---
title: "ESA Asks US Trade Office to Brand Anbernic a Game-Piracy “Superfake”"
description: "The filing leans on this year’s counterfeit-goods framing to go after SD cards full of pirated ROMs"
author: "Luis Goa"
published: 2026-10-13T21:55:49Z
modified: 2026-10-14T03:21:02Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/esa-asks-us-trade-office-to-brand-anbernic-a-game-piracy-sup-7ba0d3
language: en
tags: ["piracy", "emulation", "esa", "anbernic", "ip", "tech"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# ESA Asks US Trade Office to Brand Anbernic a Game-Piracy “Superfake”

*The filing leans on this year’s counterfeit-goods framing to go after SD cards full of pirated ROMs*

By Luis Goa · October 13, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/esa-asks-us-trade-office-to-brand-anbernic-a-game-piracy-sup-7ba0d3

## In brief

- ESA asked USTR to name Anbernic in the 2026 Notorious Markets List, filed Oct 6, posted Oct 8
- Filing claims Anbernic devices ship with SD cards of “hundreds or thousands” of pirated games
- A Notorious Markets listing makes no legal finding, per USTR; rebuttal comments due Oct 21, 2026
- Ars Technica found Anbernic doesn’t sell ROM-loaded cards directly; TorrentFreak’s report says it does
- Same ESA filing claims $1.08bn in FitGirl-repack piracy losses and nominates cracker “voices38”

The Entertainment Software Association wants the US Trade Representative to put a Chinese handheld maker on a list that, by the USTR’s own description, makes no legal finding at all. In a filing submitted October 6 and posted to the federal docket October 8, the ESA — the trade group for Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony’s PlayStation division, Amazon, Epic, EA and Ubisoft, among others — asked for Anbernic to be named in the 2026 Notorious Markets List because, it says, the company’s devices “are routinely offered or shipped with removable memory cards preloaded with hundreds or thousands of unauthorized copies of copyright-protected video games.” [TorrentFreak was first to report](https://torrentfreak.com/game-industry-asks-u-s-to-flag-denuvo-cracker-voices38-as-notorious-piracy-threat/) the filing; [Ars Technica](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2026/10/esa-targets-anbernic-emulation-handhelds-as-superfake-piracy-enablers/) picked it up October 13.

## What the list actually does

The Notorious Markets List is an annual naming exercise, split out of USTR’s broader Special 301 Report since 2010 and published separately each year since February 2011. Rightsholders nominate sites, sellers and devices; USTR opens a comment window, reads the nominations, and decides what to print. This year’s window, opened by a [Federal Register notice on August 26](https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/08/26/2026-17351/2026-review-of-notorious-markets-for-counterfeiting-and-piracy-comment-request), closed for initial comments October 7 and stays open for rebuttals until October 21. Twenty-nine organizations filed by the first deadline, most of them about counterfeit physical goods rather than media piracy — the ESA’s submission, filed under docket USTR-2026-0529 as [comment 0010](https://www.regulations.gov/comment/USTR-2026-0529-0010), was one of the few to raise video games at all.

Being named costs a company nothing in court. USTR’s own language, from its [release of the 2025 list](https://ustr.gov/about/policy-offices/press-office/press-releases/2026/march/ustr-releases-2025-review-notorious-markets-counterfeiting-and-piracy) on March 3, 2026, says the list is meant “to increase public awareness and help market operators and governments prioritize intellectual property enforcement efforts” and explicitly does not constitute “findings of legal violations.” That 2025 edition named 37 online markets and 32 physical markets. The formal legal assessment lives in the separate annual Special 301 Report, due at the end of April. A Notorious Markets listing is a flag, not a verdict — but flags are how USTR has historically picked targets for the Section 301 investigations that can lead to tariffs or import restrictions, which is the leverage rightsholders are actually angling for when they file.

**How a USTR piracy nomination moves** The path from a rightsholder's filing to possible trade action

| From | To | How |
| --- | --- | --- |
| ESA files nomination *(Oct 6, 2026)* | USTR comment docket *(closes Oct 7, rebuttals to Oct 21)* |  |
| USTR comment docket *(closes Oct 7, rebuttals to Oct 21)* | USTR review |  |
| USTR review | Notorious Markets List *(no legal finding)* |  |
| Notorious Markets List *(no legal finding)* | Public awareness / foreign enforcement pressure |  |
| Notorious Markets List *(no legal finding)* | Possible Section 301 investigation |  |
| Possible Section 301 investigation | Tariffs or import restriction |  |

![How a USTR piracy nomination moves. The path from a rightsholder's filing to possible trade action](https://rews.cc/img/672befd34a48d6ac43518c4deb06779265c42af5.webp)

Based on [USTR; Federal Register notice 2026-17351](https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/08/26/2026-17351/2026-review-of-notorious-markets-for-counterfeiting-and-piracy-comment-request)

## Borrowing the counterfeit-goods word for software

This cycle’s nomination notice singles out one theme for special attention: “superfakes,” USTR’s term for counterfeit physical goods good enough to pass as genuine. A superfake Birkin bag or a superfake Rolex is the usual target. The ESA’s filing stretches the word to cover a handheld console that runs real hardware and licensed firmware but ships with an SD card of unlicensed games — arguing, per the ESA’s language quoted by Ars, that this “normalizes hardware-based piracy by delivering illicit catalogues through a polished consumer product.” Nothing about an Anbernic device is counterfeit in the trademark sense: it doesn’t pretend to be a Nintendo product. The claim is closer to old-fashioned copyright infringement wearing this year’s buzzword, which is also presumably why the ESA bothered to use it — USTR asked for superfake nominations specifically, so that’s the box rightsholders checked.

## Where the record actually supports the claim, and where it doesn’t

The reporting here splits. Ars Technica’s own check found that “many online sellers do include an SD card full of ROMs alongside emulation hardware of all types,” but “Anbernic itself does not appear to do the same when selling directly from its website.” TorrentFreak’s account of the same ESA filing says the opposite: that the ESA names Anbernic.com specifically and alleges the company ships ROM-loaded cards “both directly and via Amazon and eBay.” Both can’t be precisely right at once, and neither outlet reports a response from Anbernic, which hasn’t commented publicly on the filing.

![A beige handheld game console and a stack of black memory cards sit on a teal background, connected by a torn strip of paper.](https://rews.cc/img/3c4cfbd38f1e24128b5d60368c67faf017632566.webp)

What isn’t in dispute is that Anbernic’s own firmware has, at least once, shipped a ROM-fetching feature with no third-party reseller involved. In February 2025, a 1.0.6 firmware update for the company’s XX-series handhelds added an app called RixelHK that let a device search for and download ROMs over Wi-Fi, no SD card swap required. [Android Authority covered](https://www.androidauthority.com/anbernic-piracy-rixelhk-3530061/) the update and the backlash; Anbernic’s own promotional video for it, per [Time Extension’s report](https://www.timeextension.com/news/2025/02/anbernic-pulls-controversial-firmware-update-that-allowed-rom-downloads-from-the-internet), was pulled from YouTube within about three hours, and the firmware itself came down from Anbernic’s site shortly after. That episode predates this filing by a year and a half, and the ESA’s submission doesn’t cite it — the filing’s language is about preloaded memory cards, not downloader apps — but it’s the clearest documented instance of piracy functionality built by Anbernic itself rather than bolted on by a reseller.

## The rest of the filing’s numbers

Anbernic is one line in a longer document. The bulk of the ESA’s submission, per TorrentFreak’s reporting, is about torrent-based piracy, and its headline figure is a loss estimate: 15,484,145 users counted in peer-to-peer swarms distributing games repacked by the group FitGirl between March and August 2026, which the ESA converts to roughly $1.08 billion in lost value by multiplying swarm users by a $69.99 retail price, a method it discloses in a footnote. That’s the standard piracy-loss methodology that treats every downloader as a forgone full-price sale, an assumption no economist studying digital goods would sign off on without a substitution-rate estimate the filing doesn’t provide. The ESA also reports FitGirl’s site drew 41.77 million visits in August 2026 alone and that the site complied with zero takedown requests between August 2025 and August 2026.

![Silhouetted people funnel into a hand-cranked meat grinder that produces a large pile of banknotes against a blue background with a red circle.](https://rews.cc/img/e6e928c271e839345c5e6a1382875848bbceed22.webp)

RuTracker complied with 3% of takedown notices over the same period and DODI-Repacks with 22%, by the ESA’s count — figures that come from the rightsholder doing the counting, not an independent audit, so treat them as a floor on compliance rather than a verified rate. The filing also nominates, for the first time, the handle “voices38,” an anonymous cracker credited by Reddit’s r/CrackWatch with defeating Denuvo’s anti-tamper protection on roughly two dozen titles; Denuvo separately sued to unmask the same handle last month, seeking subpoenas to Discord, Valve and Reddit, a lawsuit the ESA’s filing doesn’t reference. Rounding out the list: the account- and item-trading marketplaces G2A, FunPay and Eldorado.gg, and the cheat-hardware seller Cronus Zen, nominated on the theory that a cheat device circumvents a game’s technical protection the same way a crack does.

None of this changes anything for Anbernic, or for anyone selling an Anbernic device with a pirated-ROM card thrown in, before USTR acts. Rebuttal comments close October 21, 2026. If the prior cycle’s timing holds, a final list follows roughly five months after the comment window closes — the 2025 review’s comments closed in October 2025 and the final list ran March 3, 2026 — which would put a 2026 list around March 2027. Whether USTR accepts a handheld console as a “superfake” at all, and whether any listing would reach Anbernic’s own storefront or only the third-party resellers who bundle the ROM cards, is exactly what’s unresolved going into that review.