The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has formally asked the U.S. Senate to amend a pending federal deepfake bill, warning that the legislation's broad definition of "digital replica" could expose game studios to "frivolous lawsuits" over characters who happen to resemble real people.

In a letter sent to Senate lawmakers this week, the trade body representing the major U.S. video game publishers flagged two sections of the bill it considers unworkable for interactive entertainment. Both concern scope rather than intent: the ESA said it supports the goal of curbing non-consensual synthetic media but cannot accept the legal exposure the current language would create for developers, artists and tool vendors.

What does the bill cover?

The measure under Senate review is aimed at harmful deepfakes, particularly non-consensual intimate imagery. The ESA's objection is not with the policy goal but with how the bill defines the imagery it regulates.

The core issue is the statutory term "digital replica." The ESA wrote that the wording does not clearly separate malicious deepfakes from legitimate likeness work performed by actors, scan subjects and reference models during character production. Modern AAA pipelines routinely use photogrammetry, facial capture and reference photography drawn from real people to build heroes, NPCs and crowds.

"The breadth of its current definition of 'digital replica' threatens to engender frivolous lawsuits by those who may, even by coincidence, resemble a game character, especially one of the thousands of background characters present in video games," the association stated.

That risk scales with content volume. A single open-world title can ship with thousands of background characters, each built from a reference base. Under the current definition, the ESA argued, anyone with even a passing resemblance could plausibly file suit.

"While the industry would likely prevail against such claims in court in the end, the time and expense of litigating such suits would be economically devastating," the letter continued.

What's the second concern?

The ESA also pushed back on a section imposing liability on providers of deepfake services. The association warned that the list of covered products could capture tools developers use to build game characters, including facial capture software, performance-driven animation systems and AI-assisted authoring pipelines used in pre-production and runtime rendering.

If liability attaches to those tools without an entertainment-specific carve-out, middleware vendors and studios could face downstream exposure when their technology contributes to a flagged output produced elsewhere.

What changes is the ESA requesting?

The trade body has asked senators to narrow the "digital replica" definition so it captures likenesses used without consent in deceptive or harmful contexts, and to add explicit language exempting creative tooling used in licensed entertainment production. The requests are advisory at this stage; the Senate has not publicly commented on the letter or signaled whether amendments will be offered during committee markup.

For developers, the practical near-term impact remains limited. The bill has not passed either chamber, and no markup date has been announced. Character art directors, performance-capture producers and any team integrating third-party likeness tooling should flag the bill to legal counsel now, since substitute language introduced in committee could move quickly.

Engine vendors and middleware providers also have reason to track the file. Any liability rule that sweeps in authoring tools would reshape vendor contracts and indemnity terms across the production stack, not just at publishers. The next signal worth watching is the committee's response to the ESA's letter and whether a manager's amendment addresses the "digital replica" definition before a floor vote.