Microsoft banned me from playing Minecraft until I provide personal info | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft banned me from playing Minecraft until I provide personal info

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62 pointsvkoskiv48 comments

Curious to hear the HN take on this. Some people I talked to seemed to think this is a small hill to die on. Am I just weird that I find this uncomfortable? The stated purpose is spam prevention, but CAPTCHA exists for that purpose. I'd be more than happy to fill out a CAPTCHA.

I've been happily playing Minecraft for 12 years now, and I've gotten more than my money's worth out of that game. If my insistence on privacy means that I can't play it anymore, then perhaps that is a price I'm willing to pay. :(

I've been playing Minecraft with my kids since very early on. It's now banned in my house. The heavy-handed approach from Microsoft, including essentially making the game unplayable after I already purchased it multiple times (four to be precise), is a bridge too far. I do not believe in "renting" games; if I purchase something, it's mine. If I don't take a stand somewhere then someday I will "own nothing," and that ain't happening. We'll proceed with other games like console emulators, Stardew Valley, Terraria, etc.

Do you use Netflix or a similar service? If yes, what's the difference?

I don't think it is very difficult to understand the difference.

In the Netflix scenario, you know that you are purchasing a subscription service that lets you access content owned/distributed/licensed by Netflix. They aren't advertising that you can own Stranger Things, for example. They advertise that you can watch Stranger Things on-demand. I don't know of anyone who has purchased a Netflix subscription and thought that they own copies of everything on Netflix.

In the game scenario, you believe that you are purchasing the game. That's how they market it. The expectation is that once you've made that transaction, you now own that copy of that game to do with as you more or less please. Play it offline, run a local server, put it away and pick it up 10 years from now and still be able to play it, etc.

It's increasingly apparent that in many cases, even when you buy something from a game store (MS, Sony, etc.) that you aren't actually purchasing the game, you're purchasing the rights to access it through a particular service. But that's not how the advertise it. And no, I don't think burying this fact behind a few thousand words of legalese is really addressing the issue at all.

If you don't understand why that distinction might upset people, I don't know what to say.

You can continue to play the game, up to a given version, provided that you do not upgrade the launcher during that period of time to a version that requires that you provide personal data. You are not entitled to subsequent updates or upgrades.

You are forced to update the launcher and game if you reinstall the OS or get a new computer, and most likely it'll just auto-update without asking. There is no way to download or archive old versions.

> You are not entitled to subsequent updates or upgrades.

Then those should be truly optional and the store page should visibly state this limitation while keeping the purchased version accessible.

Worth noting that when I purchased minecraft back in 2011, the store page did in fact (according to archive.org) say:

“When you purchase Minecraft you do so as is, be it in the early stages of development or already fully released. Subsequent updates are only an added bonus and not a guarantee, as icing on a cake. Purchases during the development of the game are discounted and include the full game upon release.”

and

“When you purchase a game from us, you fill in your personal/company details. You agree that we store and use your information in our organization to complete the agreement towards you. You have the right, according to the law Personuppgiftslagen (PUL) in Sweden to know about the information registered about you. If it is wrong, insufficient or irrelevant you have the right to make sure that it gets corrected or removed.”

But the rest of your comment stands.

I keep copies of any downloadable installer I use for this very reason, as it's always possible that you'll wish later that you'd kept that n-1th version.

He claimed if he purchases something he owns it, so I was wondering if he had a Netflix account. Because then he clearly doesn't have a problem with just renting content after making a purchase, despite his claims.

> Play it offline, run a local server, put it away and pick it up 10 years from now and still be able to play it, etc.

While it's sad, this hasn't been true the last 10-15 years.

They don't claim you own a game after you buy it, that would be false advertising. Hence why they could change his gaming experience in such a disruptive way.

> If you don't understand why that distinction might upset people, I don't know what to say.

I tried clarifying, hopefully you understand what I mean now.

Netflix doesn't sell you movies, it sells you access to their services. If you look at their site now, it offers you to "create or restart your membership" to their "streaming services". If he purchased Netflix membership for a year and lost access before that year is up, I'm sure he'd be equally miffed.

Minecraft sells you the game - even right now, their site says "Get Minecraft" - in fact, it defaulted to Japanese for me where it says "MINECRAFTを購入" which is an even more unambiguous "BUY MINECRAFT".

It is like the difference between buying a e-book on Amazon and having it removed remotely, versus a book being removed from Kindle Unlimited. You have to be willfully obtuse to not understand why people might have different expectation for the two types of transactions, legalese in be damned.

The original poster said:

> I do not believe in "renting" games; if I purchase something, it's mine

He does not believe in renting games, so I'm trying to find out of he rents movies or series. If yes, why the different approach?

Willfully obtuse... Oh please, some of you should try reading what I write and take the context into account instead.

you are a very annoying person, its really not hard to understand.

The guy doesn't like being ripped off. He rents what is marketed as rent-able, and wants what is marketed as something you buy to be actually so.

Its a very basic concept, there is no "different approach here".

There isn't anything wrong with not wanting to be ripped off.

> its really not hard to understand.

Hey that's what I'm thinking, so why don't you get what I mean ;).

Netflix doesn't have a "purchase" button under every movie/series.

Buying games like Minecraft has always been marketed and communicated as a purchase, just like you'd permanently buy a physical product. Now publishers are slowly attempting to effectively steal or lock away those products after we paid for them. Those two things in combination are not okay, publishers should either be honest or keep their word.

...or not get acquired.

A purchase is a purchase. Whether I buy a TV or a game, nobody should be able to take away access after I paid for it. Otherwise write "rent" on the button and clearly state that I might lose access at any time if the publisher feels like it.

You purchase a monthly subscription. Purchase is just a synonym for buy, it is not equivalent to owning something.

I'm not talking about legal details, but communication. No store page for video games state that the "purchase" button means anything else than, say, the "purchase" button for a shampoo on Amazon. It clearly suggests that when you buy a game you own it, period. When you buy a Netflix subscription it clearly states that it's time-limited.

At least the EU seems to - slowly - fight such antipatterns that everyone knows only exist to mislead consumers.

I'm with you. Even if it's an over-exaggerated response to something truly honest, I still support the sentiment. It's the inevitable response to the frog [us] being boiled to where we have no trust

With that said, I see this as thinly veiled data collection under the guise of spam prevention. There are perfectly capable methods that respect privacy as you mentioned. They chose to have a mountain of data as a responsibility instead

I really wish the industry acted more like we do where we have to (eg: HIPAA) -- if you don't need it, don't collect it.

Health care industry should collect everything they can though? More information means doctors can make better decisions.

I'm sure they collect plenty that's diagnostically relevant -- I can't really speak to that. Just a tech guy that's been forced to learn admittedly very little about the area.

The idea though is to be cognizant of the data that you need, with the understanding that you're taking on responsibility for that data

> Some people I talked to seemed to think this is a small hill to die on

This phrase always rubs me the wrong way, this thinking is how our freedoms slowly slip away.

I've been told the same about the TSA, people checking receipts, avoiding most social media, etc etc. It's maddening that so many people are blah about things that they probably shouldn't be, and then further try make others feel bad for standing up for what's right.

In short, no you aren't weird - everyone else is. Doing what you believe in is noble. But that's coming from another weirdo :).

Some people still think the slippery slope argument is a fallacy.

Minecraft is not a hard game to clone and even make better.

> "Minecraft is not a hard game to clone and even make better."

And … https://veloren.net/ … Bam! Someone's aready done it. ;)

(There are countless other examples, but none I've seen yet are quite as extensive and featureful as Veloren.)

I don't like Microsoft demanding personal data from my children.

It's a monetary cost. Phone numbers will cost about 0.10 per SMS verification but you can do CAPTCHAs for about 1000 for $1. I think a better solution would be microtransactions of some kind, although imposing any monetary cost will deter spammers. It just depends on how much they get out of it.

The text purchase screen that was displayed to me when I bought minecraft back in 2011, in case anyone cares:

    Purchase now!
    When Minecraft is finished, it will sell for €20.00.
    If you pre-purchase now during beta, you pay just €14.95!

    Please note that when you buy the game, you're paying for the game as it is right now!
    You will also get the full version of Minecraft when it is released. 
    Read the copyright information for more information on your purchase.
    Please log in or register to pre purchase.
    (Click here to buy the game for someone other than yourself)

    Here's what you get:
    .• You get early access to the game to a discounted price!
    .• You help fund the development of Minecraft
    .• Custom skins in multiplayer
    .• Once you've bought the game, it's yours. No DRM.

I purchased in 2010 during the Alpha stage, I believe version 1.1.2_01. Sure feels like DRM now!

The version that you got though would still be runnable? It didn't have DRM, have at it!

I paid for my Minecraft account a long time ago, over a decade, and I've generally felt like it was money well spent. I've got a lot of hours of enjoyment out of Minecraft and I was glad to support the developer. The fact this purchase was honored for so long across changes in ownership and account migrations also made me feel good about the purchase. Now though, I'm not feeling like having a paid account is a good value. It's just subjecting me to ever more levels of control by Microsoft that pirates don't have to put up with.

They should give you a refund if you don't want to provide personal information and you didn't agree to this up front, but at the same time, I do want Minecraft to police its userbase pretty actively, because my kids use it and they are not sophisticated about things like phishing attacks. Roblox is far more unsupervised and anecdotally it's far easier to stumble into kid-inappropriate things on Roblox.

Captcha just isn't as good, spammers and other bad actors can get captchas done at scale a lot cheaper than they can acquire burner phone numbers.

_Is it_ up to Mojang/Microsoft to police this? Most multiplayer activity takes place on third party servers (I'm pretty sure this is the case for their Bedrock edition as well as Java edition), which have their own teams of moderators and administrators, or are small and private. Not quite sure how phishing etc. plays into this.

Minecraft as a whole is entirely unsupervised as of right now. Until the chat reporting feature rolls out, there is not, and has never been, any control by Mojang over the interactions of players on Java servers which, with the sole exception of the small Realms instances, are privately hosted.

And that is the right way for things to be. If I'm taking the cost of hosting the servers, I get to decide who connects and who doesn't. Not Microsoft. If inappropriate behavior was taking place on my server, it would be my responsibility to ban the person or persons responsible. The wonderful thing about that federated nature is that on my Minecraft server, full of grad students with the occasional free weekend, we can discuss things like "grabbing a beer later". Whereas in a more kid-focused server, that might be deemed inappropriate. If the kid-friendly server chooses to ban my friend for that, then that's there prerogative. But he can still hang out on my server. Under centralized Microsoft rule, that message is potentially a bannable offense, not just from my server, but from all servers.

>I do want Minecraft to police its userbase pretty actively.

I don't. A game with several players on a 3rd party server should not be a concern of Microsoft, just like what I'm saying to my son during a game of Brawl shouldn't be a concern of Nintendo.

Or what I'm saying to my wife on my phone shouldn't concern AT&T.

I have multiple accounts, which I all transferred to microsoft accounts. They all got this message and had to be unlocked using a phone number. I wouldn't be surprised if they are straight up doing this to get phone numbers.

I got this message as well on an account I only use to play forza horizon. It’s obviously not some kind of fraud detection and just a way to extract everyone’s phone number.

Embrace, extend, extinguish.

I truly hate Microsoft.

In Soviet Russia, Microsoft hates you! Oh, wait…

After multiple attempts from third parties to co-opt my kids' accounts (and the resulting multi-factor authentication efforts required to take them back), I'd happily take the Microsoft-account path than the Mojang approach.

Small hill? Yes, life's too short.

Also, surveillance-state concerns aside, personal info is one way to keep child predators aware of the fact that their actions can be traced back to a real person.

You're really going there? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children

You're going there? It has less to do with them than me having to take the time to address an issue that should never have existed in the first place.

Are you implying that everything done in the name of protecting children is always a Helen Lovejoy kind of overreaction?

I think this is in most cases true, where children are (ab-)used as a justification to reduce freedoms of adults.

> personal info is one way to keep child predators aware of the fact that their actions can be traced back to a real person.

And in case of a data leak, all the (anonymous) predators know which players are children and where they live.

They can get that from census data. Thank you for playing.

I think the parent comment was referring to the fact that the predators could find out where the children they're playing with live, not that they could find children in general. As far as I know, the census forms don't include a "Minecraft player" checkbox.

If your kids don't know not to give out their password to random people on the internet: 1) nothing Microsoft can do will fix that and 2) they probably shouldn't know their password in the first place.

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