ESA bafflingly declares private Minecraft servers 'illegal'
Cross-geposted von: https://feddit.org/post/31996415
In a remarkably strange statement at a recent California State Senate hearing over the Protect Our Games Act (AB 1921, California's Stop Killing Games-endorsed bill to compel publishers to provide ways to keep playing discontinued games), a representative of the Entertainment Software Association declared private servers for the likes of Minecraft and Call of Duty "illegal," adding that, so far as the ESA is concerned, "we consider it piracy."
In a statement to PC Gamer, the ESA wrote that, so far as it's concerned, "Private servers infringe on the intellectual property (IP) rights of game publishers. Publishers reserve the right to exercise their rights against them."
https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/esa-bafflingly-declares-private-minecraft-servers-illegal-in-stop-killing-games-hearing-we-consider-it-piracy-we-have-lawsuits/Open linkView original on feddit.org
119 replies
Game devs: „Here is the code to run our games on a private server. Have fun!“
Gamers: „Cool, thanks! Will do!“
ESA: „ISN‘T THERE SOMEONE YOU FORGOT TO ASK???“
I invited Jesus, but he never logs on
ESA members: https://www.theesa.com/our-members/
The page also has this quote:
So absolutely no one I respect. Nice. ESA go fuck yourself.
Yes. I was worried while I read the list, but known assholes top to bottom. That's nice, I guess?
Wonder how many of these guys employee lawyer trolls scumbags. looks and finds Nintendo Ninjas only one of the most bs litigous companies.
Not sure if they are lawyers but they are all employing scumbag trolls, that is what ESA is.
What's the point in Microsoft shooting against "their own" product? I mean, the option for public or private servers is literally built into the game. Also there is the option for playing together over LAN which you could also argue is a private server.
If you have the facts, you pound the facts. If you have the law, you pound the law. If you have neither, you pound the table. This is the ESA pounding the table, and the goal is to confuse the gerontocracy LARPing as lawmakers.
This is why tech has gotten so out of control in the US. In the past 40 years, this industry has had so many revolutionary inventions while our legislators on average get older and less likely to understand the newest technology, thereby making them more susceptible to being misled or misleading others. Combined with our legislators not giving a fuck about actual economics, this is how we have oligopolies everywhere in the US with cartel behavior
Things have gotten so out of control because people have gotten stupid and lazy and put up with all of this shit.
People have gotten stupid because billionaires have orchestrated the gutting of education and people are too exhausted, not "lazy", because they're overworked by billionaires.
Capitalism is always the problem. Okay, very rarely organized religion or genuine natural disasters, but almost always capitalism.
Religion is fucking up a lot more than you think
It's not warming the planet so it's definitely a backseat evil right now
Also true. It doesn't help that the most successful and influential people in this time-frame have also been widely manipulative by pulling the ladder to success up with them, dismantling education, and increasing the amount of sugar and other unhealthy things in our food
The way I see it there are two possible reasons:
That's a left over from the indie days. I highly doubt they'd make that available in a new game. But in this case I think its probably a law person that has no clue about games.
Saruman and Gríma just want to shape and influence the largest cavalry force of Middle Earth...
Thank for for this list.
I was prepared to add to my boycot list, but I guess sometimes the biggest assholes are exactly who we already expected.
I get why everyone is on this list except Netflix. Am I missing something? Cause that seems a tad bit random.
Netflix has a studio that publishes games on mobile, one of their most well known product is partnering with Take2/Rockstar to port the Definitive Edition of GTAIII/VC/SA to mobile.
Netflix on mobile included games, last I knew. But I haven't had a subscription in some time.
Huh. Guess that shows how much I pay attention to mobile shit.
Atari still exists??
Sort of... It's a different company that bought the name years ago when the old Atari went bankrupt. Technically it's a French publisher formerly known as Infogrames.
Of all the hot takes in the world, that statement is the dumbest thing I have ever heard someone say. Completely out-of-touch with the case, with the subject and with the games referenced. It is literally wronger than Flat Earth and young earth creationism in a single sentence. I would quote Bully Madison but even that wouldnt suffice.
I'm sorry mate but you asked for it. We are now all dumber for having read the words "Bully Madison."
F*cking typos!
I lied tho I actually did award you points hehe
Thank you, Mr. president!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hfYJsQAhl0
So it's piracy to use the software that comes with the game? The Java version of the game, at least, has always come with the software to run your own server without needing to rent one directly from any specific vendor.
The ESA can go fuck itself.
The java version authenticates with Microsoft and Mojang to prove valid ownership and to make sure parental controls are applied to accounts. I believe they are talking about unauthenticated servers that allow pirated accounts to join. Its similar to private MMO servers that are setup in a similar way. Same files, used unsupervised.
Generally this type of thing only matters with games that kids play, because people tend to try to protect kids. Games explicitly for adults seem to be able to be more free with what they allow.
Microsoft's official server binary, distributed by Microsoft themselves, has the option to not authenticate with Mojang's servers. You don't even need to modify it. I wouldn't call that one piracy.
The official minecraft client jar has an option to disable authentication with mojang servers too btw
Sure, but theres a wide range of usage for an unnoficial minecraft server. Some servers make quite a lot of money via gambling mechanics.
The main reason Mojang or Minecraft care is because they need to protect the games image as a safe thing for kids to play. If it was a mature rated game, none of this would even matter.
Sure, and WoW ships with a file that directs you to the official servers, that you can change to any IP address.
Besides all that I'm simply explaining the companies position. If you want to pirate the game feel free. If you want to allow "offline" accounts to join your server, feel free to do that too.
Tell me you've never hosted a Minecraft server without telling me you've never hosted a Minecraft server.
I literally have one running right now. Its unauthenticated as well.
Their words matter. If they wanted to say that, then they should have said that. They didn't say that. They said private Minecraft servers are IP infringement despite Microsoft explicitly allowing them. They're fools.
Sort of comes off as an old boomer just saying stuff off the top of their head. I'm sure its not an actual legal declaration. I guess I agree then, they are fools.
Why is the European Space Agency doing this instead of a moon program or something? /j
For a moment there I was wondering what was happening on the ISS for ESA to make such a statement
the astronauts running a private minecraft server on mission-critical equipment? :P
I had to google ESA multiple times because I kept getting AI summaries for the space agency.
today is a good day to ditch Google
Use DDG and turn the AI off.
AI is always useless.
So Imma be real with you. I switched to DDG full time on all my devices, mostly out of security concerns and the desire to not feed the monopoly.
That said, DDG is so much worse at finding what I'm actually looking for than Google ever was. It's a bit frustrating, I have so many reasons to like DDG, but being a good search engine isn't one of them.
But for the record, Google isn't great at finding what I want anymore either, and with its AI bullshit it's likely to simply lie to me. Really, 2010 Google search is superior to modern Google search by every metric possible, that was peak web search for me.
Eh, I really haven't missed it. Google is still there if I really need it ... but chances are that if I can't find it on DDG, I won't find it on Google either.
I know exactly what you mean, felt the same way for me. I've started using qwant recently and I feel like it has better results. Still not quite as good as google is at the moment and nowhere as good as google used to be, but at the rate google is enshittifying its only a matter of time until qwant is better.
I'm the AI skeptic in my group, but even I use it occasionally for super targeted stuff. It's pretty good at finding errors in my excel formulas.
If it’s piracy either way then why are we paying?
I’m sorry, WHAT? How fucking stupid do you have to be to think that this makes any sense.
The ESA isn't stupid, they're just making the statement to give the politicians in their pockets a cover excuse for making it illegal that the actual dumbasses who support those politicians will buy.
And they've been successful with that strategy (for now)
To the rest of us it certainly makes them sound hella stupid.
Oh this bullshit with the EULA
I didn't know mojang had any official servers aside from the bedrock one that was used for the mob vote
Huh
They don't. There's realms. What I'm referring to is the EULA for running those servers. Mojang blocks IPs all the time.
Oh right, i forgot about realms
The ESA is a mouthpiece for companies that want you to own nothing and do nothing that they don't approve of and benefit from.
It's blatantly a bad stance from them; but it doesn't even touch on games that use internal client/server models even when playing single-player — which includes Minecraft. If their argument were law, would I be breaking it by just playing Minecraft at all? With the way it's worded, I would think yes.
That doesn't even take into account that Minecraft in particular can turn a single-player client/server into a multiplayer with one button press. Would that be illegal? Maybe they'd argue not, because it's LAN only (which is a flimsy argument as well). But with a little effort, you could open up that LAN server up to whomever you wanted.
Very obvious they didn't think it through, they just want you to own nothing.
Why would the European Space Agency do such a thing...
Their nerds waste too much time playing the game
I thought they were all playing Kerbal.
https://xkcd.com/1244/
https://xkcd.com/1356/
To be fair, the european space agency isn't NASA
You're right, KSA would be more on-brand perhaps?
If they will still call you a pirate even if you buy the game, and even if the game sells well, they’ll eventually lay off the entire development team, why not just pirate the damn thing from the start?
Screw the ESA and its partners.
All I heard from the ESA representative is : "If buying isn't owning, pirating isn't stealing." 🦜
It's worse lmao they're saying that buying is piracy
If buying is piracy, piracy is not stealing
We reached out to all gamers everywhere and a spokesman for the group responded with the following statement:
Lol wut?
Fucking noobs…
Reading this article, ESA feels like the evil archenemies of the Stop Killing Games folks. As SKG put it, the talk of illegality was to mislead a Californian legislator too busy to fact check.
That said, the real fight ESA is pushing is more in regards to private servers for MMOs and other always-online games that SKG wants to be legal as part of preservation. I personally disagree with ESA in that regard, although I can understand their legal argument regarding the lawsuits on World of Warcraft private servers, mentioned in the article.
(Though, my two cents, I personally feel "free market" should mean official servers are better and earn their subscriptions: more people, more reliable, better content, etc... but they usually aren't. So fuck them, lol).
Wtf would WoW private servers be illegal
If they used official closed source code, there is some legal issues, if challenged, but if they reverse engineered the server code then it's a lot more leeway (similar to emulators). Most private servers I'm familiar with are reverse engineered, though, and since the assets and such are generally client side, nothing the server hosts is illegal.
Though again, I don't even think that should be illegal but c'est la vie; it's copyrighted code.
Edit: former and latter are two different things, and I need to be more careful when I change my sentence structure after writing it.
What private server uses Blizzard's proprietary server cose
Oh I have no idea, I don't play that game but I imagine it's none. Every MMO server I've seen was reverse engineered. The lawsuits in those cases are probably frivolous, although you never know how courts go.
I'm confused, since the comment I replied to said that most private servers you were aware of used proprietary code.
Oh I typo'd. I can fix it.
(I remember now, I changed the sentence structure after the fact. Sorry about that)
Gotcha
Blizzard's position is that the subscription is for the use of the client as well as their server. A private server allows you to play without an active subscription, thus piracy.
I was like what the hell is the European Space Agency doing with Minecraft in California...
Exploring the vacuum between the ears of these people apparently
Better stick to space. Much more happening there.
Big “Home Taping is Killing Music” energy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Taping_Is_Killing_Music
I thought it was Napster that was killing music… 🤔
No, that was after the home taping killed it.
It is like Schrodinger's Cat. Both alive and be killed by anything.
McDonald's getting killed by home cooked burgers.
AI is being killed by local models also. So many things are killing so many things!
The biggest bullies who suffer the slightest jabs always cry the hardest.
What I would give to have these fucks having an inkling of what it is they're talking about.
They know. They don't care that it makes no sense. To them anyone with money that is not paying all of it to them is a criminal.
I'm actually going assume they (ESA) meant the Minecraft DRM servers and not the hosting and playing with friends servers, because they refer to 'counterfeiting and piracy' lawsuits right afterwards. I mean its easy to say they don't know the difference but I'd suspect this was a little more malicious.
They don't know the difference. Oh, you're right, that was easy.
What are minecraft drm servers?
When you buy Minecraft, it associates a game license to your Microsoft ID. So when you sign in to the launcher, the DRM server is what it checks with to make sure you own and can play Minecraft before letting you in.
Ohhhh, I thaught your servers that implement some kind of drm for some reason
They probably meant to say servers that allow pirated clients to connect. The official server config used to have that option - not sure if it still does.
Yes, you can still turn off validation, at least on Java edition - you can even host your own validation server via drasl and similar, but that requires the server to have config options set to use your custom auth (and probably skin) server, and your client to have the libauthinjector mod installed.
Works great as an alternative to whitelisting IP's to play with friends, and means you can't have your Minecraft account deleted because you swore on your privately hosted server and a friend hit the report button.
My thoughts leaned more towards the World of Warcraft private servers; in many ways it's the same respect, filling in a role that has been taken by the publisher, but they perhaps didn't intend it to appear so inflammatory in Minecraft's case, since the main purpose of those servers is just for gameplay, not DRM.
It's still a mean sentiment either way, but something tells me they're not as familiar with the classic, LAN-party, Quake server you'd run.
Yeah obviously since these games don't want private servers they provided the exact files to host your own server. Do they really believe the courts are that stupid?
They arent saying games have to enforce it they're saying they have the right to enforce it if they choose. Clearly they arent.
IP has more rights than people.
Wait until they hear what Quake, DOOM, Marathon, Half-Life, etc were doing in the 90s...
Well then, I guess we will just have to make better OpenSource games, now won't we?
can really recommended beyond all reason, a foss rts game, in the style of supreme commander. running on lua.
Did they let their members know this before they implemented private matches and server browsers in their games?
It's not baffling, if you realize its the ESA saying it.
We'll keep up the good work, then.
you do know that like 85% of TF2 servers (yes there are still TF2 players) are community hosted? I hope this dipshit is ready to deal with the business end of a fully loaded Gaben.
a bit of context as a current Minecraft player:
About two years ago, Microsoft made Mojang add a rather draconian player reporting feature to all of their server software that constantly scans the chat for "malicious content." "Malicious content" is the usual boilerplate corporate image ass covering, but while that is bad enough, it also has the power to ban a player from even accessing their OWN private, Singleplayer world, should the algorithm deem the infraction severe enough. Unfortunately, the console version of the game (known as "Bedrock" by the community, due to it having a shared cross play API for all console ports) was wholly owned by Microsoft, with Mojang only getting a developer credit. This means for the console player, there is little to be done. Meanwhile on the original PC version (Known as "Java" for the language it's coded in) had this implemented as well, but because Mojang owns all the licencing for THAT version, and they have an open, "hands off" modding API policy (within reason) for it, Modders IMMEDIATELY coded a workaround that deactivates the part of the code operating the chat reporting feature, by spoofing the blockchain authentications that verify that the chat entries scanned are "authentic" (basically it makes the receiving server at Mojang believe that every chat entry's "encryption key" is "inauthentic" so it can ignore all of them, no matter what their content is. The clever bastards.) This mod ("no chat reports") is now considered a part of standard server op support QoL installs, for the Java player base.
so all tf2 servers (non casual or comp) is illegal now?
Calling the Minecraft Cops
Cyberpolice