I tend to agree with you that allowing the community to keep games running would be a more desirable outcome, but I don't believe California could make such a law. As I understand it, reverse engineering is already illegal federally because of things like the DMCA. California can't just make the DMCA not apply in this case because its not a California law. However they can pass consumer protection laws making there be consequences for abandoning a game when the consumers are in California. Given the alternative is probably do nothing this does seem good.

I don't know about California, but AFAIK reverse engineering is legal, but breaking DRM protection isn't, so what companies did was to put DRM in their software, hence the reverse engineering became illegal.

yep, that is what I meant by the DMCA, but I should probably have been more clear.