Online Minecraft Bans Will Be Able to Block You from Private Servers
techraptor.net
techraptor.net
Simply put: I do not care what someone else thinks about someone's behavior on someone else's server. Regardless of the nature of their behavior.
If someone says something nasty on someone else's server, and that player gets reported by another player on that server, and this results in a ban, now the 'offending' player cannot play on my server. Even though I could not care less what they said in that other server!
I've always moderated my servers as I see fit. But now the code my servers execute will betray my wishes? Thankfully, private servers are often running modified code supporting plugins, and I am hoping that the community further subverts this process with things like this: https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/no-chat-reports
It's pretty sad, but frankly expected given Microsoft's goals in the market with regard to authoritarian ('parental') controls in their investments.
I will never again join any other server except those I run myself, because I don't want to end up banned from joining my own private server. This does still leave a slight risk of being reported on my own server. But at least it is far less likely, since we're all friends and like each other. We all interact how we want and we love each other for it.
If all else fails, I will have to switch my servers to online-mode=false, and add an authentication plugin to verify usernames 'manually' (instead of my server asking auth servers upon player login). This may require my players to use 'cracked' clients that will masquerade as any chosen username without consulting auth servers. It's a last resort for sure.
For what it's worth, cracked clients are not presently required to join a online-mode=false server. Maybe they'll change this too, but presently legit clients can join cracked servers without trouble.
Minetest has a lot of potential, but presently it is very rough around the edges. As it stands, Minetest is for hackers to roll their own minecraft, not a ready-to-play game polished up for a general audience. Particularly, the in-game menus are generally quite poor and incomplete; you can't even rebind your mouse keys in-game, you have to edit your minetest.conf for that: https://wiki.minetest.net/Controls#PC
The real problem is the direct attack on the autonomy of server operators. Each Minecraft server is a separate community, and they should be left to their own devices to form their own internal expectations of behavior and speech. If Microsoft wants to moderate behavior on the servers they own (Realms) or actively advertise (Whatever's going on over in Bedrock), that's fine. But when I'm paying the server bill, the only interaction with MS I want is authentication (and maybe the skin server).
It is unclear whether that will remain the status quo.
The fuck up is not the feature, but how this is all being communicated, executed.
You could be banned even from your own private instances, and as far as we know maybe even from running the game offline. And I say as far as we know because the rules are not explicit. It's a communication disaster.
Especially because Mojang says all the time how they respect the community and ask for their input before implementing any new features and this comes in a silent minor update (1.19.1).
Bonus points for the product team that gave a gift for everyone to transition for a Microsoft account with the promise that nothing would change. Just a year ago.
The way this is all being handled feels like a privacy invasion.
And this is not even criticizing the quality of the moderation, because nothing was shown, the rules aren't clear.
The chances of you losing literally years of a personal game with some friends on a private server, that some people even create content from, is a real possibility and Mojang is acting like this moderation should be a black box.
They couldn't handle it in a worse way.
You mean how they required everyone to migrate accounts and it cost many people access to the game for which they had already paid?
Especially because Mojang says all the time how they respect the community and ask for their input before implementing stuff.
Nightmarish.
What stops someone from just making another Microsoft id?
The only servers hosted by Mojang are realms.