Mexico's protest against digital-only game distribution is escalating from a single complaint into a full legislative proposal. Senator Luis Donaldo Colosio Riojas, who chairs Mexico's Digital Rights Commission, and federal Deputy Iraís Reyes have presented a consumer-protection initiative targeting how digital games and other digital goods are sold in the country, first seen in a video statement posted to Instagram.
The proposal has three main foundations. Digital platforms would be required to clearly disclose whether a purchase grants outright ownership or a license to access the software, something Colosio has previously contended over, saying consumers "pay as owners but receive rights similar to those of a tenant."
It would also require mechanisms to preserve a game's functionality if a publisher shuts down its servers, rather than letting titles simply stop working. Any foreign platform selling digital goods in Mexico would also need to maintain a local address or legal representative so customers have a place to file complaints locally.
In addition, the bill would treat license agreements as adhesion contracts, meaning revoking access to purchased content without providing some form of preservation, compensation, or refunds would be considered a serious violation.
This isn't the pair's first move against the shift toward digital-only distribution. In August, Colosio and Reyes filed what they described as a formal antitrust complaint against Sony with Mexico's competition regulator, COFECE, especially targeting Sony's aim to end physical PlayStation disc production by 2028. That complaint argued that the shift would eliminate price competition and leave the secondhand market useless. This new bill takes the same underlying concern and extends it to all digital publishers, not just Sony.
In the US, Sony has separately argued in court filings that digital PlayStation game ownership isn't reasonable, pointing to license agreement language stating software is "licensed to you, not sold." The timing matches Sony's legal posture elsewhere in the world, and if Mexico's proposal becomes law, it would clash with how Sony has been framing digital ownership in its own defense.
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At the time of writing, no bill number or final legislative text has been made official, and there's no set timetable for a vote.
