The video game industry’s biggest U.S. trade group wants Washington to treat those thousand-game retro handhelds as a piracy problem. The Entertainment Software Association has asked the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to feature plug-and-play and handheld devices preloaded with games in its 2026 Notorious Markets List, VGC reports.
The Notorious Markets List is the USTR’s yearly roundup of online and physical marketplaces accused of enabling piracy and counterfeiting. This year’s review has a special focus on superfakes, high-quality counterfeit goods, according to the USTR’s Federal Register notice. Comments were due October 7, and rebuttals are due October 21 at 11:59 p.m. ET.
“The functional equivalent of superfakes”
The ESA leaned into that theme. “In the video game sector, illicit plug-and-play consoles and handheld devices are the functional equivalent of superfakes,” its filing says. The group argues these devices look and feel like legitimate electronics, with polished housings, menus, retail packaging and listings on familiar shopping sites, while their real selling point is a memory card loaded with hundreds or thousands of unauthorized games.
The ESA says that apparent legitimacy makes the harm worse, because one device can replace purchases across multiple publishers and console generations and removes the technical hurdles that once kept casual buyers away from piracy. It asks the USTR to push governments and marketplaces to treat preloaded libraries as evidence of commercial-scale piracy, inspect bundled storage media, require sellers to prove they are authorized, suspend repeat sellers and coordinate action against manufacturers, importers and fulfillment providers.
The filing goes further and nominates retro handheld maker Anbernic as a notorious online market, saying its devices are routinely offered or shipped with memory cards preloaded with ESA members’ games. The ESA also nominated cracked game sources and repackers, torrent sites, unauthorized digital goods marketplaces and commercial cheat sellers.
Retro handhelds have become one of the hottest corners of gaming hardware, and many buyers use them with legally owned games. The ESA’s push puts the bundled-ROM side of that market in the regulatory spotlight. For another look at regulators circling the games business, see RCG’s report on the EU’s probe into in-game virtual currencies.
