8 ms·

Mojang threatens lawyers against pay-to-win Minecraft server operators

48 points by atian 12y ago

paulrov 12y ago
Can see this panning out like any other thing Notch has gone up against. Lots of tweeting and throwing money at the problem for a week then go on holiday and forget all about it. > Erik Broes: running servers is NOT A BUSINESS* Just as much of a business as running a "Let's play" channel mate, but you're not going to attack them are you because they have a bigger voice than you. Face facts your companies lack of action has made the community stronger than the creators.
Maskawanian 12y ago
I like Minecraft, played it for a while... However, what right does Mojang have to dictate this?
- dangoor 12y ago
  People are using Mojang code.
  - Karunamon 12y ago
    Just because it's in a EULA doesn't make it legal, enforceable, ethical, or moral.
    - dangoor 12y ago
      I agree with you. But, IANAL so I have no idea if it's legal or enforceable. Given the "what right does Mojang have?" question, though, the answer is that assuming the EULA for the server code is enforceable, copyright is the right they have.
      - angersock 12y ago
        Which begs the question...does copyright sensibly mean anything when it is being run entirely on a machine owned by somebody else, especially with functionality introduced not by the original authors? I could buy a trademark infringement argument, perhaps, but copyright doesn't seem to really make sense.
        drdaeman 12y ago
        IANAL, but I think if server owner's jurisdiction prevents them from using software without obtaining a license and this jurisdiction allows this exact kind of noncompliance to void the whole license (which is not always the case) - probably yes, it has a meaning. Obviously, it only matters if someone notices the noncompliance and lack of the license. For example if Mojang actually sues.
        Karunamon 12y ago
        And to them I say "good luck with that" in the most sarcastic tone I can muster. There are tens of thousands of private servers out there - the effort they play at expending on shutting down the despicable and horrible and bad and terrible practice of paid perks could be better redirected at further developing their games. This is the kind of priority fail I'd expect from EA or some other massive publisher, not an indie rockstar like Mojang.
        drdaeman 12y ago
        You see, the discussion - as I get it - was about very status of the copyright law - i.e. whenever there's a legal basis for a lawsuit or Mojang threats are void. It wasn't about server operators who don't give a damn about that - sure there are some.
- throwaway9956 12y ago
  Looks like it hinges on a clause in the EULA, so their right to do this probably depends on the legal status of EULAs in your jurisdiction (they're not enforcible everywhere). Ignoring the legal aspect, this strikes me as a dick move. I'm certainly not interested in pay-to-win minecraft servers, but if people want to use them with their purchased copies of the game, they should be able to.
Karunamon 12y ago
Yknow.. this is kind of backwards. If someone wants to donate to a server and get diamonds, I don't see how that is Mojang's place to dictate. If they were hosting the servers, sure. But on a private server?
- Skiptar 12y ago
  The issue is you're paying money to a third party for mojang's work, more precisely something which you have already paid for by purchasing the game. If you ignore the game itself and look at it from a purely technical view, what people are essentially doing is running code on their own servers (Which is allowed) but then charging people for bits of the code written by mojang (Which is not allowed). For most private servers you see, they will have a list of "donation" amounts and a "reward" for each, however this is quite clearly a sale since you are exchanging a commodity for money. To be classed as a donation, you would need to donate money without the requirement of something in return. I think Mojang are clearly right here, but not to the advantage of the minecraft community.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    What's wrong with charging to expose functionality on a server you own, just because that functionality involves code written by somebody else? For example, let's say I run Mac OS X server on a computer somewhere and charge for user accounts on it. I'm charging people for the bits of code written by Apple, right? But surely this is completely reasonable of me, and Apple has no place to tell me that I can't charge money for this. Taking it further, maybe I allow free accounts which only have access to a few shell commands, and then you can pay more to unlock other commands. Again, I see nothing wrong with that, even though I didn't make those other commands.
    - pix64 12y ago
      Every program makes use of the OS. You literally couldn't do anything without using the OS.
  - agscala 12y ago
kawsper 12y ago
10 years ago ISPs, and internet-cafés in Denmark had reserved slots for paying members on their counterstrike-servers. I guess such a system would also be disallowed under the Mojang license. One of my friend also hosted a Minecraft-server where you would get access to a /teleport-command if you supported the servers. I guess that would also violate the Mojang license. What about Youtube-streamers? I guess they are using Mojang code to monetize as well.
- Cthulhu_ 12y ago
  I guess so, yeah, the EULA is pretty clear about it. I think the article hints at Mojang being upset at server hosters locking features that are in the game itself though, like certain ranges of tools or items, in exchange for money.
  - pjmlp 12y ago
    Except the fact that EULAs are void in most European countries.
    - joshvm 12y ago
      Citation needed? In the US there have been cases where EULAs have been upheld, not sure about outside. There is a lot of misinformation on the internet about whether they're valid, whether you have to explicitly accept them and so on. I think in a lot of cases it depends on how much money the prosecutors have - in most cases it's more than you. I believe they're invalid if the terms are confusing to the lay-user, i.e. if there is so much legalese that nobody actually understands what they're signing up for. Or if it makes ridiculous claims like "Buy buying the product you forfeit your soul". http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/25/microsoft_eula/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/25/microsoft_eula/ El Reg reckons it's not worth testing it, for the lawyer-money problem. There haven't been enough lawsuits outside the US to really say one way or the other.
      - pjmlp 12y ago
        For example, http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-07-03-eu-rules-publishers-cannot-stop-you-reselling-your-downloaded-games http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-07-03-eu-rules-publis... In case you can read German, http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endbenutzer-Lizenzvertrag http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endbenutzer-Lizenzvertrag in Germany, a EULA is only valid if the consumer is able to fully read it before paying for the respective product.
jamescun 12y ago
Mojang seem to be forgetting that it costs money to operate a server, and a "freemium" model is a completely viable and legitimate way to fund that operation (other ways such as accepting donations and paid-players only exist). Some may say you are in essence paying a third party for Mojang's work, when in fact you have already done so by purchasing the game in the first place. What position do Mojang feel they are in to dictate how people play the game? Ultimately it comes down to what players want, players are not afraid to vote with their feet and abandon servers which operate in this way; as of yet there seems to be no widespread trend in abandoning these servers. As an aside, I believe this is more likely a push by Mojang to shut down paid servers and move people onto their Minecraft Realms product which does exactly this.
- valarauca1 12y ago
  The problem is a lot of server admins claim it costs $1000-2000+ a month to run a unmodded minecraft server (with ~100 players). And a lot of players simply accept that as true.
  - pascoej 12y ago
    To be fair, it would take a very beefy server to run the vanilla server with 100 players. When dealing with a high volume of players, using mods like spigot is essential.
  - jamescun 12y ago
    Depends on your country but I was involved in the running of a Minecraft server a couple of years ago with about ~100 simultaneous players and our server costs were about £400 ($650?) a month in a UK datacentre; so $1000/month wouldn't be impossible. We could have saved some money by using a cheaper European provider (iirc OVH had a similar spec'd server for £200), but we were all based in the UK so the low latency was a major benefit. The UK server provider market really needs some disruption.
  - wfn 12y ago
    Yup. Both vanilla minecraft and bukkit are terrible at multithreading. Bukkit's plugin API doesn't use locks (iirc), so having the plugins be able to run in a safe multithreaded fashion is a clusterfuck. It's possible to do that, it's just a lot of tedious work, rewriting essential parts of the code, etc. Mojang ain't helpin' here. If you run a server and have lots of players on, or whatever, you'll see all but one of your server's cores idling by. 'tis sad. ..so lots of things will be cpu-frequency-bound. Memory consumption is another thing, but if you have lots of memory and SSD, your server will be able to do things. Still though, I believe the way everything is written, it's a very uneconomic use of hardware resources. Instead of focusing on core code and overall quality and performance improvements, Mojang just keeps shitting out new game features. I see their rationale (short term $, etc.), but when they then go about talking about how they don't like large expensive server operators taking money, it kind of puts me into an angry mood.
altcognito 12y ago
More likely story: Mojang recently released "realms" which is basically a rent-a-server model, and these are competitors to their business. Optimistically, they are trying to bring uniformity and clean up some of the more toxic servers that are out there. https://minecraft.net/realms https://minecraft.net/realms
- blhack 12y ago
  Those are really expensive compared to their competitors. For instance: https://ggservers.net/ https://ggservers.net/ ($1.5/mo)
- citricsquid 12y ago
  That's a conspiracy theory that doesn't hold water. Preventing servers from selling items does not encourage people to use Minecraft Realms, Realms serves a completely different player base. Realms are limited in capacity and limited in ability, the servers that operate as successful businesses selling items (that will be affected by this change) have up to 10,000 players online at any one time running hundreds of plugins, the maximum players a Realm can have is 10 and they do not support any plugins. They're not comparable services. From my position (I manage a third-party Minecraft website) I completely believe that Mojang are starting to take their EULA seriously in an effort to protect their customers, I don't know if it's the right decision or not but I don't believe they're trying to be anti-competitive.
  - altcognito 12y ago
    > Preventing servers from selling items does not encourage people to use Minecraft Realms If it eliminates revenue streams from their competitors, what do you think is going to happen? I have to imagine that Mojang will offer more robust features in the future, so they might not be comparable now, but in the future it will be closer. Maybe they will offer "add a plugin" option to their service. They could offer cash to plugin providers if their plugins get used. (ala the Apple Store) > I completely believe that Mojang are starting to take their EULA seriously in an effort to protect their customers I generally agree with this assessment but I don't see "protecting their customers/improving the overall Minecraft environment" and providing a better experience than third party vendors sa mutually exclusive. In fact, they are likely closely aligned up to a point.
corysama 12y ago
Conversation with a job applicant that I had a while back: "I run this minecraft server. I've modded it so that if someone kills you, you are banned for a week. But, you can unban yourself at any time for $5. This pays my rent." "So, people come to your server specifically because it adds a heavy penalty that does not exist in the standard game and then they pay you to remove that penalty?" "Yes." It sounds ridiculous, but it makes sense for a subset of hardcore players. They want PvP. But, ganking you just isn't satisfying if you just respawn next to me a second later. However, if I know that over on the other end of the internet you are genuinely pissed that I ganked you --that's satisfying! Similarly, if I know that getting whacked has real consequences, it makes the game much more exciting and intense.
- irremediable 12y ago
  That's fascinating. A friend of mine ran a server a bit like this, for his friends, although there was no pay-to-unban. We enjoyed the extra challenge, but it eventually died out because people got banned too often.
- wfn 12y ago
  These are called hardcore survival servers. They are basically what made me attracted to the idea of playing minecraft multiplayer, actually. I remember seeing a picture of someone discovering a random build in the middle of a forest (in a large map) on /r/minecraft. Apparently people still do builds on these kinds of servers! Even if that's usually dangerous! And how interesting it is to find such a build.. or bump into someone, and do a bit of game theory ("should we try to kill each other, or should we trade?") (the latter is not that usual, granted!) (Normally, you start by running away from the spawn point (which is a safe zone), to find food (nearby food sources are usually nonexistent), and make a small shelter. You then move on to building an underground base (e.g. under an ocean floor), building up armour, maybe going back to spawn eventually.. Or maybe you stack up resources, and just roam around the lands, or go out with some friendly people to found a city. There are spawn-campers who try to kill noobs, and then sometimes there are people who try to hunt down the noob-killers. Sometimes there are also people who plant seeds around the spawn to help out... etc.)
raker 12y ago
I think this was brought about by a recent conflict that occurred (and gained some attention on reddit at least) on twitter. Mojang has been well aware of servers that "sell" in-game items and in-game features (the ability to teleport or fly, for instance) for a fee. This is against Mojang's TOS, and Mojang has taken down several servers in the past for various TOS violations including this pay-to-win stuff. During the recent twitter bout, a Mojang representative stated there was a distinction between a server accepting donation, and a server rewarding donations/selling ingame benefits. A server accepting donations in order to continue running is A-OK, but a server selling benefits violates the TOS. This recent activity from Mojang to reclarify their TOS and actively tackle violations was likely a result of last week's twitter bout.
walterbell 12y ago
When someone buys a copy of Minecraft, does it include code to run a multiplayer server? Or did the community modify the Minecraft "client" code?
- LiroXIV 12y ago
  http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Tutorials/Setting_up_a_server http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Tutorials/Setting_up_a_server
- Yen 12y ago
  The server binary can be downloaded, for free, here (https://minecraft.net/download https://minecraft.net/download). However, as far as I'm aware, the actual code is not available. If and when it is available, it won't be under a free license.
phazmatis 12y ago
So people will just create a cleanroom reverse-engineered version of the mojang server.
- MzHN 12y ago
  I was about to ask this. If you have no Mojang code, media assets nor use the Minecraft name anywhere, on what grounds would they try to shut you down?
DanBC 12y ago
It'd be interesting to see what an HN server would look like. I'm glad Mojang is protecting their (often very young) userbase. Perhaps they also need a "Minecraft for non-players" faq that they can point paying adults to.

48 points by atian 12y ago

Can see this panning out like any other thing Notch has gone up against. Lots of tweeting and throwing money at the problem for a week then go on holiday and forget all about it. > Erik Broes: running servers is NOT A BUSINESS* Just as much of a business as running a "Let's play" channel mate, but you're not going to attack them are you because they have a bigger voice than you. Face facts your companies lack of action has made the community stronger than the creators.

Maskawanian 12y ago

I like Minecraft, played it for a while... However, what right does Mojang have to dictate this?

dangoor 12y ago
People are using Mojang code.
- Karunamon 12y ago
  Just because it's in a EULA doesn't make it legal, enforceable, ethical, or moral.
  - dangoor 12y ago
    I agree with you. But, IANAL so I have no idea if it's legal or enforceable. Given the "what right does Mojang have?" question, though, the answer is that assuming the EULA for the server code is enforceable, copyright is the right they have.
    - angersock 12y ago
      Which begs the question...does copyright sensibly mean anything when it is being run entirely on a machine owned by somebody else, especially with functionality introduced not by the original authors? I could buy a trademark infringement argument, perhaps, but copyright doesn't seem to really make sense.
      - drdaeman 12y ago
        IANAL, but I think if server owner's jurisdiction prevents them from using software without obtaining a license and this jurisdiction allows this exact kind of noncompliance to void the whole license (which is not always the case) - probably yes, it has a meaning. Obviously, it only matters if someone notices the noncompliance and lack of the license. For example if Mojang actually sues.
        Karunamon 12y ago
        And to them I say "good luck with that" in the most sarcastic tone I can muster. There are tens of thousands of private servers out there - the effort they play at expending on shutting down the despicable and horrible and bad and terrible practice of paid perks could be better redirected at further developing their games. This is the kind of priority fail I'd expect from EA or some other massive publisher, not an indie rockstar like Mojang.
        drdaeman 12y ago
        You see, the discussion - as I get it - was about very status of the copyright law - i.e. whenever there's a legal basis for a lawsuit or Mojang threats are void. It wasn't about server operators who don't give a damn about that - sure there are some.
throwaway9956 12y ago
Looks like it hinges on a clause in the EULA, so their right to do this probably depends on the legal status of EULAs in your jurisdiction (they're not enforcible everywhere). Ignoring the legal aspect, this strikes me as a dick move. I'm certainly not interested in pay-to-win minecraft servers, but if people want to use them with their purchased copies of the game, they should be able to.

Karunamon 12y ago

Yknow.. this is kind of backwards. If someone wants to donate to a server and get diamonds, I don't see how that is Mojang's place to dictate. If they were hosting the servers, sure. But on a private server?

Skiptar 12y ago
The issue is you're paying money to a third party for mojang's work, more precisely something which you have already paid for by purchasing the game. If you ignore the game itself and look at it from a purely technical view, what people are essentially doing is running code on their own servers (Which is allowed) but then charging people for bits of the code written by mojang (Which is not allowed). For most private servers you see, they will have a list of "donation" amounts and a "reward" for each, however this is quite clearly a sale since you are exchanging a commodity for money. To be classed as a donation, you would need to donate money without the requirement of something in return. I think Mojang are clearly right here, but not to the advantage of the minecraft community.
- mikeash 12y ago
  What's wrong with charging to expose functionality on a server you own, just because that functionality involves code written by somebody else? For example, let's say I run Mac OS X server on a computer somewhere and charge for user accounts on it. I'm charging people for the bits of code written by Apple, right? But surely this is completely reasonable of me, and Apple has no place to tell me that I can't charge money for this. Taking it further, maybe I allow free accounts which only have access to a few shell commands, and then you can pay more to unlock other commands. Again, I see nothing wrong with that, even though I didn't make those other commands.
  - pix64 12y ago
    Every program makes use of the OS. You literally couldn't do anything without using the OS.
- agscala 12y ago

kawsper 12y ago

10 years ago ISPs, and internet-cafés in Denmark had reserved slots for paying members on their counterstrike-servers. I guess such a system would also be disallowed under the Mojang license. One of my friend also hosted a Minecraft-server where you would get access to a /teleport-command if you supported the servers. I guess that would also violate the Mojang license. What about Youtube-streamers? I guess they are using Mojang code to monetize as well.

Cthulhu_ 12y ago
I guess so, yeah, the EULA is pretty clear about it. I think the article hints at Mojang being upset at server hosters locking features that are in the game itself though, like certain ranges of tools or items, in exchange for money.
- pjmlp 12y ago
  Except the fact that EULAs are void in most European countries.
  - joshvm 12y ago
    Citation needed? In the US there have been cases where EULAs have been upheld, not sure about outside. There is a lot of misinformation on the internet about whether they're valid, whether you have to explicitly accept them and so on. I think in a lot of cases it depends on how much money the prosecutors have - in most cases it's more than you. I believe they're invalid if the terms are confusing to the lay-user, i.e. if there is so much legalese that nobody actually understands what they're signing up for. Or if it makes ridiculous claims like "Buy buying the product you forfeit your soul". http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/25/microsoft_eula/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/25/microsoft_eula/ El Reg reckons it's not worth testing it, for the lawyer-money problem. There haven't been enough lawsuits outside the US to really say one way or the other.
    - pjmlp 12y ago
      For example, http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-07-03-eu-rules-publishers-cannot-stop-you-reselling-your-downloaded-games http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-07-03-eu-rules-publis... In case you can read German, http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endbenutzer-Lizenzvertrag http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endbenutzer-Lizenzvertrag in Germany, a EULA is only valid if the consumer is able to fully read it before paying for the respective product.

jamescun 12y ago

Mojang seem to be forgetting that it costs money to operate a server, and a "freemium" model is a completely viable and legitimate way to fund that operation (other ways such as accepting donations and paid-players only exist). Some may say you are in essence paying a third party for Mojang's work, when in fact you have already done so by purchasing the game in the first place. What position do Mojang feel they are in to dictate how people play the game? Ultimately it comes down to what players want, players are not afraid to vote with their feet and abandon servers which operate in this way; as of yet there seems to be no widespread trend in abandoning these servers. As an aside, I believe this is more likely a push by Mojang to shut down paid servers and move people onto their Minecraft Realms product which does exactly this.

valarauca1 12y ago
The problem is a lot of server admins claim it costs $1000-2000+ a month to run a unmodded minecraft server (with ~100 players). And a lot of players simply accept that as true.
- pascoej 12y ago
  To be fair, it would take a very beefy server to run the vanilla server with 100 players. When dealing with a high volume of players, using mods like spigot is essential.
- jamescun 12y ago
  Depends on your country but I was involved in the running of a Minecraft server a couple of years ago with about ~100 simultaneous players and our server costs were about £400 ($650?) a month in a UK datacentre; so $1000/month wouldn't be impossible. We could have saved some money by using a cheaper European provider (iirc OVH had a similar spec'd server for £200), but we were all based in the UK so the low latency was a major benefit. The UK server provider market really needs some disruption.
- wfn 12y ago
  Yup. Both vanilla minecraft and bukkit are terrible at multithreading. Bukkit's plugin API doesn't use locks (iirc), so having the plugins be able to run in a safe multithreaded fashion is a clusterfuck. It's possible to do that, it's just a lot of tedious work, rewriting essential parts of the code, etc. Mojang ain't helpin' here. If you run a server and have lots of players on, or whatever, you'll see all but one of your server's cores idling by. 'tis sad. ..so lots of things will be cpu-frequency-bound. Memory consumption is another thing, but if you have lots of memory and SSD, your server will be able to do things. Still though, I believe the way everything is written, it's a very uneconomic use of hardware resources. Instead of focusing on core code and overall quality and performance improvements, Mojang just keeps shitting out new game features. I see their rationale (short term $, etc.), but when they then go about talking about how they don't like large expensive server operators taking money, it kind of puts me into an angry mood.

altcognito 12y ago

More likely story: Mojang recently released "realms" which is basically a rent-a-server model, and these are competitors to their business. Optimistically, they are trying to bring uniformity and clean up some of the more toxic servers that are out there. https://minecraft.net/realms https://minecraft.net/realms

blhack 12y ago
Those are really expensive compared to their competitors. For instance: https://ggservers.net/ https://ggservers.net/ ($1.5/mo)
citricsquid 12y ago
That's a conspiracy theory that doesn't hold water. Preventing servers from selling items does not encourage people to use Minecraft Realms, Realms serves a completely different player base. Realms are limited in capacity and limited in ability, the servers that operate as successful businesses selling items (that will be affected by this change) have up to 10,000 players online at any one time running hundreds of plugins, the maximum players a Realm can have is 10 and they do not support any plugins. They're not comparable services. From my position (I manage a third-party Minecraft website) I completely believe that Mojang are starting to take their EULA seriously in an effort to protect their customers, I don't know if it's the right decision or not but I don't believe they're trying to be anti-competitive.
- altcognito 12y ago
  > Preventing servers from selling items does not encourage people to use Minecraft Realms If it eliminates revenue streams from their competitors, what do you think is going to happen? I have to imagine that Mojang will offer more robust features in the future, so they might not be comparable now, but in the future it will be closer. Maybe they will offer "add a plugin" option to their service. They could offer cash to plugin providers if their plugins get used. (ala the Apple Store) > I completely believe that Mojang are starting to take their EULA seriously in an effort to protect their customers I generally agree with this assessment but I don't see "protecting their customers/improving the overall Minecraft environment" and providing a better experience than third party vendors sa mutually exclusive. In fact, they are likely closely aligned up to a point.

corysama 12y ago

Conversation with a job applicant that I had a while back: "I run this minecraft server. I've modded it so that if someone kills you, you are banned for a week. But, you can unban yourself at any time for $5. This pays my rent." "So, people come to your server specifically because it adds a heavy penalty that does not exist in the standard game and then they pay you to remove that penalty?" "Yes." It sounds ridiculous, but it makes sense for a subset of hardcore players. They want PvP. But, ganking you just isn't satisfying if you just respawn next to me a second later. However, if I know that over on the other end of the internet you are genuinely pissed that I ganked you --that's satisfying! Similarly, if I know that getting whacked has real consequences, it makes the game much more exciting and intense.

irremediable 12y ago
That's fascinating. A friend of mine ran a server a bit like this, for his friends, although there was no pay-to-unban. We enjoyed the extra challenge, but it eventually died out because people got banned too often.
wfn 12y ago
These are called hardcore survival servers. They are basically what made me attracted to the idea of playing minecraft multiplayer, actually. I remember seeing a picture of someone discovering a random build in the middle of a forest (in a large map) on /r/minecraft. Apparently people still do builds on these kinds of servers! Even if that's usually dangerous! And how interesting it is to find such a build.. or bump into someone, and do a bit of game theory ("should we try to kill each other, or should we trade?") (the latter is not that usual, granted!) (Normally, you start by running away from the spawn point (which is a safe zone), to find food (nearby food sources are usually nonexistent), and make a small shelter. You then move on to building an underground base (e.g. under an ocean floor), building up armour, maybe going back to spawn eventually.. Or maybe you stack up resources, and just roam around the lands, or go out with some friendly people to found a city. There are spawn-campers who try to kill noobs, and then sometimes there are people who try to hunt down the noob-killers. Sometimes there are also people who plant seeds around the spawn to help out... etc.)

raker 12y ago

I think this was brought about by a recent conflict that occurred (and gained some attention on reddit at least) on twitter. Mojang has been well aware of servers that "sell" in-game items and in-game features (the ability to teleport or fly, for instance) for a fee. This is against Mojang's TOS, and Mojang has taken down several servers in the past for various TOS violations including this pay-to-win stuff. During the recent twitter bout, a Mojang representative stated there was a distinction between a server accepting donation, and a server rewarding donations/selling ingame benefits. A server accepting donations in order to continue running is A-OK, but a server selling benefits violates the TOS. This recent activity from Mojang to reclarify their TOS and actively tackle violations was likely a result of last week's twitter bout.

walterbell 12y ago

When someone buys a copy of Minecraft, does it include code to run a multiplayer server? Or did the community modify the Minecraft "client" code?

LiroXIV 12y ago
http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Tutorials/Setting_up_a_server http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Tutorials/Setting_up_a_server
Yen 12y ago
The server binary can be downloaded, for free, here (https://minecraft.net/download https://minecraft.net/download). However, as far as I'm aware, the actual code is not available. If and when it is available, it won't be under a free license.

phazmatis 12y ago

So people will just create a cleanroom reverse-engineered version of the mojang server.

MzHN 12y ago
I was about to ask this. If you have no Mojang code, media assets nor use the Minecraft name anywhere, on what grounds would they try to shut you down?

DanBC 12y ago

It'd be interesting to see what an HN server would look like. I'm glad Mojang is protecting their (often very young) userbase. Perhaps they also need a "Minecraft for non-players" faq that they can point paying adults to.