Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-172.56.23.4-20161127023633/@comment-28251580-20161127103537

There are several possibilities, but Kayaba was a genius and would most likely have countermeasures in place for everything ARGUS could come up with:
 * Most likely only Kayaba had admin privileges when the game began it's service. Attempting to reset could start a hidden routine to kill the players too.
 * Shutting down the game: If you shut down the game, the NerveGear still works because of an internal battery. If the connection was off for more than two hours, it'd fry the players' brain regardless.
 * Changing running code is not really possible, unless you programmed it specifically this way before executing it, and then it's still not changing running code in the sense you have in mind. The only one's able to interact with the code were Cardinal and Kayaba, and that's not really the changes you have in mind. As we know almost nothing about the possibilities in the series' 2022 and the code itself, we can argue for both sides without coming to a conclusion