The ESA quietly starts walking back baffling statements about private servers being 'illegal', though it's still tutting and wagging its finger

The Entertainment Software Association, in an ongoing attempt to slow the roll of the games conservation movement Stop Killing Games, made a baffling statement at a recent California State Senate hearing over a proposed Protect Our Games Act that goes as follows:

"[Private servers are] 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."

Now, you can read our very own Joshua Wolens' article on the foible yourself, but I'll repeat what he said back then in that the words of ESA vice president Jennifer Gibbons are basically nonsense. More on that in a moment.

In a statement provided to PC Gamer, the ESA wrote: "Private servers infringe on the intellectual property (IP) rights of game publishers. Publishers reserve the right to exercise their rights against them. The provision in CA AB 1921 that proposed these servers ...