as a living document.
- The Chinese rule. Ministry of Culture Notice Regarding Strengthening Regulation of Online Gaming Operations, document number Culture Market Release (2016) No. 32, issued 1 December 2016 and effective 1 May 2017. Both quotations are from an English translation rather than from the original, which is stated here rather than hidden.
- The Federal Trade Commission actions. Genshin Impact developer settlement, 17 January 2025, for the $20 million figure, the alleged conduct and the four order requirements. Epic Games, 19 December 2022, for the $275 million penalty and the $245 million refund fund. Refund progress from the June 2025 announcement and the Fortnite refunds page. The 2020 workshop findings are in the staff perspective paper of 14 August 2020.
- The rating label. ESRB announcement of 13 April 2020 and the current ratings guide for the five interactive elements and their definitions. The compliance figure is from Leon Y. Xiao, Beneath the label, Royal Society Open Science, volume 10 issue 3, 2023, DOI 10.1098/rsos.230270, read from the open access copy because the publisher version could not be retrieved.
- California on the word buy. California Business and Professions Code section 17500.6, added by Assembly Bill 2426, operative 1 January 2025. The official state legislature page could not be retrieved, so this is a reproduction of the code rather than the official source, and the description here is deliberately a summary rather than a quotation.
- A studio that publishes everything. The official Warframe drop tables, carrying their own last updated date of 25 June 2026. The short address on the game site redirects here, and the target may move.
- Scale. Entertainment Software Association, Essential Facts, press release of 3 June 2026, with fieldwork by YouGov from 11 to 25 February 2026 among 13,545 respondents aged 5 to 90, source of the 212.3 million weekly players, the average age of 37 and the $20 median monthly in-game spend. Spending from the association report of 11 February 2026, using Circana and Sensor Tower data.
- Noted and not published. Several things were checked and left out. No count of shut-down online games is given, because no government body, standards body, industry association or peer-reviewed source publishes one; the community lists that exist are not authoritative. No share of spending attributable to in-game purchases is given, because the content line bundles full games, downloadable content, microtransactions and subscriptions and is not broken out. No direct quotation is attributed to the Entertainment Software Association regarding the 2024 exemption, because only the Federal Register summary of opponents arguments could be verified. No claim is made about whether any particular publisher other than Digital Extremes does or does not publish odds, and no rationale is attributed to any company for withholding them, because no such statement could be found. And the phrase critically endangered is described as the foundation own framing rather than as a separately measured variable, because the study explainer does not define it.
Scope note. This page describes rules, decisions and published figures as they stood on 19 August 2026. Two of the items here have live deadlines inside the following twelve months, so treat every date as something to re-check rather than a fixture. Nothing here is legal advice, and the description of a copyright exemption in particular is a summary of a regulation rather than a statement about what is permissible in any specific situation; the regulation itself is linked above and is short enough to read. Regulatory material is United States, European Union and United Kingdom, and the rules that apply where you live may be different. Game figures change with patches, and any number in any guide on this site, including this one, describes the version it was written against.