Mike Gallagher resigned his job as CEO of the Entertainment Software Association today, after 11 years running the video game industry’s lobbying group in the U.S.
Gallagher didn’t say what he would do next, but we heard that he is considering a run at a political campaign in his home state of Washington. Variety, meanwhile, reported that Gallagher was forced out by the board. Dan Hewitt, a spokesman for the ESA, declined to comment on Gallagher’s plans or why he left.
Most of Gallagher’s work, naturally, was in the political realm. Perhaps his (and his board’s) biggest accomplishment was the ESA’s victory in 2011, when it successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that video games are a protected form of free speech and do not cause violence.
“I think is longest-lasting legacy is the Supreme Court decision protecting video games under the First Amendment,” said Mike Fischer, a former ESA board member and an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California’s game division. “A lot of people thought we didn’t have a chance of winning.”
Gallagher also arranged, via President Barrack Obama’s digital media adviser Mark Deloura, a high-level discussion with former Vice President Joe Biden on video game violence in the wake of the Sandy Hook mass shooting. Gallagher also arranged a meeting with President Donald Trump after yet another shooting. Those discussions helped hold off renewed government attempts at censoring games. During the Trump meeting, the president reportedly turned to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) and said, “We got a problem, Marco, and it’s not with these guys.”
Gallagher also got credit for bringing the Electronic Entertainment Expo back from the dead. At his first E3, the show had been gutted and was reduced to a few thousand press. It was rebuilt to include fans and now draws about 65,000 people to Los Angeles every June.
“I agree that the Supreme Court effort was a huge one, but he also negotiated some very complex times for the organization [bringing E3 back from the dead] and for the industry [being…
