The Entertainment Software Association (ESA), gaming's primary industry lobbying group, is stepping back from remarks made during a California State Senate hearing on the Protect Our Games Act (AB 1921). During the debate, ESA vice president for state government affairs Jennifer Gibbons declared that private servers for Minecraft and Call of Duty were "illegal" and constituted "piracy".
According to reports from PC Gamer, GameSpot, and GamesRadar, Gibbons stated: "They're illegal. They 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."
The statement drew immediate backlash. Journalists and players noted the claim was factually incorrect: Minecraft's official website itself allows anyone to download a .jar file to legally set up and run a private server. Facing questions, the ESA began to retreat from its position. In a statement to PC Gamer, the organization now says only that "private servers infringe on the intellectual property rights of game publishers," without categorically calling them "illegal."
The incident happened during California's vote on the Stop Killing Games-backed legislation, which sought to require publishers to keep discontinued games playable. The bill failed to advance, but the ESA's controversial statement became the hearing's most debated moment.
