Membership fees for the Entertainment Software Association have climbed over 1700 percent in the last two years.

A filing to the US Internal Revenue Service showed that membership fees for the financial year ended March 2008 gave the ESA $17.41 million. That figure was at $4.47 million the year prior, and sitting at $1 million for the 2006 fiscal year.

The sudden surge in membership fees is parallel to the lower profile of E3. Gamespot reports that the previous IRS filing saw the ESA attain “most” of its $18.46 million fiscal income from the E3 2006 event alone. Yet in 2007, E3’s fiscal contribution to the ESA was strikingly smaller, sitting at $3.49 million after the entertainment expo saw attendee figures intentionally plummet from around 60,000 to some 5,000 selected industry figures.

The filings show that the ESA would not have been able to keep the income rates of previous years if it hadn't pushed up membership fees, a policy which could be seen as a reason why publishers such as Activision, LucasArts, id Software, NCsoft and Midway have left the association.

The IRS filing also showed that fees owed to the ESA’s Entertainment Software Rating Board had climbed 48 percent from the previous year, reaching $5.18 million.