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Watch On AB 1921, the Protect Our Games Act , would require publishers of server-dependent games to give players 60 days’ notice before shutting one down, then provide a playable version, a patch, or a refund. Assemblymember Chris Ward, who authored the bill, raised community servers during the hearing as one way to keep games running after support ends. The California Assembly passed it 43 to 16 in May before it moved to the Senate. Gibbons said the ESA considers such servers “piracy,” and argued that community servers are not affiliated with the publisher and don’t uphold the same trust and safety standards.
Mojang publishes a dedicated Minecraft server as a Java file and documents how to run it , while Valve distributes SteamCMD and dedicated-server tools for hundreds of titles, letting players run their own match servers on their own systems. Running a server for a game you’ve bought obviously sits inside what those publishers permit, and for Minecraft, it’s Mojang’s own recommended setup for free multiplayer.
Minecraft isn't the exception here. Palworld, Valheim, ARK: Survival Ascended, and Counter-Strike 2 all ship official dedicated-server software that runs on a spare PC or a rented VPS. The line the ESA steps over is a technical one, since running a publisher's own server binary is a licensed activity, not the unauthorized copy its piracy comparison implies.
Gibbons cited the U.S. Trade Representative’s Notorious Markets reports as precedent for the piracy claim, which have named private servers as infringement hubs. Those entries, such as Warmane and Firestorm in the 2018 report, were World of Warcraft servers that let players skirt past Blizzard's subscription, which is an entirely different scenario from running a free-to-play multiplayer server on a game that’s already been paid for.
Those WoW servers exist only because Blizzard never released its own, leaving operators to rebuild the backend from scratch through reverse engineering, which is what drew those copyright claims. AB 1921 compels nothing of the sort; its remedies let a publisher comply by releasing official server tools — exactly what Mojang already does with Minecraft — and a company distributing its own server software obviously can't be infringing its own IP.
Responding to comments made by Ward that private servers help to keep games alive, Gibbons said, “They’re illegal. 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.”
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Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/pc-gaming/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/pc-gaming/esa-tells-california-lawmakers-that-private-game-servers-are-piracy#main
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