Mexican lawmakers want storefronts to say out loud that you are buying a licence
A Senate initiative from Luis Donaldo Colosio Riojas and Iraís Reyes would force platforms to disclose before checkout whether you own or licence a game, and require a preservation plan before servers are switched off.
The argument over what a digital game purchase actually buys you has reached Mexico's Senate. Senator Luis Donaldo Colosio Riojas, who chairs the chamber's digital rights commission, and federal deputy Iraís Reyes have put forward a consumer-rights initiative aimed squarely at digital storefronts.
Three demands
The first is disclosure. Platforms and publishers would have to make clear before checkout what the buyer is getting — ownership or a licence — along with the circumstances under which access can be suspended. The point is to stop the distinction living exclusively in terms of service nobody reads.
The second is preservation. Where a game is sold under an indefinite licence but needs a server to run, the initiative would require the seller to provide technical tools or patches that let the game keep working locally once official support ends, including private servers where that is feasible.
The third is jurisdiction. Foreign platforms selling into Mexico would need a local address, giving Mexican consumer authorities somewhere to direct a complaint.
Where this came from
Colosio and Reyes filed an antitrust complaint against Sony earlier this year over reports that the company plans to stop producing physical PlayStation discs from 2028, so this is a continuation rather than a first move. It also lands in the same current as the Stop Killing Games campaign in Europe, which has been pushing publishers on the same end-of-life question.
Why it matters
If it passed, publishers selling into Mexico would have to plan for a game's shutdown before they sell it — a legal obligation no major market currently imposes.