A rather bizarre statement made by the Entertainment Software Association\u2019s VP of State Government Affairs, Jennifer Gibbons, during a California State Senate hearing for Stop Killing Games\u2019 Protect Our Games Act is making the rounds online today, as the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) Vice President cut in during a statement made by Assemblyman Chris Ward to declare that community servers for Minecraft and Call of Duty games are \u201cillegal\u201d and considered \u201cpiracy.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Stop Killing Games\u2019 Protect Our Games Act<\/a> was the topic<\/a> of discussion at yesterday\u2019s California State Senate hearing, during the Senate Business, Professions and Economic Development Committee. Assemblyman Chris Ward proposed the POG Act to the committee, which was opposed by ESA\u2019s VP of State Government Affairs, Jennifer Gibbons.<\/p>\n Ward was questioned by the committee about the feasibility of providing consumers with privately hosted servers to continue playing games after publishers have ceased supporting them. \u201cMinecraft is currently hosted by community servers,\u201d Ward replied, \u201cCall of Duty [has] community servers, so it\u2019s an option that is out there, in existence here today.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re illegal,\u201d Gibbons interrupted. \u201cThey are not in any way affiliated with Microsoft. Microsoft, for Minecraft, has gotten a lot of criticism because of those community servers not employing the same safety standards that Microsoft does on their Minecraft servers.\u201d<\/p>\n Hello outlaws! Jennifer Gibbons, VP of the Entertainment Software Association said Minecraft community servers are ILLEGAL. Thank you for lying about the law to the California Senate in public, it lets everyone see what we’ve been up against.https:\/\/t.co\/AqARv4n1Od<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Accursed Farms (@accursedfarms) June 29, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n Gibbons was then asked by a committee member if private servers were akin to a \u201cblack market\u201d for video games, to which she replied, \u201cYes. In fact, we consider it piracy. We have lawsuits, two pending lawsuits, against private servers right now, and the United States Trade Representative (USTR) in their Notorious Markets Reports on counterfeiting and piracy has named some of these big private servers as a notorious market.\u201d<\/p>\n As PC Gamer<\/a> notes, the USTR\u2019s Notorious Markets Reports actually targets servers that allow users to bypass subscription fees, so Gibbons\u2019 comment doesn\u2019t apply to Minecraft or Call of Duty, as you don\u2019t even need to pay to play these games online if you\u2019re on PC.<\/p>\n The video game industry lobbies against regulation <\/p>\n But this isn\u2019t the first time that the ESA has lobbied against the Stop Killing Games and Protect Our Games Act. ESA President and CEO Stan Pierre-Louis also published a lengthy \u201copinion\u201d piece about the Protect Our Games Act on the ESA\u2019s official website<\/a>: \u201cThis bill may sound consumer friendly, but it ultimately hurts both players and creators. Many games today are live, connected experiences that depend on online communities and evolving content[\u2026]AB 1921 doesn\u2019t just misunderstand games. It undermines the very thing it claims to protect.\u201d<\/p>\n However, Stan Pierre-Louis\u2019 \u201cconsumer friendly\u201d angle doesn\u2019t hold much weight when you take into account that the ESA lobbied against banning loot boxes and pay-to-win microtransactions<\/a> in games played by minors in 2019. So, why exactly is the ESA seemingly anti-video game preservation, but pro-loot boxes and microtransactions for kids? Who can say. But for absolutely, 100 percent unrelated reasons, let\u2019s take a look at how the ESA makes its money.<\/p>\n As the Entertainment Software Association is a non-profit, it\u2019s quite easy<\/a> to find a breakdown of its revenue. Based on ESA\u2019s fiscal year ending March, 2025, the non-profit pulled in $36,614,556 in tax-exempt \u201cprogram service revenue.\u201d $27,804,681 of that figure was generated via \u201cmember dues.\u201d These are the fees that the likes of Electronic Arts, Microsoft, Epic Games, Nintendo, Amazon, Take-Two, Ubisoft, and Sony Interactive Entertainment pay them each year.<\/p>\n Likewise, it\u2019s quite easy to find out how they spend their money. For instance, out of the $35,510,258 the ESA spent in FYE March, 2025, $4,819,280 went to the \u201ccompensation of current officers, directors, trustees, and key employees,\u201d $11,021,302 was spent on \u201cother salaries and wages,\u201d and a whopping $2,266,618 was spent on \u201clobbying.\u201d Almost $2.3 million of that $4,819,280 \u201ccompensation\u201d figure went directly to ESA President and CEO Stanley Pierre Louis and ESRB\u2019s President Patricia Vance.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also important to note here that since the revenue that the ESA generated from E3 began to dip in the early 2000s, ESA\u2019s revenue is now predominantly generated through said membership fees. In fact, between 2006 and 2009, the ESA raised<\/a> its membership fees by roughly 1,700 percent.<\/p>\n It\u2019s similarly important to note that Video Games Europe, another membership-fee-oriented \u201cinterest group\u201d that represents dozens of AAA publishers, including Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, Take-Two, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Nintendo, Amazon, and Epic Games, also<\/a> lobbied against Stop Killing Games in the European Union. I\u2019m sure that this is merely coincidental.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A rather bizarre statement made by the Entertainment Software Association\u2019s VP of State Government Affairs, Jennifer Gibbons, during…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":735306,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[316387,36260,12474,12624,24351,74],"class_list":["post-735305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-always-online","tag-call-of-duty","tag-esa","tag-minecraft","tag-stop-killing-games","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=735305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/735306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=735305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=735305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=735305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}