The Entertainment Software Association or ESA represents the interests of publishers and the gaming industry in the USA, or at least the bigwigs with the cash available to pay for representatives in a court room. Recently, an ESA representative sparked a round of controversy with the bold claim that privately hosted servers were illegal, and like a black market for video games.
This argument was made at a state senate hearing in California (thanks for the spot, TheGamer), where the Stop Killing Games movement is trying to push through a piece of legislation called Protect Our Games. Stop Killing Games wants to see an end to games being taken offline and made unplayable once official support has ended. One of the ways in which a community can keep a game going beyond its official support is through private servers.
Jennifer Gibbons, vice president of the ESA for state government affairs, believes this would be a terrible thing. "They're illegal," Gibbons said, when the idea of Minecraft's private servers was raised in the senate hearing.
"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."
Gibbons also agreed when asked if private servers were like a "black market" for video games, saying: "In fact, we consider it piracy." This doesn't change the fact that Minecraft has arguably encouraged private servers since the game launched as everything you need to host one is available on the game's website. We're not sure on the solidity of the "illegal" argument, but the idea of hating so severely on private servers does make me think of that one image of the guy getting unreasonably angry at the kid in the propeller hat. The bill didn't pass, in any case, but does have a chance to try again later down the road.
