The Entertainment Software Association’s push against a California game preservation bill has turned into a fight over a basic technical fact: private servers are not automatically pirate operations just because a publisher did not run them.
In a California committee hearing on legislation tied to the Stop Killing Games campaign, ESA vice president for state government affairs Jennifer Gibbons said private community servers for Minecraft were illegal and described them as piracy, according to PC Gamer. The comment matters because private servers are one of the practical ways players can keep online games usable after a publisher shuts down official infrastructure.
The bill, introduced in February by Assemblymember Chris Ward, had already cleared the California Assembly in late May on a 43-16 vote. It then stalled in committee after a 4-3 vote with four abstentions, Engadget reported. The abstentions left the measure short of the yes votes needed to advance. The committee also voted unanimously to allow reconsideration, meaning the bill could return.
What ESA told lawmakers
Ward raised private servers during the hearing as an existing model, pointing to community servers for Minecraft and Call of Duty, according to PC Gamer. Gibbons interrupted to say those servers were illegal and not affiliated with Microsoft. She also said Microsoft had faced criticism because community-run Minecraft servers did not use the same safety standards as Microsoft’s own servers.
State Sen. Caroline Menjivar asked whether that made such servers comparable to a black market for video games. Gibbons answered yes, according to PC Gamer, and said the ESA considered them piracy. She also cited two pending lawsuits against private servers and said the U.S. Trade Representative had named some large private servers in its Notorious Markets reports on counterfeiting and piracy.
There is a narrower version of that claim that has support in the record described by PC Gamer: some private servers for some games have appeared in USTR notorious markets designations. Those cases can involve servers that let people play games without paying a required subscription, with World of Warcraft servers described as a frequent target.
Minecraft is a bad fit for that blanket argument. PC Gamer noted that Microsoft itself provides the server .jar file used to run a private Minecraft server. In plain terms, a player who wants to host a Minecraft server can get the necessary server software from Microsoft’s own site. That is not the same fact pattern as an unauthorized server built to bypass payment for an online game.
ESA held the line
Asked about the claim afterward, the ESA did not retreat. In a statement to PC Gamer, the trade group said private servers infringe game publishers’ intellectual property rights and that publishers reserve the right to enforce those rights against them.
That statement leaves out the key distinction the California fight is now circling: permission. A private server can create legal problems when it uses copyrighted code, assets, trademarks, or access methods in ways a publisher has not allowed. A private server that a publisher permits, or for which the publisher supplies the needed server software, sits in a different bucket. Microsoft distributing Minecraft server software is a pretty large bucket with a Microsoft logo on it.
The Stop Killing Games argument, as described in the California debate, is that when publishers stop maintaining online games, they should allow some path for continued play, including private servers. The ESA’s testimony framed that path as infringement by default. If the bill comes back for reconsideration, lawmakers will have to decide whether that framing describes the technical reality or just protects publisher control after official support ends.
This story draws on original reporting from Techdirt.
