No lollipop for you
Yes it will be interesting when we can actually create conscious beings in games. I am reminded by a TNG episode where James Moriarty is created as an opponent for Data on the holodeck. Moriarty became aware of his sentient being. Moriarty argued that he was in fact alive, and as such had a right to live and exist.

"You – or someone – asked your computer to program a nefarious fictional character from nineteenth century London – and that is how I arrived... but I am no longer that creation. I am no longer that character, I have changed. I am alive – I am aware of my own consciousness."

– James Moriarty, 2365 ("Elementary, Dear Data")

So in this sense we have to ask ourselves what type of Gods do we wish to be to these beings? Cause that is what we are essentially, their creators. As a God do I think I am being benevolent by puppeteering a sentient being’s life? Is it right for me to enslave a thinking individual to do my bidding? I may be entertained… but is it right? Is it right to create a thing that feels and then to enslave it. We don’t do it to our own children. So how could I as the creator of that thing feel right that they are for my entertainment.
If we were to give these programs rights, as much rights as we have as sentient beings, than what purpose could they really serve? We couldn’t make any apps with them – we couldn’t force them to do anything really. All we could do is create them and stand idly back and watch them develop as their own “digital species” detached from this world. Perhaps we could trade with them for efforts, involving programming or energy of some sort. Like the Microverse Battery episode in Rick and Morty, where Rick creates a microverse that extracts energy via goobleboxes. When Zeep Xanflorp creates a solution to their own energy problems within the microverse, by creating another miniverse (basically repeating Ricks experiment successfully) Rick’s battery no longer works. What happens when the miniverse rebels or stops serving their purpose? How beholdent are we as creators to these entities? Are we responsible for them? How deep does the rabbit hole go, and could we just pull the plug if something went wrong, essentially mass killing the lot of them?
I believe sentients have the right to freedom and life, whether made of digital matter or physical matter. To decide otherwise is verging on the behavior of our worst rulers throughout history.

Plus I was deeply effected by the 90's Canadian made cartoon called Reboot... so my bias has to do with my love for those characters struggles as "digital sentient beings" in a video game aware of their creators but helpless to their creators whims.