ESA Asks US Government to Flag Piracy-Laden Retro Handhelds as a ‘Notorious Market’

The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) is the US trade body that represents most major US game publishers, including the companies behind Call of Duty, Madden, and Fortnite, and it files US policy comments on their behalf. The ESA has asked the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) to add retro handheld devices that ship with thousands of pirated games pre-installed to its annual Notorious Markets List, in a filing reported on Tuesday.

VGC was first to report the filing. The Notorious Markets List is the USTR’s annual roster of online and physical markets that “engage in or facilitate substantial copyright piracy or trademark counterfeiting.” Adding a market to the list does not impose direct sanctions. It does publicly flag the operators, raise their profile with US trading partners, and it can lead to enforcement action by US Customs and Border Protection at the border.

In its comment, the ESA argues that pre-loaded handhelds from brands like Anbernic (a Chinese handheld maker known for the RG35XX and RG35XX Plus lines), Miyoo (another Chinese maker, maker of the Mini and Mini Plus handhelds), and Powkiddy (a third Chinese vendor of sub-$100 emulation handhelds), which often advertise tens of thousands of bundled ROMs at price points below $100, function as the gaming industry’s “functional equivalent of superfakes,” per the trade body’s framing. GamesRadar reported the comment and the “superfakes” language. The trade body’s argument is that a buyer who pays $60 for a thousand-game handheld is not really a separate audience from a player who would otherwise buy a licensed retro re-release or a current-gen copy of the same classic.

The legitimate retro hardware market sits in the same aisle. Analogue is a US retro console company that sells FPGA-based consoles, including the recently shipped Analogue 3D, a $250 NES-compatible console that runs only the cartridges players own. ModRetro is a US maker of cartridge-based retro consoles, including the Chromatic that plays Game Boy and Game Boy Color cartridges at a similar price point. Both companies have spent the last few years arguing that the draw of a retro handheld is the authentic hardware experience, not the bundled library. A Notorious Markets designation for the pirate-loaded devices would give those companies a clearer line to draw in the marketplace and a US government process to point to when lobbying retailers and marketplaces to delist offending SKUs.

For players, the practical effect is unlikely to be immediate. The USTR accepts comments through the end of the annual review window, then publishes the final list, usually in early 2026. A device already in a player’s house is not at risk of being confiscated. The change would land on importers, online marketplaces, and advertisers. A Notorious Markets designation makes it harder for the offending handhelds to clear US customs in volume. It also makes it harder for the brands to run paid ads on major platforms. Buying one in a US store today remains legal under most circumstances. Selling a new batch into the country is where the pressure lands.

What the list does in practice

The Notorious Markets list is the USTR’s main public-pressure tool for foreign piracy and counterfeiting hotspots. Naming a market on the list does not block it at the border, but it raises the cost of doing business for any US-facing importer that buys from that market. Retailers and ad networks can also use a listing as a reason to delist products, decline ad placements, or tighten payment processing. The retro handheld filing is the ESA’s attempt to apply that same pressure at the consumer-device level rather than the marketplace level. The VGC and GamesRadar reports do not name the specific devices or brands the ESA called out in the filing, beyond describing them as retro handhelds pre-loaded with thousands of pirated games.

Case by the numbers

• 1 annual Notorious Markets list published by the USTR, usually in early 2026 for the previous year’s review window.
• 3 major Chinese vendors (Anbernic, Miyoo, Powkiddy) named by trade press as the volume players in the sub-$100 pre-loaded handheld market.
• 2025 Notorious Markets list included Chinese e-commerce platforms, foreign piracy storefronts, and Telegram piracy channels, but no consumer hardware category.
• $250 price of the Analogue 3D, the highest-profile legal alternative to the pirate-loaded Anbernic and Miyoo handhelds.
• $60 approximate retail price of a 1,000-game Anbernic or Miyoo handheld, the target of the ESA’s “superfakes” framing.
• $95.8B is the US video game industry’s total economic impact per the ESA’s own figures, the size of the industry the trade body is defending.
• 250,800 total US jobs the ESA counts as supported by the US video game industry, per the trade body’s policy page.

The ESA’s previous USTR comments cover Vietnam’s IP enforcement and the FTC’s personalized pricing policy statement, per the trade body’s public filings page. A retroactive look at the 2025 list shows the USTR has historically named Chinese e-commerce platforms, foreign piracy storefronts, and Telegram piracy channels, but not consumer hardware. Today’s filing is the first time the ESA has asked the USTR to draw a line around a specific device category rather than a marketplace. It lands at a moment when the cheap retro handheld market has never been more crowded, and when the trade body is also pushing for action on the NO FAKES Act and on Section 1201 of the DMCA, the anti-circumvention rule that protects game TPMs.

The story sits inside a wider industry fight over enforcement priorities. Nintendo’s Latin America vice president was on record last week telling fans that Nintendo has no plans to ditch physical games in the region, even as the company leans harder on legal enforcement. Take-Two is in a separate fight over GTA 6 launch readiness. The hardware end of the industry is also in flux, with Nvidia reportedly ending RTX 5090 production this quarter, and Valve dropped the Steam Frame CAD files for modders. The ESA is the one trade body that has to weigh all of those fights at once. The retro handheld filing is the smallest of them, and the most concrete.

Our read: Players who own one of the affected devices do not need to do anything, and that is the point. The change is supposed to land on importers, marketplaces, and ad networks, not on the end of a player who already bought a thousand-game handheld. The audience the filing is really aimed at is the next buyer, who might decide that the extra $190 for an Analogue 3D or a ModRetro Chromatic is the better deal now that the alternative has a US government process aimed at it. The same dynamic played out a decade ago when the ESA lobbied for tougher enforcement on modchips. The legitimate modding market for current-gen consoles has not recovered since. The retro market is different because the games are old. The trade body’s playbook is the same.

What’s next: The USTR’s comment window closes in November. The final Notorious Markets list usually lands in January or February. If the retro handheld category is named, expect the named brands to push back through US importers and marketplace partners. The legal retro console makers are likely to use the listing as a marketing moment, especially ahead of any holiday sale on the Analogue 3D or Chromatic.

Edited by Kerwin Stewart, Editor-in-Chief · How we report