Minecraft bans integration with NFTs and Blockchains | Hacker News Reader

Minecraft bans integration with NFTs and Blockchains

minecraft.net

128 pointsjessmartin24 comments

Glad they cut this stuff off before it got too big. Cryptocurrency grifts have been taking over Minecraft Java Edition in the past year or so.

This is a refreshing stance from a company. Kids are too frequently treated as just a way into mom and dad's wallet.

This is not a "stance", Microsoft owns plenty of game studios which are more than happy to include in-app purchases for every skin, emoji, and loot box they can.

They are preventing this for the reason others have already mentioned: they don't get a piece of the action.

Should be noted, Minecraft already allows Java server owners to take a surprisingly large piece of the pie. They've loosened the EULA to allow most forms of pay-to-win, you can pretty much sell whatever you want as long as it's not the specific narrow situation of items/commands that benefit a player's ability to PVP, used on a server that is almost exclusively dedicated towards competitive PVP. Other than that it's free reign and there's quite a lot of shady pay-to-win servers out there. (There are many ways to "win" in the game other than PVP, such as digging a massive hole -- no kidding, on our homely non-profit server we do competitive hole-digging and take it VERY seriously and would be pissed if someone was able to purchase an advantage.)

I agree with the feeling of being annoyed by pay to win. But I don’t think that Microsoft should be dictating what players can and cannot do on private servers.

Not entirely surprising. Minecraft gets to maintain full control and custody, including extracting rent from any marketplace and assets selling on its platform, and at the same time look like the hero to the game community that so fervently hates NFTs.

NFTs are a cancer, it's entirely reasonable to not want to be associated with it.

The irony is that Minecraft and its players have no problem with virtual tokens known as Minecoins that are used to buy game assets and mods.

Instead of allowing this sort of pattern to be decentralized and permissionless, they are forcing it to remain on a centralized and permissioned stack that allows them to consistently extract rent, exert control over what kind of sales happen, and limit how users can dispose of these assets.

You can’t even sell back your Minecoins, you are only given license to use them for the Minecraft Marketplace. Had this been a standard ERC20 token the company would have no way to block you from reselling unwanted coins on a secondary market.

Is anyone speculating in Minecoins and constantly shilling it to push to the prices before selling out?

Your comparison is very selective.

I am not big on the jpeg NFT marketplace, but I'm also not a collector of baseball cards or magic cards or cool skins for my video game character. There are stark similarities between NFT jpegs and any other virtual asset, right? A good use of NFTs can be representing the virtual ownership of a unique artwork, like a receipt that comes with the physical purchase. Being the "true" owner of something has a value. Music CDs often come with a code for the digital version. Isn't that an NFT? But yeah I'm still not buying anybody's jpeg.

Uh, the Java edition of Minecraft isn't controlled by Minecraft or Microsoft. I used to run my own private server with its own economy, and tons of custom plugins.

I have news for you… https://help.minecraft.net/hc/en-us/articles/7317376541197-M...

People bypass account authentication, that's been a thing for over a decade, so a ban would be fairly meaningless on a huge chunk of servers that authenticate through their own systems, which most NFT-focused servers likely already do. Admittedly, looks like a lot has changed since I used to dabble in the 2011 era, though this was only introduced in June 2022 lol.

how do you ban mods to your game when the mod distribution and SDK are entirely 3rd party?

By leveraging their ability to ban people from all servers, see the discussion from a few days ago.

A) Ban from all servers (even private): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860168

B) Forcing people to provide personal information to play the game at all: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32142847

Together create effective permabans for anyone Microsoft wants

Surely, this ban does not apply to servers which do not connect connect to Mojang servers (e.g. online-mode set to false aka "cracked" servers)?

It applies to all servers, even java ones run by third parties: https://help.minecraft.net/hc/en-us/articles/7317376541197-M...

If you crack the game to not validate through Mojang servers, then it will probably bypass the ban, but I don't know if you'll be able to connect to a 3rd party server which excepts the users to be authenticated

Good.

Eh, not that I'm in love with crypto or Web3, but as I've been getting into server stuff and mods for my kids, it's really hard for me to see Microsoft's dealings with Minecraft as a hugely missed opportunity, perhaps even an all out failure. The "metaverse" people keep touting could have (relatively easily, I think) been nearly the sole perview of Minecraft if Microsoft didn't Microsoft Minecraft so hard.

Even e.g. Roblox does a much better job of trying to integrate the creator/modder experience.

Why is this getting downvote? Minecraft could have been so much, particularly regarding educational content. I don't like the Roblox experience partly due to some pervert indie creators I've heard about. Minecraft could really be extended, not on its main version but through community-reviewed mods probably.

I'm frequently critical of Microsoft, and I can always count on what strongly feels like a 4 or 5 downvote overreach regardless of the criticism.

Right. So my kids are into both the Roblox and the Minecraft and that's kind of what got me here; I'm thinking that Microsoft could (very) theoretically have had a long term "Marketplace" vision for Minecraft that looks like the best of what Roblox is today.

(I mean, this is a huge pipe dream. MS has always had the resources but literally has never had anything remotely close to a vision like this)

Whatever you feel about NFTs or cryptocurrency, it's quite obvious that they are 100% lying about the reason they are doing this.

The real reason is that cryptocurrency makes it relatively easy for people to transact without Microsoft taking a cut. That's it.

Minetest had no such restrictions by the way.

People have been able to use PayPal for well over a decade to buy in-game perks and memberships on plenty of Minecraft servers, even buying plugins for their servers, and hosting. Bypassing Microsoft isn't really an issue with the Java edition, short of changing the license the game is provided under.

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