24 ms·

It seems that the good times for online Minecraft play are over

395 points by airhangerf15 4y ago

rstat1 4y ago
Never seen people make such a huge deal out of nothing like this before. Like this is borderline ridiculous. Its soo much easier to not get banned from something than is to. Literally just don't be an idiot. Its not that hard.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dleslie 4y ago
  > Literally just don't be an idiot. Its not that hard. Kids are often antisocial and exhibit poor behavior. Kids also love Minecraft. Permanent, Microsoft-account level bans for questionable chat text is ridiculous.
  - rstat1 4y ago
    I don't disagree there. But I very highly doubt the ones doing all this complaining are actually kids.
- bolt7469 4y ago
  It's a big deal because Minecraft's server system is traditionally very decentralized. However, this change suggests that Microsoft now wants to increasingly centralize the game. Microsoft seems to be going against the game's original ethos.
  - jimbob45 4y ago
    There’s no going back though, is there? Once Minecraft is playable over LAN without internet connection, there’s very little to nothing that MS can do to police speech, right? I don’t mean to be dismissive but the censorship is virtually opt-in at this point, no?
    - bolt7469 4y ago
      The MS controversy is that they implemented a centralized chat signing feature that is not opt-out. Most of the fun Minecraft servers are using a kind of server-side modding, but their users are playing with "vanilla" clients. So if you get banned by MS, you can't join those servers. MS is now the gatekeeper of offensive chat, not the individual servers.
      - jimbob45 4y ago
        You’re saying the servers are fun and that’s fine. However, I’m of the opinion that it’s the players who make the game fun and if the players choose to play on virtual LAN servers, then they, in essence, opt-out of the censorship.
        kuschku 4y ago
        Even the LAN servers are still part of this censorship model. The only way to avoid this censorship is to crack the game and run the server in cracked mode.
- cypress66 4y ago
  If you are playing in a private server it should be up to that server to ban or not ban people, the same way if you are in a private bar it should be up to that bar to ban you from it because you use profanity.
- charcircuit 4y ago
  Imagine if suddenly the web changed so that it was possible to be banned from every single website (you can't even look at them) for your behavior on a single site by a moderator with incomplete context even if it was done in private. This is a big change to how things work and it was forced onto the community.
- jrm4 4y ago
  No, the ridiculousness is the deep centralization. Whether it's Minetest OR cracked Minecraft, it's clear that Microsoft is an irresponsible, or more importantly, unnecessary steward/middleman here. Those who want Microsofts vision, I suppose that's fine -- but I see no good reason to require or respect it. On with the mods.
8jy89hui 4y ago
Does anyone have any insight into why Microsoft thought this was necessary? Minecraft has been server-moderated for years now and has been wildly successful. I've never heard of any hate groups or even hateful servers (I'm sure they exist, but they don't make the news in a way that would harm Microsoft). Is there some legislation that would make it a liability for Microsoft to not moderate all the chat? This move just seems so strange
- ceeplusplus 4y ago
  1. Minecraft has a lot of kids playing it, particularly kids whose parents blame Microsoft for poor behavior rather than learning to parent. 2. California recently passed a bill which would fine companies which fail to prevent kids from accessing features which are "detrimental" to children's health [1]. Naturally, Microsoft doesn't want to get fined for what edgy gamers say online. 3. (speculation) The censorship police that have infected every other major online platform have now reached gaming. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/30/californoa-childrens-online-privacy-protection-act/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/30/californoa-childrens-onlin...
  - garciasn 4y ago
    My 12 year old has been bombarded with the message this is coming and will be the end of HyPixel/SkyBlock from many of the prominent Minecraft YouTubers he watches. Let me tell you: if my money is down the drain because some little jackwagon mass-reports some random server and my kids’ accounts are locked, I’m gonna be fucking furious. If the hoopla around this is true, Microsoft is going to relive its 1990s level hatred from the nerd community—just as parents instead of dorky teens and twenty-somethings running Linux.
    - bisby 4y ago
      Microsoft profits off Bedrock ("Minecraft for WIndows") because they can charge for basically everything, because there are no mods (addons). Java edition is where the mods are. Which is why hypixel/skyblock are on java edition. Ive seen speculation that Microsoft is adding this to have a process for banning java edition players. And then they just... stop selling java edition. Then there are no new java players ever again, and the existing player pool slowly dwindles because they either get banned, or their friends get banned and they don't want to play java alone, and the only option is to go to the microtransaction-fest that is bedrock. And now you live in their walled garden. I would say that this is pure conspiracy level stuff, but that would be literally the final step of a EEE plan. Microsoft has done this before and there would be no surprise if they actually did that. Will they? I dunno, but it's overall a heavy handed bad move. Everything I've heard about the system is that it's not a great idea.
SquareWheel 4y ago
Surely there's a better recap of the issue than a two month old forum post from a user running cracked servers?
noncoml 4y ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/realms/comments/x6wl6j/banned_from_own_realm/ https://www.reddit.com/r/realms/comments/x6wl6j/banned_from_... Imagine getting banned from your own realm…
teaearlgraycold 4y ago
I think having an opt-in (on by default in Realms) universal bans system is a good idea and something only Microsoft can properly provide. Can you really not turn this off per server?
- jandrese 4y ago
  As far as I know there is no way to disable the reporting, nor is there any way to request a review after you are banned. It is a system set up to enable abuse even more than Youtube's content ID and demonetization bans, and that's saying something.
  - plushpuffin 4y ago
    Spigot/Paper servers can disable chat reporting with plugins, clients can disable sending signatures with forge mods, and servers can be configured to allow clients which don’t sign their messages with the setting enforce-secure-profile.
- sli 4y ago
  Already exists for Java edition as a server (Bukkit) mod, which makes it opt-in: https://www.mcbans.com/ https://www.mcbans.com/
  - teaearlgraycold 4y ago
    Yes - but that doesn't work on Realms and requires the server to trust a 3rd party for the bans list and only works if you use Bukkit. Those problems are solved by Microsoft running the program. But it needs to be optional - ideally opt in. Since Realms is mostly for kids I think it makes sense for this feature to be opt out, or even always on, in Realms.
amiga-workbench 4y ago
I think now is the time for people to be putting their energies into something like Minetest[1] so they can't have the rug pulled on them. There are already some mods available, but it would be great to see more ported. [1] https://www.minetest.net/ https://www.minetest.net/
- openfuture 4y ago
  No. Not yet. First we must(!) address the incentive problem in free software (and society) then things like minetest will outcompete things like minecraft naturally. The only reason it doesn't already is because developers can only get paid working on less valuable (read: closed) software. See: https://datalisp.is https://datalisp.is.
  - aliqot 4y ago
    Hi Bill! In all seriousness though, this isn't likely to happen, so let's not let perfect be the enemy of good.
  - doodlesdev 4y ago
    I'm a huge advocate of free software, but I've never actually seen a _true_ solution to the incentive problem when it comes to developing free software. Sure, there are ways to monetize free software projects, but honestly, if you want to make a lot of money, grow a company, hire developers and grow a huge user base, then closed source only benefits you (unfortunately). I'm not really sure how we can change that, specially because of the already widespread perception that free software must also be free as in beer (which I guess will always be true, and it's exactly the reason so many companies choose closed source).
    - openfuture 4y ago
      Money is a social construct. Public goods are traditionally funded by taxes. Dual to taxing someone would be to print new money for everyone except that person. We need to pay ourselves and take ourselves seriously.
denkmoon 4y ago
Gonna be a lot of very upset kids when their frenemies from school get their account banned from ever playing online again.
amiga 4y ago
Anyone who has ever seen an MS acquisition play out before knew this was coming. Minecraft has been open for some time, and that has an effect counter to the control that MS seeks over its products. "Embrace, extend, extinguish" has been the strategy for decades.
- karaterobot 4y ago
  This doesn't make sense. They bought Minecraft 8 years ago, and it's grown by an order of magnitude since then. It's a huge cash cow for them. In what way is that consistent with the "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy from 26 years ago, when they had an entirely different leadership team and business model? How is this not just a dumb move on their part, and actually part of some master plan to ... what... lose money?
  - tomrod 4y ago
    How many more licenses will be purchased -- and how much can they make from the lifetime value of Realms subscribers? Seems like the beancounters won this one.
- yodon 4y ago
  Are you seriously arguing that Microsoft is intentionally trying to "extinguish" it's own IP? I realize that "Embrace, extend, extinguish" is a hopelessly tired and outdated meme, but trying to freshen it up by arguing they've now reached a level where they are intentionally trying to kill their OWN products as part of some grand and 30-year-in-the-past EEE "plan" is simply absurd.
  - jay_kyburz 4y ago
    I don't follow Minecraft or this issue closely, this is pure speculation, but MS could be trying to extinguish self hosted servers and would prefer all players playing on official Mincraft servers.
    - jacknews 4y ago
hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago
Microsoft customer service is abysmal everywhere. I’m currently battling a $20 azure bill that I’m unsure how to pay, customer support keeps directing me to the billing section, which, as I’ve told them, tells me I’m not authorised to access, despite being the subscription owner. Microsoft UX everywhere I’ve seen is horrible and I feel ripe for disruption. Given the shit they’ve put me through with azure the past 18 months, I hope they lose money when that happens.
- jandrese 4y ago
  The Minecraft account migration process was awful too. It's a mishmash of Microsoft, X-Box, and Outlook/Live branding all with sites that work differently and options are spread around them seemingly at random. By default you can't even play online, you have to track down an obscure option in X-Box chat preferences to allow you to join servers. It was even worse for me because some bot registered for a Microsoft account using my email address ages ago. I recovered the account using the "forgot my password", link, but the bot set it up in German and I can't seem to get it to change the language everywhere. So while most of the menus are in English, I still get confirmation emails in German.
  - inetknght 4y ago
    > The Minecraft account migration Just to add onto this rant against Microsoft... ... I cannot use my Microsoft account because it was hacked and stolen. I would get emails several times each year saying that there's suspicious activity but I can't log in. When I try to log in then Microsoft sends me through account recovery and asks questions about my real life that were never associated with the account. So I'm royally pissed that Minecraft has migrated to it. I've lost all of the time and the little amount of money spent.
  - ezfe 4y ago
    I've implemented oauth with the new flow, and jeesh it runs through so many layers: https://wiki.vg/Microsoft_Authentication_Scheme https://wiki.vg/Microsoft_Authentication_Scheme
LennyWhiteJr 4y ago
I have some hope for Hytale, an open sandbox game created by the creators of the HyPixel minecraft server. https://hytale.com/ https://hytale.com/
OrangeMonkey 4y ago
- lolinder 4y ago
  Any attempt to understand "the users here" as a unit is misguided. Hacker News doesn't have a single opinion on anything. You get a different sub-community showing up for each thread depending on topic and time of day, so the sentiment will always fluctuate from thread to thread.
  - aliqot 4y ago
    I oppose censorship in any form. It's the only perfect system that is achievable and can be what it claims, a space free of censorship. There is no 'only the bad things' that can be censored, as you've illuminated here, different people will have different sensibilities. In the mean time, however, we can educate ourselves and steel our nerves as we may come across ideas and content we don't agree with or care to be exposed to. As responsible netizens we shouldn't let it affect us to hysterics and cries of censorship, and instead stay away from the places that do. It starts with personal agency and responsibility for yourself and those you're charged with rearing.
    - wvenable 4y ago
      I'm glad I got to hear your opinion but the only reason you were able to make it here is because this place is heavily moderated. No popular forums can survive a lack of censorship in any form.
  - verisimilitudes 4y ago
    - JetAlone 4y ago
      > I remember when the idiots here were congratulating Uber for killing that woman, because her death wouldn't be in vain; it would improve their self-driving software. We will reach Peak Scientistic Neo-Liberalism on the back of such sacrifices. Progress, profits, enlightenment, efficiency and safety, at any cost.
bitL 4y ago
Can you just ignore Minecraft's own chat system and use a 3rd party one (perhaps pasting a link to the Minecraft's one for players to join)?
- bolt7469 4y ago
  Many useful server plugins use chat commands for certain features. The in-game whisper chat feature might also need more configuration to emulate it in the external chat. A Discord server would probably be the best solution.
- charcircuit 4y ago
  If you get banned for chatting you can't even JOIN any multiplayer server.
kragen 4y ago
Minetest is probably the best Minecraft alternative; it's free and open source software, which avoids the danger associated with centralized retaliation systems like the one Microsoft is operating. Also, it's easier to write mods for, partly because mods are written in Lua, and you don't have to install mods on the client, just the server. https://www.minetest.net/ https://www.minetest.net/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6Fyav6FiIs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6Fyav6FiIs The video's author doesn't mention it by name, but the quantum computing tutorial game he's playing in a couple of the clips is called QiskitBlocks; it's a series of puzzles designed to teach you how quantum computing works. The (public) games that run on the Minetest engine are listed on https://content.minetest.net/packages/?type=game https://content.minetest.net/packages/?type=game. QiskitBlocks in particular is https://content.minetest.net/packages/JavaFXpert/qiskitblocks/ https://content.minetest.net/packages/JavaFXpert/qiskitblock....
- deep-root 4y ago
  Minetest is like a platform, and for anyone wanting a Minecraft-clone based on it: https://content.minetest.net/packages/kay27/mineclone5/ https://content.minetest.net/packages/kay27/mineclone5/
  - kragen 4y ago
    Yup, though the guy who wrote that video liked MineClone2 better: https://content.minetest.net/packages/Wuzzy/mineclone2/ https://content.minetest.net/packages/Wuzzy/mineclone2/ MineClone5 is a fork of MineClone2, but both are popular and in active development, and because they're GPLed they can freely gank features from each other. They just have slightly different development priorities. I think even the base Minetest Game is pretty Minecraft-like, though. Out of the box it doesn't have mobs, the Nether, portals, magic, or redstone, but you can add those a la carte to Minetest Game as mods, and there's a cooler redstone alternative called mesecons. You can see the mods at https://content.minetest.net/packages/?type=mod https://content.minetest.net/packages/?type=mod; most of them are applicable to Minetest Game. And in Minetest Game you can mine a lot deeper than in Minecraft. (You kind of have to, which might be better or worse.)
- 4y ago
hsuduebc2 4y ago
Another corporate acquisition which ruined some nice product by features literally nobody asked for. Well done.
pvg 4y ago
This is from a couple of months ago, related hn threads from then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31892395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31892395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860168 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860168
- dang 4y ago
  Thanks! Macroexpanded: Microsoft will start banning players from all private Minecraft servers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31892395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31892395 - June 2022 (15 comments) Online Minecraft Bans Will Be Able to Block You from Private Servers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860168 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860168 - June 2022 (23 comments)
ynniv 4y ago
Minecraft is Microsoft's metaverse play now. Expect it to trend towards real identities and strong DRM accordingly.
nightpool 4y ago
It does not surprise me that the right wing channers who started bae.st after getting banned from Twitter dislike the increase in moderation on other platforms. I'm no fan of Microsoft, but on the theory that you can judge a person by the quality of their enemies, Minecraft comes out looking positively beatific here.
- JetAlone 4y ago
  The enemy of your enemy is really not your friend in this scenario.
  - nightpool 4y ago
    I mean, when it comes to actual trolls complaining about getting kicked off of the platform, I have to conclude that Microsoft is at least doing one thing right.
    - JetAlone 4y ago
      Don't be naive, this will affect way more people than just the ones you'll snicker about. Cause it gets abused.
armchairhacker 4y ago
I strongly disagree with Microsoft's stance. But I also think the issue is way overblown. You can simply mod servers so that they don't have this chat reporting. If everyone in the Minecraft community is so opposed, just create and exclusively join modded servers. Does not matter if they get labeled "Not Secure" if 90% of well-known popular servers have it, and there are tools and tutorials everywhere which make it so easy to set up even a 9-year old can do it. What if Microsoft tries to force servers to enable chat reporting in a future update? Nope, not going to happen. Minecraft is nearly open-source and the amount of modders who care about this is huge, the technical and legal resources to do so are just not worth it. I do get that Microsoft is obnoxiously tone-deaf with this, and I believe it's a terrible idea which is barely legal (revoking people's access to what they bought on shoddy evidence - if this actually starts happening to a lot of people I hope they get sued). But it's just - people are saying "Minecraft is dead". Minecraft is not remotely dead.
- devwastaken 4y ago
  If you are banned, it also reasons that you would no longer be able to authenticate to 3rd party servers either, and it would be most likely an infringement of DRM to bypass, if not simply against TOS.
- autoexec 4y ago
  > revoking people's access to what they bought on shoddy evidence - if this actually starts happening to a lot of people I hope they get sued I wouldn't put my money on them winning that one. It's wrong, but the laws were written by and for companies. I don't think a judge is going to say that a company who runs an online service can't ban users for violations of their policies. Hell, if the law cared about making sure companies couldn't arbitrarily cut off people's access to their purchases DRM would be outlawed.
  - bspammer 4y ago
    They are not running the online service. These are community servers.
LAC-Tech 4y ago
I think at this point it's best for us to just let minecraft die. I haven't played a single hour of the game since they shutdown mojang accounts. There's just no way in hell I'm paying for a realm where I can't say naughty words in chat. Notch introduced a whole new genre of gaming - let's look towards new games in this category rather than trying to inhabit the corpse of Microsoft Minecraft 365.
egberts1 4y ago
Reminds me of The song found in Windows 95 (OSR1/2) CD. skip to time index 0:30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okt9GcWiWmE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okt9GcWiWmE
nathanvanfleet 4y ago
Seems funny that they think Minecraft ever stood for anything other than a game for people to play.
baskethead 4y ago
My kid and his friends are all eschewing 1.19.X and sticking with the 1.18.2 release specifically because of this issue. And they know this because they all watch the Youtube videos that are saying the same thing, that this "feature" is garbage.
- JetAlone 4y ago
  I'm doing the same, but it won't last forever. A forced update, or some kind of retro-active system is inevitable. The product owners really want this feature.
omegacharlie 4y ago
Modern-day MC is a bit out of my depth but are these bans enforced in a similar mechanism to online-mode checks? (which validates that the username attempting to connect to the server has authenticated against the Mojang login servers?) More importantly could it be possible for a modified client or server to 'spoof' reports against an arbitrary user to 'frame' them? Disturbing possibilities here.
- darknavi 4y ago
  > Modern-day MC is a bit out of my depth but are these bans enforced in a similar mechanism to online-mode checks? Yes, a server with `online-mode` turned off does not use any authentication and will let anyone (banned or not) play.
- ShowalkKama 4y ago
  > Modern-day MC is a bit out of my depth but are these bans enforced in a similar mechanism to online-mode checks? (which validates that the username attempting to connect to the server has authenticated against the Mojang login servers?) yes > More importantly could it be possible for a modified client or server to 'spoof' reports against an arbitrary user to 'frame' them? Disturbing possibilities here. no
- orsond 4y ago
  > More importantly could it be possible for a modified client or server to 'spoof' reports against an arbitrary user to 'frame' them? Disturbing possibilities here. Yes, the developers of Nodus have demonstrated this over and over again that they can spoof messages. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz5iGzuNnNU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz5iGzuNnNU
  - rcxdude 4y ago
    Sort of. (I think you know this but I'm adding context for others unaware of how the system works). The design intent of the chat reporting system is that chat messages are signed by the client with a key associated with the account, so that you can't just conjure up a message of someone saying a slur and send it to microsoft. Someone has to have actually typed something for it to appear in the report. So far I don't think anyone has demonstrated spoofing a message signed by someone else which they didn't actually write (which I think is what OP was asking). Of course just have the message with no context is not enough to go on in a lot of cases, so they also made a system to try to have a verifiable chain of context to go with the offending message. This is what the system above is exploiting, since it basically allows a malicious actor to have one message appear in the chat reports but another appear to the player (which is also spoofing a message), allowing manipulation of the context of the message and thus a false report that appears legitimate as far as Microsoft can verify. There's a relatively simple but limiting way to avoid this: just never say anything in chat. It's also possible to mod the client to never sign messages (and the server to strip signatures from message), but this may result in your chats being dropped by some clients and servers (I think it's an option, not sure if the default has changed to on).
orsond 4y ago
Hi, orsond from the fifth column here. The Fifth Column is a Minecraft hacking and griefing group. We created Project Copenhiemer which is a Minecraft server scanning tool. Copenhiemer scans the internet every 20 minutes for minecraft servers, logs players, server versions, mods and more. Originally we had created it to find players and grief their server worlds, highlighting how much information about players is leaked from Mojangs default server configuration. They have put some features into the game to stop this information from being leaked but have made it an opt in system which no one uses or is even aware of. We have become increasingly worried about the direction of Mojang's safety policies and we believe they are just playing lip service to the actual problems at hand. Online gaming and gaming coms has a seriously unaddressed problem with child safety. Mojang's reasoning for chat reporting is to protect children. Chat reporting does absolutely nothing to solve this problem. You can report people for swearing, drug/alcohol references, etc. You cannot report a player for child exploitation unless they use the chat system to do so. As an example, I know one server admin that disabled chat entirely on his large server only to have pedophiles use in game signs to message and groom children over Skype and Discord. If Mojang were serious about protecting children, they would stop developing their paternalistic chat surveillance system and split multiplayer children and 18+ play from each other. For example, children should only be able to join under 18's Mojang hosted servers (realms) where conduct can be heavily monitored and 18+ players join multiplayer servers where children cannot play. It is clear they have thought about this problem for a total of 5 minutes and have shut down healthy & reasonable debate about their solution to avoid embarrassment and scrutiny.
- vermilingua 4y ago
  How do you propose MS/Mojang determine who is and is not an actual child? Require parents to provide legal documents of their children? Photographic confirmation? Time and time again it has been proven that attempts to segregate the internet into adult/child zones will fail.
  - orsond 4y ago
    No idea. They should figure it out. The point is that their solution doesn't and will not work in solving this problem.
verisimilitudes 4y ago
Gee guys, where are the dipshits to remind us MicroSoft <3 open source and totally isn't just opportunistically fucking it over again? It's not as if they took a game that worked everywhere and have increasingly restricted it for no reason. No, wait, MicroSoft is a big corporation, so this is just a different department, right?
ckemere 4y ago
It's apparently a minority voice opinion here on HN, but I for one appreciate what Microsoft is trying to do. As a parent of a 6 and 9 year old who have really gotten into Minecraft during COVID, I appreciate them basically deciding "We want Minecraft to be a game for kids and an online community that is nice." I get why people are frustrated, but I also like the idea of a global decision that forces servers open to "the public" to have an enforced global standard of behavior. Correct me if I'm wrong, I don't see anything in their process that suggests that a group of adults playing with their friends are at risk of having their chat audited in the absence of a complaint?
- dmix 4y ago
  The road to hell is always paved with good intentions and naive ideals. I’m trying to imagine having to explain to a 6yr old why they can’t play Minecraft until Dad creates another account and hope they can afford another license. And hope it doesn’t happen again the next time a troll joins their server. It also seems to be incentivizing people to not have any chat reports at all.
  - ckemere 4y ago
    I guess I don't understand - the troll will report your 6 year old for dropping f-bombs? And the chat logs (which MS will now have) will back then up? And why are you inviting trolls to play with your 6 year old? (We're somewhat new to Minecraft, so I may be missing something here.)
    - zbird 4y ago
      > I guess I don't understand - the troll will report your 6 year old for dropping f-bombs? They'll report for no reason, that's the point of trolling. > And the chat logs (which MS will now have) will back then up? I have not played Minecraft, but I'd be surprised if the server admins of any game of such scale acted on logs. Also, I wouldn't want my kids to be logged on a corporate server. > And why are you inviting trolls to play with your 6 year old? Are the rooms invite only? Then what's the point of Microsoft's draconian measures here? I thought the point was to censor public servers, but again, I haven't played this much. In any case, this situation already looks like defeat for an online community.
dmix 4y ago
Sounds like reddit
Hippieblog 4y ago
[dead]
williamscales 4y ago
I'm not super familiar with Minecraft but isn't it more usual to communicate with other players over discord? And you get voice chat that way? Sorry if I'm being dumb, would love a link to an intro to how Minecraft works.
tjr225 4y ago
Arnavion 4y ago
There's a special kind of irony in putting the text of one's blogpost in a noscript tag for the sake of people who disable JS, but then setting a CSS class on body to make it invisible that is only removed by JS.
- autoexec 4y ago
  Wow, I saw the blank page and just closed the tab. These days I rarely even bother to view the source to look for readable content. Too often there's no content at all, just ads, tracking, and JS. I went back to read what they had. It's not often I'm amused and disappointed at the same time! One of these days I'm either going to find or end up writing a CSS blocker.
  - Arnavion 4y ago
    (To be clear, you're not missing any content by being unable to read it because of the CSS. The noscript text is a long joke that ends with telling you to enable JS. I'm just amused that the joke doesn't work because the author used CSS to hide the body.)
politician 4y ago
This is clearly how Microsoft is finally going to rid itself of Notch’s original $20 to play forever deal. Bedrock edition didn’t get enough people off Java edition, micro transactions didn’t lure enough people away, so now they’ve just implemented a really loose report-to-ban system and let the online community tear itself apart. When you’ve invested multiple billions in a property, these are the sorts of choices you make to protect that investment.
socialismisok 4y ago
Oh shit, they are moderating chat in a game for children and responding to player reports? Pretty ghoulish, if you ask me. /S Come on, are we really complaining that public chat is moderated now? Is that really where the bar has sunk to?
- gjs278 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- rhdunn 4y ago
  Adults play too. Imagine you are an adult Minecraft player who plays in a popular private server with only other adults (e.g. any of the big popular YouTube Minecrafters). You then play on a public server and someone reports you and gets you banned. You now cannot play on that private server or any other multiplayer world, even if it is just you and a friend.
  - watwut 4y ago
    It does matter what exactly it is that you done on that public server. Some swearing? Yeah you are right. The other stuff like "serious threats, doxxing/stalking"? Nah, other adults dont have to have to put up with you either.
- xdrosenheim 4y ago
  Wow dude, you said a swear word in public... Better call the police and have you locked up for the rest of your life for that. Unless you pay your government a little $30 more, pretty please? ; )
- rcxdude 4y ago
  I would describe messages on a private server as private chat. No-one has any issue with Microsoft moderating Microsoft's servers, they have an issue with Microsoft moderating their servers.
kypro 4y ago
I think this is probably an autistic take on this, but I think we care way to much about exposing kids to mean words and mean people. Again, perhaps an autistic take, but being bullied (badly) as a kid was easily the best thing that ever happened to me in terms of mental resilience. Imagine we got into an argument and I got angry and called you a "smelly poo poo", you'd probably just laugh because despite what I'm saying being mean and profanity it's also such an insignificant insult that it borders on comical. But to a kid that might actually be quite offensive and hurtful and that's because they haven't built a tolerance. I suspect this might be why a lot people today feel that words can be violent - they simply haven't built up a tolerance for offensive speech. And sometimes in the real world people can be offensive and mean. Another thing I'll add here is that in the UK working class guys really like to insult each other. Given the types of individuals who browse HN I know most here won't relate to this, but it's actually kinda fun to be a dick to your friend. And further I'd argue that guys actually bond in part by playfighting and teasing each other. I get that what I'm saying here is very context dependent, but some of the best times of my childhood was playing video games with my friends and saying all kinds of horrid stuff to them. If I had to guess 80% of the stuff we'd say to each other on voice chat was insults but it was hilarious. Kids are way stronger than we tend to think. If you teach a kid they're a victim because someone said something mean then they'll probably believe it and see themselves as a victim. On the other hand, if you act like mean words are no big deal and that sometimes people can be mean then they'll probably grow up much better prepared to handle the real world. At least in my experience / opinion.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- xmprt 4y ago
  People will be offensive in the real world but I don't think we should encourage or accept that kind of behavior. If we build a society where people are shamed and shunned and not allowed to participate (whether it's a short timeout or a longer ban) when they behave poorly then hopefully we can reduce this kind of behavior in the world and instead of accepting it, people will be more comfortable fighting back in a positive way instead of simply flinging insults back which was how many of my childhood bullies behaved. Playfighting is a different topic and typically even when you play fight, you set certain boundaries and there are things that you don't say/do. Good friends will recognize those boundaries and not cross them. You wouldn't call your friends soft and say they lack mental resilience for having boundaries, would you?
groby_b 4y ago
"You can be banned for anything" here means "I couldn't just be a jerk whenever I want, so I'm upset". None of the ban reasons are particularly egregious for a game a lot of kids play. It's a social event, there are social norms, not sticking to them will get you ostracized. This is how society works and enforces sustainable and mutually beneficial interaction patterns.
- piperswe 4y ago
  Servers are a social event - that should be where the social norms apply. Different servers have different social norms. I should be able to use non-child-friendly language on a private server with adult friends (and friends of friends) without worrying about someone reporting me for it.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
MBCook 4y ago
“centralized chat and account moderation goes against everything minecraft stood for” That seems… hyperbolic? I don’t feel like Minecraft has ever stood for anything in particular other than creating worlds and sharing them with others.
- doodlesdev 4y ago
  I guess the general consensus is that the coolest part of Minecraft is you play it how you want to. This time there is a global restriction on what you and cannot do, reducing this sense of freedom from the sandbox. It's hyperbolic, although I have to admit centralized _anything_ for a sandbox such as Minecraft is pretty lame.
Pxtl 4y ago
I know the business need but I've been very bothered by the fact that online gaming for kids has defaulted to mmo-style open servers. My daughter asked to play Roblox and after looking into their system I said no. I'm more than happy to let my kids online... to play with their friends, with content that was created by their friends or curated by professionals. Not to play with strangers in a slushpit if user-contributed content curated by an algorithm. So I get why Minecraft is doing this, but imho it's the wrong approach. Make it easier for parents and kids to run a private server. Publish curated plugins for kids to load into said servers. Let us parent, and let the pubs be pubs. Instead MS seems to be following the Roblox approach of "trust our algo and our banhammer". Which, no.
- JetAlone 4y ago
  I've been mulling over your desired situation which is probably shared with plenty of parents. I think you want a system with a walled-garden with a "friend code" like Nintendo has, that can be physically shared through a scanner. You want to be able to supervise who your kids are friends with, and you want it to be extremely difficult to share that information online. Then the kids are strictly, systematically only able to contact and play with each other if they are friends. Maybe friends of friends. Parents get to review content, or professionals are paid to curate content that is allowed in this system. When someone new becomes friends with your kid, you are notified and can ask who that is. If they seem to not be any of your kid's IRL friends, then you, as the parent, have the power to block that person from your child's games, report them, and notify the other parents of any of your children's friends that you have done so to this user. It's local, involves the parents' supervision at a higher level. It can probably be abused by kids getting their parent's supervision module and blocking one of their friends and notifying all the parents as a mean joke or something. Or by parents who want to exclude certain children based on not liking their parents, and wanting to make an example of them as a "bad influence". It's also vulnerable to the child lying and saying a stranger is one of their IRL friends. The friend code "badge" getting lost is another serious concern. A tool to use the friend code scanner at events like birthday parties to get surprise packs could be a "fun" thing that serves a double purpose of displaying each kid's profile, to help keep an offline list that verifies each kid's online identity to their parents, by pairing it with a photo (which never goes online) taken at the time of scanning. And there could be a tool to let you quickly scan that list and compare to the friend network of your kid and their friends. Maybe if there's somebody who consistently never shows up on the "party lists", flags could be raised and the parents could be notified to separately ask their children who that is - if answers are inconsistent, something's probably wrong. Now, this system would take effort to implement, and effort to get existing games to agree to integrate - and they do need to integrate. Trying to create games to fit snugly into this system from the ground up would be insanely difficult. Maybe it absolutely must run servers of popular games in a "black-box", with this security system on top of it. To the kid's perspective, it needs to feel like barely an extra step to sign in and play through those servers, and on the computers they have access to, the vanilla version of the game needs to be thoroughly inaccessible. Parents would need to be willing to pay significant money into this.
user- 4y ago
Is this website just 4chan but prettier? I clicked on the feed and all I saw was people saying f*g and hentai.
- chungy 4y ago
  Looks to be a pretty normal Pleroma instance.
mr_woozy 4y ago
parasti 4y ago
Seeing how my wooden signs and item names containing perfectly safe Latvian words have been brutally disappeared and censored in Minecraft Bedrock, this seems like global disaster about to happen. In my experience, Microsoft is incompetent to correctly enforce this.
- SSLy 4y ago
  You shouldn't be surprised considering the amount of racism in USA.
  - parasti 4y ago
    The words being filtered are not racial slurs in English.
hooby 4y ago
Microsoft lost my copy of the game during the account transfer. Despite me having an account, that had both re-downloaded the game and played it just a few weeks earlier, had a custom character skin stored in it, and other stuff - they claimed I didn't actually ever own Minecraft, and demanded I provide proof of purchase. I provided as much as I could - including security questions+answers (which I had stored in my KeePass database, together with the password) - but I could not provide the original purchase email, since I lost access to that email years earlier. Their support was quite hostile with just the thinnest veneer of superficial politeness on top. They refused to tell me why they believed I don't own the game. They refused to tell me what I could do to get my copy back (other than providing that email, that I no longer had). Basically I was considered guilty unless I could proof my innocence - and they wouldn't accept any other proof than the original confirmation email. And that's how - after nearly 10 years - I stopped being a Minecraft player. There's no way I'm going to repurchase the game and play again - not after being treated like that.
- doodlesdev 4y ago
  Quoting the original creator [0]: "Just pirate it". [0]: https://twitter.com/notch/status/157261795139125248 https://twitter.com/notch/status/157261795139125248
  - voxic11 4y ago
    Quoting the original creator [0]: "buy it". [0]: https://twitter.com/notch/status/157261795139125248 https://twitter.com/notch/status/157261795139125248
  - _nalply 4y ago
    There is another way to oppose a hostile ecosystem: instead consuming non-blessed copies ignore it.
    - doodlesdev 4y ago
      I agree with this sentiment a lot. I only make the exception here for this game specifically because: - He has already bought the product - It works offline and you don't need to ever update - The game is fun as hell and there's really nothing like it If this was the case with some other piece of software such as Windows (which funnily enough is also by Microsoft) where I do have alternatives, instead of pirating I just use Linux/Mac/BSD/whatever_else instead. I should note my personal experience with the game has been very pleasant specifically because I choose to play it "pirated"/"offline" even though I've purchased a copy of the game a long time ago, it's just more convenient, safer, and more private. If MineTest or something else ever gets to a state where it's as polished and fun as Minecraft 1.0.0 I'll certainly migrate.
Guthur 4y ago
This is really a result of "you shall hurt no one's feelings" that has permeated through out our society and part of the broader top down push for Economic Social Governance. This is going to be major disaster like all central social governance, it will be brought via tyranny as it always must be, no matter how well intentioned.
Smithalicious 4y ago
I feel like this is pretty shitty. Me and my friends were playing minecraft before many of the children that supposedly need to be protected now were even born. I'm sure server owners will work around this, but I feel like the well is poisoned now, some amount of innocence has been lost. Hosting a minecraft server has always been administering your own little kingdom, it's where me and many others got our first experience self-hosting services. Now Microsoft is squarely inserting itself in what used to be a relationship directly between server admin and player. Of course part of me also thinks that handing out the occasional game-wide permanent ban that can be quickly circumvented by buying another $25-or-whatever-it-was license is good business for a game that everybody already owns, but that's probably too cynical.
Kiro 4y ago
A two month old post on a hacking forum complaining about chat moderation in a game for kids, from a user running cracked servers. Apparently enough for HN to pick up the pitchforks because, you know, Big Tech Bad.
- bspammer 4y ago
  The game is not for kids, the game is just played by a lot of kids. Why is anything that kids can find fun branded as “for kids”? The target market when notch originally created the game was certainly not kids.
  - Kiro 4y ago
    I'm a Minecraft player myself but fact remains that most players are children and the moderation needs to be adapted accordingly.
teekert 4y ago
Imo they shifted from teen-adolescent semi-hackers to kids as the target group. It's always annoying when something you love pivots to target another group of users. As someone who is often an early adopter I went through this a couple of times. The end of era.
foxes 4y ago
Today on HN: wall of text about why you should be able to say anything you want with zero consequences.
alkonaut 4y ago
Of all the bad things that happened with minecraft, chat moderation seems pretty far down the list. The endless complications with licenses, authentication systems etc were a massive frustration. To this day I still don't know whether to use a nintendo account, a microsoft account or a mojang account when signing into the game on Switch. Who moderates the chat seems like a pretty minor issue in comparison. I think people (As in, majority minecraft players) care about decentralized game hosting and chat moderation to about the same extent that they care about email hosting: they don't.
vkoskiv 4y ago
I couldn't even complete the Microsoft account migration without encountering a data-mining attempt (they wanted my personal phone #). [1] I can no longer justify this kind of privacy invading anti-user behaviour for a silly block game, so I've chosen to just quit Minecraft after ~12 years of playing. At Assembly, I discovered that Minetest (with the mineclone 2 gamemode) is a very passable clone of Minecraft, with an open protocol and game source code. If I want to play a game like that again, I'll just go for Minetest. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32142847 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32142847
xdrosenheim 4y ago
I have not used the official Minecraft client since they change it over to the new one. I advice everyone to never use it. Use one of the meny alternatives that lets you easily set up different versions of the game, with mods, profiles, and easier to change RAM allocation. Never download that piece of human garbage that is version 1.19.
mccorrinall 4y ago
And now read about how they tricked regulators to become the top company in Germany: https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/sap-die-dunkle-seite-des-digitalkonzerns-a-bb2a621a-825c-44ee-be90-e6e74ceeea2d?sara_ecid=soci_upd_KsBF0AFjflf0DZCxpPYDCQgO1dEMph https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/sap-die-dunkle... (paywall)
- mccorrinall 4y ago
  I actually wanted to post this under the SAP article…
mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
I knew Minecraft was effectively dead the moment Microsoft sank their teeth into it, and I've barely touched the game since. They did their best to cut out Linux support. All hope of it being open sourced is lost, so expect it to go into disrepair the moment it stops making them money.
makach 4y ago
This article just grinds my gears. It is terrible what Microsoft is doing by forcing us to migrate our accounts, but I am powerless against it. All I can do is to shake my old angry fist in the air and curse profoundly. But I will still play the game.
c7DJTLrn 4y ago
Microsoft have realised their investment has a limited number of years of life left in it. The main audience has grown up. To keep the brand alive they need to aggressively pursue the younger generation and tailor the game to them. Hence the safety features which the older audience don't care for. I still maintain my stance that Microsoft ruined Minecraft by turning it into an investment.
mountainb 4y ago
Unbelievable how many people here are defending the centralized chat moderation a priori. You would think that HN would support the ideal of distributed server administration.
- ragazzina 4y ago
  On HN defending the corporation seems to be the default. It looks like an American mindset to me, but I've seen some of my (I'm from Europe) friends do it as well.
  - mountainb 4y ago
    I'm an American. I'm a capitalism respecter and corporation enjoyer. But I don't see the value in having a central decision maker take over all the peer-to-peer dispute resolution which was working fine previously. One very bad and inefficient dispute resolver is not preferable to decentralization. That's also a fundamental American norm which MS is flouting here.
AmazingTurtle 4y ago
I don't understand these people down here who appreciate Minecraft for what they are trying to do. In cs:go there is a way better system. If other people mute you (because for whatever reason) too often, you become muted by default for every game you join. People can unmute you on their behalf. Thats a reputation based system. And banning someone from a years old account, memories attached etc. will just get people mad at you. There's better systems.
avereveard 4y ago
Like, host a server with no account verification but a user whitelist. Realms where expensive traps since the beginning, yall just refused to listen.
xani_ 4y ago
Great time for christian minecraft servers, someone calls you a butt and they will be banished forever from realms of minecraft
theknocker 4y ago
awwaiid 4y ago
Reading this is a very very different experience when you are actually reading the noscript text due to non-js feed reader. I read the whole thing before realizing that all the Alex Jones stuff never mentioned Minecraft.

395 points by airhangerf15 4y ago

Never seen people make such a huge deal out of nothing like this before. Like this is borderline ridiculous. Its soo much easier to not get banned from something than is to. Literally just don't be an idiot. Its not that hard.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dleslie 4y ago
> Literally just don't be an idiot. Its not that hard. Kids are often antisocial and exhibit poor behavior. Kids also love Minecraft. Permanent, Microsoft-account level bans for questionable chat text is ridiculous.
- rstat1 4y ago
  I don't disagree there. But I very highly doubt the ones doing all this complaining are actually kids.
bolt7469 4y ago
It's a big deal because Minecraft's server system is traditionally very decentralized. However, this change suggests that Microsoft now wants to increasingly centralize the game. Microsoft seems to be going against the game's original ethos.
- jimbob45 4y ago
  There’s no going back though, is there? Once Minecraft is playable over LAN without internet connection, there’s very little to nothing that MS can do to police speech, right? I don’t mean to be dismissive but the censorship is virtually opt-in at this point, no?
  - bolt7469 4y ago
    The MS controversy is that they implemented a centralized chat signing feature that is not opt-out. Most of the fun Minecraft servers are using a kind of server-side modding, but their users are playing with "vanilla" clients. So if you get banned by MS, you can't join those servers. MS is now the gatekeeper of offensive chat, not the individual servers.
    - jimbob45 4y ago
      You’re saying the servers are fun and that’s fine. However, I’m of the opinion that it’s the players who make the game fun and if the players choose to play on virtual LAN servers, then they, in essence, opt-out of the censorship.
      - kuschku 4y ago
        Even the LAN servers are still part of this censorship model. The only way to avoid this censorship is to crack the game and run the server in cracked mode.
cypress66 4y ago
If you are playing in a private server it should be up to that server to ban or not ban people, the same way if you are in a private bar it should be up to that bar to ban you from it because you use profanity.
charcircuit 4y ago
Imagine if suddenly the web changed so that it was possible to be banned from every single website (you can't even look at them) for your behavior on a single site by a moderator with incomplete context even if it was done in private. This is a big change to how things work and it was forced onto the community.
jrm4 4y ago
No, the ridiculousness is the deep centralization. Whether it's Minetest OR cracked Minecraft, it's clear that Microsoft is an irresponsible, or more importantly, unnecessary steward/middleman here. Those who want Microsofts vision, I suppose that's fine -- but I see no good reason to require or respect it. On with the mods.

8jy89hui 4y ago

Does anyone have any insight into why Microsoft thought this was necessary? Minecraft has been server-moderated for years now and has been wildly successful. I've never heard of any hate groups or even hateful servers (I'm sure they exist, but they don't make the news in a way that would harm Microsoft). Is there some legislation that would make it a liability for Microsoft to not moderate all the chat? This move just seems so strange

ceeplusplus 4y ago
1. Minecraft has a lot of kids playing it, particularly kids whose parents blame Microsoft for poor behavior rather than learning to parent. 2. California recently passed a bill which would fine companies which fail to prevent kids from accessing features which are "detrimental" to children's health [1]. Naturally, Microsoft doesn't want to get fined for what edgy gamers say online. 3. (speculation) The censorship police that have infected every other major online platform have now reached gaming. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/30/californoa-childrens-online-privacy-protection-act/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/30/californoa-childrens-onlin...
- garciasn 4y ago
  My 12 year old has been bombarded with the message this is coming and will be the end of HyPixel/SkyBlock from many of the prominent Minecraft YouTubers he watches. Let me tell you: if my money is down the drain because some little jackwagon mass-reports some random server and my kids’ accounts are locked, I’m gonna be fucking furious. If the hoopla around this is true, Microsoft is going to relive its 1990s level hatred from the nerd community—just as parents instead of dorky teens and twenty-somethings running Linux.
  - bisby 4y ago
    Microsoft profits off Bedrock ("Minecraft for WIndows") because they can charge for basically everything, because there are no mods (addons). Java edition is where the mods are. Which is why hypixel/skyblock are on java edition. Ive seen speculation that Microsoft is adding this to have a process for banning java edition players. And then they just... stop selling java edition. Then there are no new java players ever again, and the existing player pool slowly dwindles because they either get banned, or their friends get banned and they don't want to play java alone, and the only option is to go to the microtransaction-fest that is bedrock. And now you live in their walled garden. I would say that this is pure conspiracy level stuff, but that would be literally the final step of a EEE plan. Microsoft has done this before and there would be no surprise if they actually did that. Will they? I dunno, but it's overall a heavy handed bad move. Everything I've heard about the system is that it's not a great idea.

SquareWheel 4y ago

Surely there's a better recap of the issue than a two month old forum post from a user running cracked servers?

noncoml 4y ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/realms/comments/x6wl6j/banned_from_own_realm/ https://www.reddit.com/r/realms/comments/x6wl6j/banned_from_... Imagine getting banned from your own realm…

teaearlgraycold 4y ago

I think having an opt-in (on by default in Realms) universal bans system is a good idea and something only Microsoft can properly provide. Can you really not turn this off per server?

jandrese 4y ago
As far as I know there is no way to disable the reporting, nor is there any way to request a review after you are banned. It is a system set up to enable abuse even more than Youtube's content ID and demonetization bans, and that's saying something.
- plushpuffin 4y ago
  Spigot/Paper servers can disable chat reporting with plugins, clients can disable sending signatures with forge mods, and servers can be configured to allow clients which don’t sign their messages with the setting enforce-secure-profile.
sli 4y ago
Already exists for Java edition as a server (Bukkit) mod, which makes it opt-in: https://www.mcbans.com/ https://www.mcbans.com/
- teaearlgraycold 4y ago
  Yes - but that doesn't work on Realms and requires the server to trust a 3rd party for the bans list and only works if you use Bukkit. Those problems are solved by Microsoft running the program. But it needs to be optional - ideally opt in. Since Realms is mostly for kids I think it makes sense for this feature to be opt out, or even always on, in Realms.

amiga-workbench 4y ago

I think now is the time for people to be putting their energies into something like Minetest[1] so they can't have the rug pulled on them. There are already some mods available, but it would be great to see more ported. [1] https://www.minetest.net/ https://www.minetest.net/

openfuture 4y ago
No. Not yet. First we must(!) address the incentive problem in free software (and society) then things like minetest will outcompete things like minecraft naturally. The only reason it doesn't already is because developers can only get paid working on less valuable (read: closed) software. See: https://datalisp.is https://datalisp.is.
- aliqot 4y ago
  Hi Bill! In all seriousness though, this isn't likely to happen, so let's not let perfect be the enemy of good.
- doodlesdev 4y ago
  I'm a huge advocate of free software, but I've never actually seen a _true_ solution to the incentive problem when it comes to developing free software. Sure, there are ways to monetize free software projects, but honestly, if you want to make a lot of money, grow a company, hire developers and grow a huge user base, then closed source only benefits you (unfortunately). I'm not really sure how we can change that, specially because of the already widespread perception that free software must also be free as in beer (which I guess will always be true, and it's exactly the reason so many companies choose closed source).
  - openfuture 4y ago
    Money is a social construct. Public goods are traditionally funded by taxes. Dual to taxing someone would be to print new money for everyone except that person. We need to pay ourselves and take ourselves seriously.

denkmoon 4y ago

Gonna be a lot of very upset kids when their frenemies from school get their account banned from ever playing online again.

amiga 4y ago

Anyone who has ever seen an MS acquisition play out before knew this was coming. Minecraft has been open for some time, and that has an effect counter to the control that MS seeks over its products. "Embrace, extend, extinguish" has been the strategy for decades.

karaterobot 4y ago
This doesn't make sense. They bought Minecraft 8 years ago, and it's grown by an order of magnitude since then. It's a huge cash cow for them. In what way is that consistent with the "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy from 26 years ago, when they had an entirely different leadership team and business model? How is this not just a dumb move on their part, and actually part of some master plan to ... what... lose money?
- tomrod 4y ago
  How many more licenses will be purchased -- and how much can they make from the lifetime value of Realms subscribers? Seems like the beancounters won this one.
yodon 4y ago
Are you seriously arguing that Microsoft is intentionally trying to "extinguish" it's own IP? I realize that "Embrace, extend, extinguish" is a hopelessly tired and outdated meme, but trying to freshen it up by arguing they've now reached a level where they are intentionally trying to kill their OWN products as part of some grand and 30-year-in-the-past EEE "plan" is simply absurd.
- jay_kyburz 4y ago
  I don't follow Minecraft or this issue closely, this is pure speculation, but MS could be trying to extinguish self hosted servers and would prefer all players playing on official Mincraft servers.
  - jacknews 4y ago

hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago

Microsoft customer service is abysmal everywhere. I’m currently battling a $20 azure bill that I’m unsure how to pay, customer support keeps directing me to the billing section, which, as I’ve told them, tells me I’m not authorised to access, despite being the subscription owner. Microsoft UX everywhere I’ve seen is horrible and I feel ripe for disruption. Given the shit they’ve put me through with azure the past 18 months, I hope they lose money when that happens.

jandrese 4y ago
The Minecraft account migration process was awful too. It's a mishmash of Microsoft, X-Box, and Outlook/Live branding all with sites that work differently and options are spread around them seemingly at random. By default you can't even play online, you have to track down an obscure option in X-Box chat preferences to allow you to join servers. It was even worse for me because some bot registered for a Microsoft account using my email address ages ago. I recovered the account using the "forgot my password", link, but the bot set it up in German and I can't seem to get it to change the language everywhere. So while most of the menus are in English, I still get confirmation emails in German.
- inetknght 4y ago
  > The Minecraft account migration Just to add onto this rant against Microsoft... ... I cannot use my Microsoft account because it was hacked and stolen. I would get emails several times each year saying that there's suspicious activity but I can't log in. When I try to log in then Microsoft sends me through account recovery and asks questions about my real life that were never associated with the account. So I'm royally pissed that Minecraft has migrated to it. I've lost all of the time and the little amount of money spent.
- ezfe 4y ago
  I've implemented oauth with the new flow, and jeesh it runs through so many layers: https://wiki.vg/Microsoft_Authentication_Scheme https://wiki.vg/Microsoft_Authentication_Scheme

LennyWhiteJr 4y ago

I have some hope for Hytale, an open sandbox game created by the creators of the HyPixel minecraft server. https://hytale.com/ https://hytale.com/

OrangeMonkey 4y ago

lolinder 4y ago
Any attempt to understand "the users here" as a unit is misguided. Hacker News doesn't have a single opinion on anything. You get a different sub-community showing up for each thread depending on topic and time of day, so the sentiment will always fluctuate from thread to thread.
- aliqot 4y ago
  I oppose censorship in any form. It's the only perfect system that is achievable and can be what it claims, a space free of censorship. There is no 'only the bad things' that can be censored, as you've illuminated here, different people will have different sensibilities. In the mean time, however, we can educate ourselves and steel our nerves as we may come across ideas and content we don't agree with or care to be exposed to. As responsible netizens we shouldn't let it affect us to hysterics and cries of censorship, and instead stay away from the places that do. It starts with personal agency and responsibility for yourself and those you're charged with rearing.
  - wvenable 4y ago
    I'm glad I got to hear your opinion but the only reason you were able to make it here is because this place is heavily moderated. No popular forums can survive a lack of censorship in any form.
- verisimilitudes 4y ago
  - JetAlone 4y ago
    > I remember when the idiots here were congratulating Uber for killing that woman, because her death wouldn't be in vain; it would improve their self-driving software. We will reach Peak Scientistic Neo-Liberalism on the back of such sacrifices. Progress, profits, enlightenment, efficiency and safety, at any cost.

bitL 4y ago

Can you just ignore Minecraft's own chat system and use a 3rd party one (perhaps pasting a link to the Minecraft's one for players to join)?

bolt7469 4y ago
Many useful server plugins use chat commands for certain features. The in-game whisper chat feature might also need more configuration to emulate it in the external chat. A Discord server would probably be the best solution.
charcircuit 4y ago
If you get banned for chatting you can't even JOIN any multiplayer server.

kragen 4y ago

Minetest is probably the best Minecraft alternative; it's free and open source software, which avoids the danger associated with centralized retaliation systems like the one Microsoft is operating. Also, it's easier to write mods for, partly because mods are written in Lua, and you don't have to install mods on the client, just the server. https://www.minetest.net/ https://www.minetest.net/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6Fyav6FiIs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6Fyav6FiIs The video's author doesn't mention it by name, but the quantum computing tutorial game he's playing in a couple of the clips is called QiskitBlocks; it's a series of puzzles designed to teach you how quantum computing works. The (public) games that run on the Minetest engine are listed on https://content.minetest.net/packages/?type=game https://content.minetest.net/packages/?type=game. QiskitBlocks in particular is https://content.minetest.net/packages/JavaFXpert/qiskitblocks/ https://content.minetest.net/packages/JavaFXpert/qiskitblock....

deep-root 4y ago
Minetest is like a platform, and for anyone wanting a Minecraft-clone based on it: https://content.minetest.net/packages/kay27/mineclone5/ https://content.minetest.net/packages/kay27/mineclone5/
- kragen 4y ago
  Yup, though the guy who wrote that video liked MineClone2 better: https://content.minetest.net/packages/Wuzzy/mineclone2/ https://content.minetest.net/packages/Wuzzy/mineclone2/ MineClone5 is a fork of MineClone2, but both are popular and in active development, and because they're GPLed they can freely gank features from each other. They just have slightly different development priorities. I think even the base Minetest Game is pretty Minecraft-like, though. Out of the box it doesn't have mobs, the Nether, portals, magic, or redstone, but you can add those a la carte to Minetest Game as mods, and there's a cooler redstone alternative called mesecons. You can see the mods at https://content.minetest.net/packages/?type=mod https://content.minetest.net/packages/?type=mod; most of them are applicable to Minetest Game. And in Minetest Game you can mine a lot deeper than in Minecraft. (You kind of have to, which might be better or worse.)
4y ago

hsuduebc2 4y ago

Another corporate acquisition which ruined some nice product by features literally nobody asked for. Well done.

pvg 4y ago

This is from a couple of months ago, related hn threads from then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31892395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31892395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860168 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860168

dang 4y ago
Thanks! Macroexpanded: Microsoft will start banning players from all private Minecraft servers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31892395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31892395 - June 2022 (15 comments) Online Minecraft Bans Will Be Able to Block You from Private Servers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860168 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860168 - June 2022 (23 comments)

ynniv 4y ago

Minecraft is Microsoft's metaverse play now. Expect it to trend towards real identities and strong DRM accordingly.

nightpool 4y ago

It does not surprise me that the right wing channers who started bae.st after getting banned from Twitter dislike the increase in moderation on other platforms. I'm no fan of Microsoft, but on the theory that you can judge a person by the quality of their enemies, Minecraft comes out looking positively beatific here.

JetAlone 4y ago
The enemy of your enemy is really not your friend in this scenario.
- nightpool 4y ago
  I mean, when it comes to actual trolls complaining about getting kicked off of the platform, I have to conclude that Microsoft is at least doing one thing right.
  - JetAlone 4y ago
    Don't be naive, this will affect way more people than just the ones you'll snicker about. Cause it gets abused.

armchairhacker 4y ago

I strongly disagree with Microsoft's stance. But I also think the issue is way overblown. You can simply mod servers so that they don't have this chat reporting. If everyone in the Minecraft community is so opposed, just create and exclusively join modded servers. Does not matter if they get labeled "Not Secure" if 90% of well-known popular servers have it, and there are tools and tutorials everywhere which make it so easy to set up even a 9-year old can do it. What if Microsoft tries to force servers to enable chat reporting in a future update? Nope, not going to happen. Minecraft is nearly open-source and the amount of modders who care about this is huge, the technical and legal resources to do so are just not worth it. I do get that Microsoft is obnoxiously tone-deaf with this, and I believe it's a terrible idea which is barely legal (revoking people's access to what they bought on shoddy evidence - if this actually starts happening to a lot of people I hope they get sued). But it's just - people are saying "Minecraft is dead". Minecraft is not remotely dead.

devwastaken 4y ago
If you are banned, it also reasons that you would no longer be able to authenticate to 3rd party servers either, and it would be most likely an infringement of DRM to bypass, if not simply against TOS.
autoexec 4y ago
> revoking people's access to what they bought on shoddy evidence - if this actually starts happening to a lot of people I hope they get sued I wouldn't put my money on them winning that one. It's wrong, but the laws were written by and for companies. I don't think a judge is going to say that a company who runs an online service can't ban users for violations of their policies. Hell, if the law cared about making sure companies couldn't arbitrarily cut off people's access to their purchases DRM would be outlawed.
- bspammer 4y ago
  They are not running the online service. These are community servers.

LAC-Tech 4y ago

I think at this point it's best for us to just let minecraft die. I haven't played a single hour of the game since they shutdown mojang accounts. There's just no way in hell I'm paying for a realm where I can't say naughty words in chat. Notch introduced a whole new genre of gaming - let's look towards new games in this category rather than trying to inhabit the corpse of Microsoft Minecraft 365.

egberts1 4y ago

Reminds me of The song found in Windows 95 (OSR1/2) CD. skip to time index 0:30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okt9GcWiWmE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okt9GcWiWmE

nathanvanfleet 4y ago

Seems funny that they think Minecraft ever stood for anything other than a game for people to play.

baskethead 4y ago

My kid and his friends are all eschewing 1.19.X and sticking with the 1.18.2 release specifically because of this issue. And they know this because they all watch the Youtube videos that are saying the same thing, that this "feature" is garbage.

JetAlone 4y ago
I'm doing the same, but it won't last forever. A forced update, or some kind of retro-active system is inevitable. The product owners really want this feature.

omegacharlie 4y ago

Modern-day MC is a bit out of my depth but are these bans enforced in a similar mechanism to online-mode checks? (which validates that the username attempting to connect to the server has authenticated against the Mojang login servers?) More importantly could it be possible for a modified client or server to 'spoof' reports against an arbitrary user to 'frame' them? Disturbing possibilities here.

darknavi 4y ago
> Modern-day MC is a bit out of my depth but are these bans enforced in a similar mechanism to online-mode checks? Yes, a server with `online-mode` turned off does not use any authentication and will let anyone (banned or not) play.
ShowalkKama 4y ago
> Modern-day MC is a bit out of my depth but are these bans enforced in a similar mechanism to online-mode checks? (which validates that the username attempting to connect to the server has authenticated against the Mojang login servers?) yes > More importantly could it be possible for a modified client or server to 'spoof' reports against an arbitrary user to 'frame' them? Disturbing possibilities here. no
orsond 4y ago
> More importantly could it be possible for a modified client or server to 'spoof' reports against an arbitrary user to 'frame' them? Disturbing possibilities here. Yes, the developers of Nodus have demonstrated this over and over again that they can spoof messages. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz5iGzuNnNU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz5iGzuNnNU
- rcxdude 4y ago
  Sort of. (I think you know this but I'm adding context for others unaware of how the system works). The design intent of the chat reporting system is that chat messages are signed by the client with a key associated with the account, so that you can't just conjure up a message of someone saying a slur and send it to microsoft. Someone has to have actually typed something for it to appear in the report. So far I don't think anyone has demonstrated spoofing a message signed by someone else which they didn't actually write (which I think is what OP was asking). Of course just have the message with no context is not enough to go on in a lot of cases, so they also made a system to try to have a verifiable chain of context to go with the offending message. This is what the system above is exploiting, since it basically allows a malicious actor to have one message appear in the chat reports but another appear to the player (which is also spoofing a message), allowing manipulation of the context of the message and thus a false report that appears legitimate as far as Microsoft can verify. There's a relatively simple but limiting way to avoid this: just never say anything in chat. It's also possible to mod the client to never sign messages (and the server to strip signatures from message), but this may result in your chats being dropped by some clients and servers (I think it's an option, not sure if the default has changed to on).

orsond 4y ago

Hi, orsond from the fifth column here. The Fifth Column is a Minecraft hacking and griefing group. We created Project Copenhiemer which is a Minecraft server scanning tool. Copenhiemer scans the internet every 20 minutes for minecraft servers, logs players, server versions, mods and more. Originally we had created it to find players and grief their server worlds, highlighting how much information about players is leaked from Mojangs default server configuration. They have put some features into the game to stop this information from being leaked but have made it an opt in system which no one uses or is even aware of. We have become increasingly worried about the direction of Mojang's safety policies and we believe they are just playing lip service to the actual problems at hand. Online gaming and gaming coms has a seriously unaddressed problem with child safety. Mojang's reasoning for chat reporting is to protect children. Chat reporting does absolutely nothing to solve this problem. You can report people for swearing, drug/alcohol references, etc. You cannot report a player for child exploitation unless they use the chat system to do so. As an example, I know one server admin that disabled chat entirely on his large server only to have pedophiles use in game signs to message and groom children over Skype and Discord. If Mojang were serious about protecting children, they would stop developing their paternalistic chat surveillance system and split multiplayer children and 18+ play from each other. For example, children should only be able to join under 18's Mojang hosted servers (realms) where conduct can be heavily monitored and 18+ players join multiplayer servers where children cannot play. It is clear they have thought about this problem for a total of 5 minutes and have shut down healthy & reasonable debate about their solution to avoid embarrassment and scrutiny.

vermilingua 4y ago
How do you propose MS/Mojang determine who is and is not an actual child? Require parents to provide legal documents of their children? Photographic confirmation? Time and time again it has been proven that attempts to segregate the internet into adult/child zones will fail.
- orsond 4y ago
  No idea. They should figure it out. The point is that their solution doesn't and will not work in solving this problem.

verisimilitudes 4y ago

Gee guys, where are the dipshits to remind us MicroSoft <3 open source and totally isn't just opportunistically fucking it over again? It's not as if they took a game that worked everywhere and have increasingly restricted it for no reason. No, wait, MicroSoft is a big corporation, so this is just a different department, right?

ckemere 4y ago

It's apparently a minority voice opinion here on HN, but I for one appreciate what Microsoft is trying to do. As a parent of a 6 and 9 year old who have really gotten into Minecraft during COVID, I appreciate them basically deciding "We want Minecraft to be a game for kids and an online community that is nice." I get why people are frustrated, but I also like the idea of a global decision that forces servers open to "the public" to have an enforced global standard of behavior. Correct me if I'm wrong, I don't see anything in their process that suggests that a group of adults playing with their friends are at risk of having their chat audited in the absence of a complaint?

dmix 4y ago
The road to hell is always paved with good intentions and naive ideals. I’m trying to imagine having to explain to a 6yr old why they can’t play Minecraft until Dad creates another account and hope they can afford another license. And hope it doesn’t happen again the next time a troll joins their server. It also seems to be incentivizing people to not have any chat reports at all.
- ckemere 4y ago
  I guess I don't understand - the troll will report your 6 year old for dropping f-bombs? And the chat logs (which MS will now have) will back then up? And why are you inviting trolls to play with your 6 year old? (We're somewhat new to Minecraft, so I may be missing something here.)
  - zbird 4y ago
    > I guess I don't understand - the troll will report your 6 year old for dropping f-bombs? They'll report for no reason, that's the point of trolling. > And the chat logs (which MS will now have) will back then up? I have not played Minecraft, but I'd be surprised if the server admins of any game of such scale acted on logs. Also, I wouldn't want my kids to be logged on a corporate server. > And why are you inviting trolls to play with your 6 year old? Are the rooms invite only? Then what's the point of Microsoft's draconian measures here? I thought the point was to censor public servers, but again, I haven't played this much. In any case, this situation already looks like defeat for an online community.

dmix 4y ago

Sounds like reddit

Hippieblog 4y ago

[dead]

williamscales 4y ago

I'm not super familiar with Minecraft but isn't it more usual to communicate with other players over discord? And you get voice chat that way? Sorry if I'm being dumb, would love a link to an intro to how Minecraft works.

tjr225 4y ago

Arnavion 4y ago

There's a special kind of irony in putting the text of one's blogpost in a noscript tag for the sake of people who disable JS, but then setting a CSS class on body to make it invisible that is only removed by JS.

autoexec 4y ago
Wow, I saw the blank page and just closed the tab. These days I rarely even bother to view the source to look for readable content. Too often there's no content at all, just ads, tracking, and JS. I went back to read what they had. It's not often I'm amused and disappointed at the same time! One of these days I'm either going to find or end up writing a CSS blocker.
- Arnavion 4y ago
  (To be clear, you're not missing any content by being unable to read it because of the CSS. The noscript text is a long joke that ends with telling you to enable JS. I'm just amused that the joke doesn't work because the author used CSS to hide the body.)

politician 4y ago

This is clearly how Microsoft is finally going to rid itself of Notch’s original $20 to play forever deal. Bedrock edition didn’t get enough people off Java edition, micro transactions didn’t lure enough people away, so now they’ve just implemented a really loose report-to-ban system and let the online community tear itself apart. When you’ve invested multiple billions in a property, these are the sorts of choices you make to protect that investment.

socialismisok 4y ago

Oh shit, they are moderating chat in a game for children and responding to player reports? Pretty ghoulish, if you ask me. /S Come on, are we really complaining that public chat is moderated now? Is that really where the bar has sunk to?

gjs278 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
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rhdunn 4y ago
Adults play too. Imagine you are an adult Minecraft player who plays in a popular private server with only other adults (e.g. any of the big popular YouTube Minecrafters). You then play on a public server and someone reports you and gets you banned. You now cannot play on that private server or any other multiplayer world, even if it is just you and a friend.
- watwut 4y ago
  It does matter what exactly it is that you done on that public server. Some swearing? Yeah you are right. The other stuff like "serious threats, doxxing/stalking"? Nah, other adults dont have to have to put up with you either.
xdrosenheim 4y ago
Wow dude, you said a swear word in public... Better call the police and have you locked up for the rest of your life for that. Unless you pay your government a little $30 more, pretty please? ; )
rcxdude 4y ago
I would describe messages on a private server as private chat. No-one has any issue with Microsoft moderating Microsoft's servers, they have an issue with Microsoft moderating their servers.

kypro 4y ago

I think this is probably an autistic take on this, but I think we care way to much about exposing kids to mean words and mean people. Again, perhaps an autistic take, but being bullied (badly) as a kid was easily the best thing that ever happened to me in terms of mental resilience. Imagine we got into an argument and I got angry and called you a "smelly poo poo", you'd probably just laugh because despite what I'm saying being mean and profanity it's also such an insignificant insult that it borders on comical. But to a kid that might actually be quite offensive and hurtful and that's because they haven't built a tolerance. I suspect this might be why a lot people today feel that words can be violent - they simply haven't built up a tolerance for offensive speech. And sometimes in the real world people can be offensive and mean. Another thing I'll add here is that in the UK working class guys really like to insult each other. Given the types of individuals who browse HN I know most here won't relate to this, but it's actually kinda fun to be a dick to your friend. And further I'd argue that guys actually bond in part by playfighting and teasing each other. I get that what I'm saying here is very context dependent, but some of the best times of my childhood was playing video games with my friends and saying all kinds of horrid stuff to them. If I had to guess 80% of the stuff we'd say to each other on voice chat was insults but it was hilarious. Kids are way stronger than we tend to think. If you teach a kid they're a victim because someone said something mean then they'll probably believe it and see themselves as a victim. On the other hand, if you act like mean words are no big deal and that sometimes people can be mean then they'll probably grow up much better prepared to handle the real world. At least in my experience / opinion.

deleted 4y ago
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xmprt 4y ago
People will be offensive in the real world but I don't think we should encourage or accept that kind of behavior. If we build a society where people are shamed and shunned and not allowed to participate (whether it's a short timeout or a longer ban) when they behave poorly then hopefully we can reduce this kind of behavior in the world and instead of accepting it, people will be more comfortable fighting back in a positive way instead of simply flinging insults back which was how many of my childhood bullies behaved. Playfighting is a different topic and typically even when you play fight, you set certain boundaries and there are things that you don't say/do. Good friends will recognize those boundaries and not cross them. You wouldn't call your friends soft and say they lack mental resilience for having boundaries, would you?

groby_b 4y ago

"You can be banned for anything" here means "I couldn't just be a jerk whenever I want, so I'm upset". None of the ban reasons are particularly egregious for a game a lot of kids play. It's a social event, there are social norms, not sticking to them will get you ostracized. This is how society works and enforces sustainable and mutually beneficial interaction patterns.

piperswe 4y ago
Servers are a social event - that should be where the social norms apply. Different servers have different social norms. I should be able to use non-child-friendly language on a private server with adult friends (and friends of friends) without worrying about someone reporting me for it.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

MBCook 4y ago

“centralized chat and account moderation goes against everything minecraft stood for” That seems… hyperbolic? I don’t feel like Minecraft has ever stood for anything in particular other than creating worlds and sharing them with others.

doodlesdev 4y ago
I guess the general consensus is that the coolest part of Minecraft is you play it how you want to. This time there is a global restriction on what you and cannot do, reducing this sense of freedom from the sandbox. It's hyperbolic, although I have to admit centralized _anything_ for a sandbox such as Minecraft is pretty lame.

Pxtl 4y ago

I know the business need but I've been very bothered by the fact that online gaming for kids has defaulted to mmo-style open servers. My daughter asked to play Roblox and after looking into their system I said no. I'm more than happy to let my kids online... to play with their friends, with content that was created by their friends or curated by professionals. Not to play with strangers in a slushpit if user-contributed content curated by an algorithm. So I get why Minecraft is doing this, but imho it's the wrong approach. Make it easier for parents and kids to run a private server. Publish curated plugins for kids to load into said servers. Let us parent, and let the pubs be pubs. Instead MS seems to be following the Roblox approach of "trust our algo and our banhammer". Which, no.

JetAlone 4y ago
I've been mulling over your desired situation which is probably shared with plenty of parents. I think you want a system with a walled-garden with a "friend code" like Nintendo has, that can be physically shared through a scanner. You want to be able to supervise who your kids are friends with, and you want it to be extremely difficult to share that information online. Then the kids are strictly, systematically only able to contact and play with each other if they are friends. Maybe friends of friends. Parents get to review content, or professionals are paid to curate content that is allowed in this system. When someone new becomes friends with your kid, you are notified and can ask who that is. If they seem to not be any of your kid's IRL friends, then you, as the parent, have the power to block that person from your child's games, report them, and notify the other parents of any of your children's friends that you have done so to this user. It's local, involves the parents' supervision at a higher level. It can probably be abused by kids getting their parent's supervision module and blocking one of their friends and notifying all the parents as a mean joke or something. Or by parents who want to exclude certain children based on not liking their parents, and wanting to make an example of them as a "bad influence". It's also vulnerable to the child lying and saying a stranger is one of their IRL friends. The friend code "badge" getting lost is another serious concern. A tool to use the friend code scanner at events like birthday parties to get surprise packs could be a "fun" thing that serves a double purpose of displaying each kid's profile, to help keep an offline list that verifies each kid's online identity to their parents, by pairing it with a photo (which never goes online) taken at the time of scanning. And there could be a tool to let you quickly scan that list and compare to the friend network of your kid and their friends. Maybe if there's somebody who consistently never shows up on the "party lists", flags could be raised and the parents could be notified to separately ask their children who that is - if answers are inconsistent, something's probably wrong. Now, this system would take effort to implement, and effort to get existing games to agree to integrate - and they do need to integrate. Trying to create games to fit snugly into this system from the ground up would be insanely difficult. Maybe it absolutely must run servers of popular games in a "black-box", with this security system on top of it. To the kid's perspective, it needs to feel like barely an extra step to sign in and play through those servers, and on the computers they have access to, the vanilla version of the game needs to be thoroughly inaccessible. Parents would need to be willing to pay significant money into this.

user- 4y ago

Is this website just 4chan but prettier? I clicked on the feed and all I saw was people saying f*g and hentai.

chungy 4y ago
Looks to be a pretty normal Pleroma instance.

mr_woozy 4y ago

parasti 4y ago

Seeing how my wooden signs and item names containing perfectly safe Latvian words have been brutally disappeared and censored in Minecraft Bedrock, this seems like global disaster about to happen. In my experience, Microsoft is incompetent to correctly enforce this.

SSLy 4y ago
You shouldn't be surprised considering the amount of racism in USA.
- parasti 4y ago
  The words being filtered are not racial slurs in English.

hooby 4y ago

Microsoft lost my copy of the game during the account transfer. Despite me having an account, that had both re-downloaded the game and played it just a few weeks earlier, had a custom character skin stored in it, and other stuff - they claimed I didn't actually ever own Minecraft, and demanded I provide proof of purchase. I provided as much as I could - including security questions+answers (which I had stored in my KeePass database, together with the password) - but I could not provide the original purchase email, since I lost access to that email years earlier. Their support was quite hostile with just the thinnest veneer of superficial politeness on top. They refused to tell me why they believed I don't own the game. They refused to tell me what I could do to get my copy back (other than providing that email, that I no longer had). Basically I was considered guilty unless I could proof my innocence - and they wouldn't accept any other proof than the original confirmation email. And that's how - after nearly 10 years - I stopped being a Minecraft player. There's no way I'm going to repurchase the game and play again - not after being treated like that.

doodlesdev 4y ago
Quoting the original creator [0]: "Just pirate it". [0]: https://twitter.com/notch/status/157261795139125248 https://twitter.com/notch/status/157261795139125248
- voxic11 4y ago
  Quoting the original creator [0]: "buy it". [0]: https://twitter.com/notch/status/157261795139125248 https://twitter.com/notch/status/157261795139125248
- _nalply 4y ago
  There is another way to oppose a hostile ecosystem: instead consuming non-blessed copies ignore it.
  - doodlesdev 4y ago
    I agree with this sentiment a lot. I only make the exception here for this game specifically because: - He has already bought the product - It works offline and you don't need to ever update - The game is fun as hell and there's really nothing like it If this was the case with some other piece of software such as Windows (which funnily enough is also by Microsoft) where I do have alternatives, instead of pirating I just use Linux/Mac/BSD/whatever_else instead. I should note my personal experience with the game has been very pleasant specifically because I choose to play it "pirated"/"offline" even though I've purchased a copy of the game a long time ago, it's just more convenient, safer, and more private. If MineTest or something else ever gets to a state where it's as polished and fun as Minecraft 1.0.0 I'll certainly migrate.

Guthur 4y ago

This is really a result of "you shall hurt no one's feelings" that has permeated through out our society and part of the broader top down push for Economic Social Governance. This is going to be major disaster like all central social governance, it will be brought via tyranny as it always must be, no matter how well intentioned.

Smithalicious 4y ago

I feel like this is pretty shitty. Me and my friends were playing minecraft before many of the children that supposedly need to be protected now were even born. I'm sure server owners will work around this, but I feel like the well is poisoned now, some amount of innocence has been lost. Hosting a minecraft server has always been administering your own little kingdom, it's where me and many others got our first experience self-hosting services. Now Microsoft is squarely inserting itself in what used to be a relationship directly between server admin and player. Of course part of me also thinks that handing out the occasional game-wide permanent ban that can be quickly circumvented by buying another $25-or-whatever-it-was license is good business for a game that everybody already owns, but that's probably too cynical.

Kiro 4y ago

A two month old post on a hacking forum complaining about chat moderation in a game for kids, from a user running cracked servers. Apparently enough for HN to pick up the pitchforks because, you know, Big Tech Bad.

bspammer 4y ago
The game is not for kids, the game is just played by a lot of kids. Why is anything that kids can find fun branded as “for kids”? The target market when notch originally created the game was certainly not kids.
- Kiro 4y ago
  I'm a Minecraft player myself but fact remains that most players are children and the moderation needs to be adapted accordingly.

teekert 4y ago

Imo they shifted from teen-adolescent semi-hackers to kids as the target group. It's always annoying when something you love pivots to target another group of users. As someone who is often an early adopter I went through this a couple of times. The end of era.

foxes 4y ago

Today on HN: wall of text about why you should be able to say anything you want with zero consequences.

alkonaut 4y ago

Of all the bad things that happened with minecraft, chat moderation seems pretty far down the list. The endless complications with licenses, authentication systems etc were a massive frustration. To this day I still don't know whether to use a nintendo account, a microsoft account or a mojang account when signing into the game on Switch. Who moderates the chat seems like a pretty minor issue in comparison. I think people (As in, majority minecraft players) care about decentralized game hosting and chat moderation to about the same extent that they care about email hosting: they don't.

vkoskiv 4y ago

I couldn't even complete the Microsoft account migration without encountering a data-mining attempt (they wanted my personal phone #). [1] I can no longer justify this kind of privacy invading anti-user behaviour for a silly block game, so I've chosen to just quit Minecraft after ~12 years of playing. At Assembly, I discovered that Minetest (with the mineclone 2 gamemode) is a very passable clone of Minecraft, with an open protocol and game source code. If I want to play a game like that again, I'll just go for Minetest. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32142847 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32142847

xdrosenheim 4y ago

I have not used the official Minecraft client since they change it over to the new one. I advice everyone to never use it. Use one of the meny alternatives that lets you easily set up different versions of the game, with mods, profiles, and easier to change RAM allocation. Never download that piece of human garbage that is version 1.19.

mccorrinall 4y ago

And now read about how they tricked regulators to become the top company in Germany: https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/sap-die-dunkle-seite-des-digitalkonzerns-a-bb2a621a-825c-44ee-be90-e6e74ceeea2d?sara_ecid=soci_upd_KsBF0AFjflf0DZCxpPYDCQgO1dEMph https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/sap-die-dunkle... (paywall)

mccorrinall 4y ago
I actually wanted to post this under the SAP article…

mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago

I knew Minecraft was effectively dead the moment Microsoft sank their teeth into it, and I've barely touched the game since. They did their best to cut out Linux support. All hope of it being open sourced is lost, so expect it to go into disrepair the moment it stops making them money.

makach 4y ago

This article just grinds my gears. It is terrible what Microsoft is doing by forcing us to migrate our accounts, but I am powerless against it. All I can do is to shake my old angry fist in the air and curse profoundly. But I will still play the game.

c7DJTLrn 4y ago

Microsoft have realised their investment has a limited number of years of life left in it. The main audience has grown up. To keep the brand alive they need to aggressively pursue the younger generation and tailor the game to them. Hence the safety features which the older audience don't care for. I still maintain my stance that Microsoft ruined Minecraft by turning it into an investment.

mountainb 4y ago

Unbelievable how many people here are defending the centralized chat moderation a priori. You would think that HN would support the ideal of distributed server administration.

ragazzina 4y ago
On HN defending the corporation seems to be the default. It looks like an American mindset to me, but I've seen some of my (I'm from Europe) friends do it as well.
- mountainb 4y ago
  I'm an American. I'm a capitalism respecter and corporation enjoyer. But I don't see the value in having a central decision maker take over all the peer-to-peer dispute resolution which was working fine previously. One very bad and inefficient dispute resolver is not preferable to decentralization. That's also a fundamental American norm which MS is flouting here.

AmazingTurtle 4y ago

I don't understand these people down here who appreciate Minecraft for what they are trying to do. In cs:go there is a way better system. If other people mute you (because for whatever reason) too often, you become muted by default for every game you join. People can unmute you on their behalf. Thats a reputation based system. And banning someone from a years old account, memories attached etc. will just get people mad at you. There's better systems.

avereveard 4y ago

Like, host a server with no account verification but a user whitelist. Realms where expensive traps since the beginning, yall just refused to listen.

xani_ 4y ago

Great time for christian minecraft servers, someone calls you a butt and they will be banished forever from realms of minecraft

theknocker 4y ago

awwaiid 4y ago

Reading this is a very very different experience when you are actually reading the noscript text due to non-js feed reader. I read the whole thing before realizing that all the Alex Jones stuff never mentioned Minecraft.