During a recent legislative hearing regarding the Protect Our Games Act in the California State Senate, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) took a hardline stance against player-run servers. Jennifer Gibbons, the ESA’s vice president of state government affairs, explicitly told lawmakers that private community servers for Minecraft and Call of Duty are “illegal.”
Gibbons argued that these servers are not affiliated with companies like Microsoft and often fail to meet the same safety standards as official, publisher-run infrastructure. “In fact, we consider it piracy,” Gibbons stated during the hearing. She further claimed that the United States Trade Representative (USTR) has identified major private servers as “notorious markets” for counterfeiting, citing two pending lawsuits involving the organization.
The Conflict Over Private Server Legality
The ESA's testimony appears to conflate community-run projects with specific, unauthorized services targeted by the USTR for allowing players to bypass subscription fees. Critics point out that neither Minecraft nor classic Call of Duty titles require a subscription to play, and Minecraft even hosts links to community servers directly on its official website. Commenters on platforms like Reddit have accused the ESA of attempting to mislead legislators who lack the time to fact-check lobbyist claims in real-time.
Following the hearing, the ESA doubled down on its position in a statement to Video Games Chronicle. The trade group maintained that private servers infringe on intellectual property rights and expressed concern that legislation like CA AB 1921—which would require certain games to remain playable after server shutdowns—could hinder a publisher’s ability to enforce those rights.
The Future of the Stop Killing Games Movement
The Protect Our Games Act, which was endorsed by the Stop Killing Games movement, was ultimately voted down. The movement, which gained momentum following Ubisoft’s decision to shut down The Crew, argues that publishers have an ethical and legal obligation to keep older games functional for players who have already purchased them.
Despite the legislative setback in California, proponents of the movement are undeterred. An advocate for the group emphasized that they plan to introduce similar legislation in other states and are considering efforts at the federal level. “The ESA is about to learn what it is like to fight on many fronts at once,” the advocate stated. “They have to win every single time to keep things the way they are. We only have to win once to change them.”
Publishers continue to push back against these proposals, warning that such mandates could make video games significantly more expensive to produce and limit developer choice. For now, the debate over who owns the right to keep a game’s servers running—the publisher or the community—remains a central point of contention in the industry.