ESA Stops Donating to Politicians Following Capitol Riots

It's been about a week since the events at the capital -- you know, where our current president provoked an armed coup of the democratic process -- and we're still dealing with the aftermath of that violent, terrible day. The games industry, despite often being VOCALLY anti-political, is no exception: Twitch, for example, has banned Trump's channel and replaced the PogChamp emote (with mixed results).

And now, the ESA -- Entertainment Software Association, the game's industry's lobby machine -- has released a statement saying that given the events of the past few days, they would temporarily be halting donations to political parties.
 

"Given the events and actions that led to the violence at the US Capitol, we are pausing contributions from the ESA PAC as we reflect on the tragedy and our path forward,"

This might not seem like much of a big deal, but as it turns out, the ESA has deep ties with the Republican Party, Donald Trump, and the senators who are loyal to him. For example, the ESA has donated a combined 6,000 dollars (small change in the world of politics, but not nothing) to five of the senators who vowed to vote against Joe Bide's confirmation and perpetuated the myth of a stolen election. In fact, the lion's share of the ESA's donations are for Republican candidates, although that's not entirely unexpected: after all, it's usually Republicans who are trying to do something about video games, so it makes sense they'd want to grease those squeaky wheels. Plus, it's Republicans who are generally anti-corporate tax, which is why the ESA was caught praising Trump in 2018 when he pushed out his new tax plan, which overwhelmingly favored companies over people.

It's not known when they'll start donating again, but rest assured they will... no matter who's sitting in the Oval Office in a few weeks.