The Entertainment Software Association released its annual report last week, and it shows a very impressive winning streak against anti-games legislation at the state level in the U.S.
In the ESA's last fiscal year, state legislatures introduced 43 bills that would have regulated the content or access to video games. No bill regulating sales became law. The most notable failures came in Utah, California and New Mexico.
Not all of the ESA's relationships with state lawmakers are so antagonistic. The annual report also touts the three states - Alabama, Georgia and Michigan - that enacted tax incentives to lure video game development, and another 17 states still considering the idea.
At the federal level, the game industry's top lobby focused on copyright and IP protection, and also beat back efforts at game content regulation. Internationally, piracy remains a top concern to the ESA; it says it sent takedown notices to ISPs that covered "more than 45 million instances of infringement of member company games in more than 100 countries world wide."
The ESA added seven members, including Southpeak Interactive, XSEED Games and Koei Corp. The 160,000-member Video Game Voters Network, sponsored by the ESA, was also highlighted in the report. The VGVN organizes letter-writing campaigns to elected officials and candidates whenever legislation or political sentiment threatening games pops up.
You can grab the entire report [pdf] here