A rather bizarre statement made by the Entertainment Software Association’s VP of State Government Affairs, Jennifer Gibbons, during a California State Senate hearing for Stop Killing Games’ 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 “illegal” and considered “piracy.”
The Stop Killing Games’ Protect Our Games Act was the topic of discussion at yesterday’s 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’s VP of State Government Affairs, Jennifer Gibbons.
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. “Minecraft is currently hosted by community servers,” Ward replied, “Call of Duty [has] community servers, so it’s an option that is out there, in existence here today.”
“They’re illegal,” Gibbons interrupted. “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.”
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
— Accursed Farms (@accursedfarms) June 29, 2026
Gibbons was then asked by a committee member if private servers were akin to a “black market” for video games, to which she replied, “Yes. 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.”
As PC Gamer notes, the USTR’s Notorious Markets Reports actually targets servers that allow users to bypass subscription fees, so Gibbons’ comment doesn’t apply to Minecraft or Call of Duty, as you don’t even need to pay to play these games online if you’re on PC.
The video game industry lobbies against regulation
But this isn’t 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 “opinion” piece about the Protect Our Games Act on the ESA’s official website: “This 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[…]AB 1921 doesn’t just misunderstand games. It undermines the very thing it claims to protect.”
However, Stan Pierre-Louis’ “consumer friendly” angle doesn’t hold much weight when you take into account that the ESA lobbied against banning loot boxes and pay-to-win microtransactions 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’s take a look at how the ESA makes its money.
As the Entertainment Software Association is a non-profit, it’s quite easy to find a breakdown of its revenue. Based on ESA’s fiscal year ending March, 2025, the non-profit pulled in $36,614,556 in tax-exempt “program service revenue.” $27,804,681 of that figure was generated via “member dues.” 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.
Likewise, it’s 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 “compensation of current officers, directors, trustees, and key employees,” $11,021,302 was spent on “other salaries and wages,” and a whopping $2,266,618 was spent on “lobbying.” Almost $2.3 million of that $4,819,280 “compensation” figure went directly to ESA President and CEO Stanley Pierre Louis and ESRB’s President Patricia Vance.
It’s also important to note here that since the revenue that the ESA generated from E3 began to dip in the early 2000s, ESA’s revenue is now predominantly generated through said membership fees. In fact, between 2006 and 2009, the ESA raised its membership fees by roughly 1,700 percent.
It’s similarly important to note that Video Games Europe, another membership-fee-oriented “interest group” that represents dozens of AAA publishers, including Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, Take-Two, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Nintendo, Amazon, and Epic Games, also lobbied against Stop Killing Games in the European Union. I’m sure that this is merely coincidental.
Update 6/30/2026, 3:45 p.m. ET: An Entertainment Software Association representative emailed Kotaku to clarify Jennifer Gibbons and the ESA’s “position on private servers.”
“Private servers that host or distribute copyrighted game content without authorization infringe on the intellectual property (IP) rights of game publishers,” they said. “While publishers may take different approaches, all publishers reserve the right to exercise their rights against IP infringement.”
They continued, “The provision in CA AB 1921 that proposed these servers as a legitimate alternative to keep games running raises concerns about a publisher’s ability to enforce their IP rights. In addition, private servers operate with no oversight from the publisher and do not uphold the same trust and safety standards. This could create an unsafe environment for players and be counter to the industry’s commitment to fostering safe and fun game play for all players.”
The ESA representative also stated that Gibbons was responding to a “multi-part question in which the committee was using the terms community server and private server interchangeably.”
