Last year, you couldn’t switch on a computer without hearing about some publisher or another leaving the Entertainment Software Association, organisers of the industry’s biggest expo, E3. Turns out they had a good reason.
A few weeks ago, the ESA submitted its annual accounts to the IRS. And buried within those reports is some interesting reading. See, as E3 shrank in both size [[link]] and significance, the amount of money the ESA made from the show shrank [[link]] accordingly, down from nearly $19 million in 2006 to under $4 million in 2007. That’s a big hole in the group’s accounts.
So they decided to make up the shortfall by hiking membership fees. In 2006, the ESA collected just over $1 million in membership fees. In 2007, they collected $4.47 million. In 2008, they collected $17.41 million. To put that in perspective, that means over a two-year period, membership fees for the group jumped 1700%.
1700% isn’t “oh, that’s OK, here’s a couple more dollars” territory. It’s, as we saw, “screw this jerktown” [[link]] territory.
ESA fees jumped 1,700% from ’06-’08 [GameSpot]