> EFF’s discussion of “matchmaking” services and multiplayer-modes is also misguided. The video game industry utilizes access controls in order to offer robust, interconnected online experiences that supplement game play. These immersive gaming experiences leverage users’ Internet connectivity to provide a suite of online network features to gamers. These features can include, for example, not only multiplayer game play, but also chat communications, sharing of user-generated content, leaderboards, points, badges and other achievement markers. Online network features for sports games might update roster information in real time to reflect injuries, trades or even increases or decreases in skill. And the online services may enable users to download customized outfits or other downloadable content. Some modern games, such as Minecraft, enable the user to create the very world that the player, and others, inhabit. Still other games may use cloud servers to offload core game calculations to create more realistic game experiences. Significantly, however, all of these online network services generally are entirely distinct services that the user must register for―and sometimes pay for―separately and are not included in the purchase of the video game. Consequently, contrary to EFF’s assertions, multiplayer gameplay over the Internet is not a “core” functionality of the video game, and permitting circumvention to access such functionality would provide the user greater benefits than those bargained and paid for.

Most of this passage is a correct summary of basic facts, however the conclusion at the end does not at all follow - not even close - and you know it. Multiplayer is not about achievements, rosters, cloud computing such as with SimCity, or getting a new outfit in Minecraft. For some games, without multiplayer there is no game. There are games like the Modern Warfare series with a single-player component, however the marketing for these focuses very heavily on the multiplayer aspect, and the multiplayer aspect is why people buy them. Then there are games like Tribes, or World of Warcraft of course, which don't even have a single-player aspect. For such titles, without multiplayer support the game simply ceases to be.

But not only have they intentionally left out a huge part of what makes a game multiplayer, they have not even justified their dismissal of what they claim makes a game multiplayer! So if a game is designed in such a way that it must make use of off-site computational resources to work - leaving aside for a moment that usually when that claim is made, it's bullshit (cf SimCity) - I should not be able to simulate this resource somehow after the publisher of the game denies it to me? If a sports game can update its reference data to look at more recent statistics for players, injuries, etc., then after the publisher stops updating this reference data, I should not be allowed to update it myself? If I want to share Minecraft skins or maps or mods or whatever with my friends, I must rely on Microsoft to provide that functionality, or lose it? Whether you agree with these claims or not, these are points that must be argued, not asserted as the ESA has done here.

Frankly, after reading the EFF article, I had a low opinion of the ESA. I already had this opinion before reading the article, actually. And you are right that my impression of the ESA argument after reading only the EFF article was "the ESA thinks an exception would enable piracy". However, now that I am reading the ESA brief, I see that it is so much worse. If your objective is to defend the ESA here, I do not think getting people to read the ESA brief is such a great idea for you.