Entertainment Software Association Calls Minecraft and Call of Duty Community Servers "Illegal"
"We consider it piracy."
Mojang Studios
If you play Minecraft or Call of Duty on community servers, you might be committing a crime, as the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) considers them "illegal".
A little context: the Stop Killing Games initiative, which works on making publishers provide ways for people who bought their games to continue playing them after servers shut down as part of the Protect Our Games Act (AB 1921), keeps looking for ways to help create laws that would force game companies to let players actually own games, not deterred by the European Commission's refusal after an alleged meeting with Ubisoft.
During a recent hearing, it was pointed out that one of the paths to allow people to enjoy their games is community servers, which already exist for such titles as Minecraft and Call of Duty. The ESA's Vice President, Jennifer Gibbons, replied that the fan servers are "illegal" and "they are not in any way affiliated with Microsoft," which owns the developers.
"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," Gibbons said.
When asked if it was "like the black market of video games," she answered, "Yes."
"In fact, we consider it piracy. We have pending lawsuits against private servers right now, and the United States Trade Representative in their notorious markets reports on counterfeiting and piracy have named some of these big private servers as a notorious market."
The reply caused a lot of criticism, although the ESA's position shouldn't surprise anyone: it opposed the bill in May and didn't support game preservation in 2024.
"Private servers that host or distribute copyrighted game content without authorization infringe on the intellectual property (IP) rights of game publishers. While publishers may take different approaches, all publishers reserve the right to exercise their rights against IP infringement. 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 Association told Dexerto.
The outlet also noted that the Minecraft end-user licence agreement actually reads that "When you buy our games, that means you can download, install, and play them. For the server version of Minecraft: Java Edition, you can install it on a server and host online play."
So it's not like the devs don't know about community servers or prohibit them.
Despite pushback, Stop Killing Games won't stop its efforts:
"AB 1921 did not make it out of the Senate Business, Professions and Economic Development Committee. The bill needed a majority of the committee to vote yes. It did not get there. Four Democrats voted yes, three Republicans voted no, and the remaining Democrats abstained.
Those abstentions matter. In a committee vote, an abstention is not neutral. It has the same practical effect as a no, because a bill only advances if it gets a majority of yes votes. Not enough yeses means the bill stops here for this session.
That is the loss.
Now here is the part the headlines and clickbait YouTube “SKG FAILED??!” thumbnails will not give you.
We never expected to get this far.
This was our first attempt, in our first year, in the United States, with a U.S. budget of zero dollars. No paid staff in California. No war chest. No in-person lobbying operation. The timeline was so compressed that we could not get funding in place fast enough to put people in the building.
We ran this on volunteers, emails, phone calls, and the truth.
And we still pushed a consumer-rights bill through the entire State Assembly, 43 to 16, and into a Senate committee vote. We were only three votes away from this becoming law.
A volunteer movement with nothing took on one of the most powerful trade groups in entertainment and forced them to spend real money and real effort to stop us.
They had to work for this.
They are going to have to work a lot harder next time, because next time we will be ready," its statement says.
SKG promises to come back with an in-person lobbying presence next session, the funding, and a "long list of organizations and developers signed on in support." It is not focused on California only, planning to introduce the act in other states.
"The ESA is about to learn what it is like to fight on many fronts at once."
However, not all players agree with the organization's view of necessary changes, saying that its solutions are naive and would require developers to prolong already lengthy production further.
Whose side are you on? What is the right action here?
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