Mark Sewards

It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Ben Goldsborough) on opening the debate so aptly. When I was elected last July, I did not imagine that one of my contributions in Westminster Hall would be on the subject of video games. It was not on my bingo card—or, more aptly, it was not in my inventory—but here we are. I am glad we are here, because although video games may not often feature in parliamentary debate, the issues raised affect far more than the gaming industry, juggernaut though it is. They go to the heart of consumer law, ownership rights and the path we are on in a digital age. It is worth noting that I speak as the vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on consumer protection, so my arguments will primarily focus on that dimension. It is also worth saying that video games in their own right have been part of the public discourse many times since their widespread adoption as an entertainment medium. Like everyone, I have heard the common questions about their merits, their impact on young people and whether they cause brain rot or inspire violence. Although I would argue that they do not do those things—certainly not the last two—this debate is not about whether video games are good or bad. It is about something much more fundamental. It is about whether, when someone buys something, they should have the right to keep it. I will be clear about my ask here. I am not demanding that publishers keep servers running forever. Campaigners are not asking for indefinite technical support. We are not asking companies to keep pouring resources into a game that they have finished with. What we are asking is fairly simple: that publishers should not be able to deliberately disable every copy of a game that consumers have already purchased, leaving them with nothing. I will talk first about the end of support, and what that means in this context. Normally, end of support means that if something goes wrong, the customer is on their own. That is fair enough—it is perfectly reasonable depending on the context. An iPhone that someone bought 14 years ago no longer receives updates from Apple, but can still be unlocked and take calls. An old toaster can still toast bread, even if it does not have smart sensors and a touchscreen. A decades-old printer no longer receives updates from the company that made it, but it still prints documents. What we are seeing with games is different. It is as if someone bought that printer, and then one day the manufacturer sent out a signal that deliberately stopped it from working at all, claiming it had reached the end of support. That is not support ending; it is obsolescence, which has an entirely different meaning.