Game industry lobbyists declare private Minecraft servers illegal at California hearing

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While the organizers behind Stop Killing Games remain optimistic about the movement's future, they've been dealt another blow from lawmakers. The Protect Our Games Act failed to reach the required committee votes to move forward in California, but what's really gotten the gaming world's attention is the argument made by the Entertainment Software Association during the hearing. According to the lobbying group, private Minecraft servers are illegal.

"They're illegal, and they're not in any way affiliated with Microsoft," according to Jennifer Gibbons, vice president for state government affairs at the ESA (thanks, PC Gamer ). "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."

That statement – and Gibbons' later assertion that private servers are tantamount to "piracy" – might seem like a bizarre thing to say, considering that you can download the tools to create your own private server directly from the official Minecraft website . But, unfortunately, that's simply a right that Microsoft is offering to players, and one that it's free to revoke at any time.

"Private servers infringe on the intellectual property (IP) rights of game publishers," the ESA says in a statement to PC Gamer. "Publishers reserve the right to exercise their rights against them." That is, indeed, the law as it stands, and one of the key points that Stop Killing Games is trying to change, hoping to require publishers to provide tools to create community servers after an online game shuts down.

According to the ESA, the provision in the Protect Our Games Act "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."

This is the second major decision against Stop Killing Games this month, as the EU Commission decided against introducing new legislation in response to the campaign. Yet, Stop Killing Games founder Ross Scott believes that the campaign has made such significant inroads with members of the EU parliament that legislation will likely happen regardless of the Commission's decision .

"We are not stopping," according to a similarly optimistic message from Stop Killing Games responding to the California decision. "Not even close. Next session, we come back with an in-person lobbying presence, the funding to do this properly, and a long list of organizations and developers signed on in support. We are not limiting this to California. We intend to introduce versions of this in other state legislatures, and we are seriously looking at the federal level. The ESA is about to learn what it is like to fight on many fronts at once. They have to win every single time to keep things the way they are. We only have to win once to change them."

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