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

Minetest is like a platform, and for anyone wanting a Minecraft-clone based on it:

https://content.minetest.net/packages/kay27/mineclone5/

This all doesn't make any sense if the MC servers aren't compatible with Minetest.

As someone who used to be a part of the Minetest scene, it's not even remotely close. While it's low-end requirements are better, it runs remarkably poorly for what it is. It's (default subgame is) a decade behind Minecraft in terms of usability/features. It's barely maintained, especially after one of the big modders and graphics developers died to a heart disease.

And with the mods, it's only "easier" at the very surface level. Unlike the Java-edition of Minecraft, where anything can be changed, you are limited to their modding API in Minetest. And this API is thin.

No dynamic skyboxes, no full entity rotation, no way to handle subgrids. Entities have huge pop in/out issues and forget about anything crazy like having animal heads rotate to face you. No custom keybindings, no overriding mouse controls. Forms have terribly poor ergonomics and it's taken a few years now to have elements displaying at the correct coordinates (for a while, different elements had slightly different interpretations of the grid). Tons of stuff is hard-coded, like how tools work, damage calculations, HUD. And none of this can be added or changed without a fork of the underlying C++ engine codebase.

For the longest time they had no client-side modding and when they added it, they ended up barely having anything in it. So if you want a mod with some kind of vehicle, it is a complete hitchy mess since the client-side's would interpolate wrong and need to be forcefully corrected by the server dozens to hundreds of milliseconds later.

I spent a lot of time making mods for the couple folk I played with. I eventually quit because it was so frustrating trying to work with that engine and constantly jury rig and compromise solutions. Went back to Minecraft for those times I want to play a block game.

I know I'm being a bit brutal, but Minetest doesn't stand a chance when the expectation is set that it is/will be in the same ball park as Minecraft's level of quality or moddability.

Minetest seems hardcoded to have much smaller worlds than Minecraft (32,000 vs 30,000,000 blocks in width)

I prefer open-source Veloren instead since it's built in Rust, has far better performance and functionality, and has a more RPG-like focus similar to Cube World.

https://veloren.net/

Yep, we (my kids and I) moved over to MineTest, sometimes running Mineclone 5, sometimes MeseCraft. It's excellent.

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.

Vaguely reputable source pointing out it applies to private servers:

https://www.cbr.com/minecraft-players-outraged-mojang-monito...

I don't think it's a bad thing, either. People who buy proprietary software know what the deal is, and anyone who didn't know what the deal was knows now. It's not your game, you've just got a temporary license to it. Kind of the consumer's fault beyond anything.

I think the issue is the ease of getting users banned, and the lack of actual moderating at all that is the problem. It literally is as easy as fill out the form, user is automatically banned, no verification required. Microsoft is not actually enforcing anything.

My son is 10 and has been playing Minecraft for most of his life. I would consider him quite good at it. I sometimes watch. Every couple of months one of his friends will get banned for no reason. Usually the reason is profanity in the chat, even though they play with the chat off and are FaceTiming on the side with each other. It turns out that the system is so easy to manipulate that other users (kids) will report them just because they don’t like how the game went.

Basically spoiled kids will say if you don’t do what I want then I’m reporting all of you and getting you banned. And they do. Microsoft doesn’t actually verify the claims, just blanket bans all of them.

So the kids create a new account, and keep playing. It just seems like something that is perfectly natural to them. It does mean that I would never spend a dollar on anything Minecraft related though.

Wow, this is the most entitled attitude I've seen in a long time. You let your kids play online, where they can communicate with basically anyone. So the solution is to grant a central authority total power to ban anyone who doesn't comply with the standards you want for your children.

This is the online equivalent of a homophobe complaining that two men holding hands in the park will turn their children gay.

At first I found it frustrtating, but I've grown to really appreciate Nintendo's approach to this problem. Their multiplayer games (like Splatoon) have no in-game chat or VOIP.

It definitely makes it harder to make friends in the games, but it also completely eliminates any and all potential for toxicity and other miscreant behavior. As a result, I'd have no problem letting my hypothetical children play these games online even at a young age.

This solution is obviously untenable for a cooperative and creative game like Minecraft, so it seems Microsoft is stuck in a real hard place here.

I'm totally on board with creating kid friendly servers. I'm more skeptical of only allowing kid friendly worlds to officially exist.

servers I'd consider "kid friendly" already have their own chat moderation so it's a non-issue if you restrict your kids to playing only on those servers (if you don't chat reporting solves nothing since anarchy & co will disable chat signing server side).

I get where you're coming from and I'm in the same boat. I play Minecraft and some of the media I consume are Minecraft SMPs and Let's Plays. My soon-to-be-7-year-old has picked up the game and now regularly plays in my world (not that is issue free, but that's a different article :-) )

I understand why Microsoft is doing it and I even agree in part with Microsoft's measures in some ways. Aside from the direct protection of kids, they're also probably trying to be pre-emptive... forestalling the day or already complying with the day when the government says they have to do this sort of thing.

What I disagree with is that it's all or nothing. Public servers that wish to not participate should be allowed to not to. Sure have the client give a warning that you're logging into the wild west, even have it give a warning every time you log into the same server. But don't force all servers to do it. Microsoft also has parent controls which allow me to determine if my kid can use his account on any public server (by default nope)... finesse that a bit to let me choose only Microsoft moderated public servers. Even maybe give me the ability to whitelist servers for my kid's account. And then let everyone else that doesn't want to comply with Microsoft's vision of civility online to enter those servers that don't comply at their discretion, risk, or peril.

This would achieve the goals that your after (and me too for my kid) while not forcing society down the path of conformity.

I do support more moderation and controls over chat, because god knows when I played Minecraft as a kid I saw so many conversations that weren't exactly appropriate. Kids on servers that aren't specifically kid-friendly worry me a lot, knowing how my friends and I banter and shit-talk. This is super heavy-handed and centralized moderation though, the consequences for mistakes or errors are huge. As far as I know, getting banned also prevents you from even playing singleplayer on Xbox and there's no appeal process. I understand and support the new chat blocking settings, and maybe even something like an official ban list that applies to Realms and servers that decide to use it, but being able to permanently ban someone from an entire game is too much power.

I have no issue with Microsoft setting community standards for the online spaces they run, or anybody else for that matter. But Microsoft is setting community standards for places they do not run here, just because these spaces use their software. This is ridiculous, and sets yet another dangerous precedent.

What's next? Maybe Office 360 profanity filter, where your Office 360 account gets banned for writing about the Austrian Village formerly known as Fucking[1] in MS Word? Maybe the Windows 12 won't let you access your perfectly legal porn anymore? Or any files related to Scunthorpe. Or Edge refuses to stream Game of Thrones for you because of nudity and profanity... and then goes on to delete all your data and ban your MS account?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugging,_Upper_Austria

I really just want a f---ing password protected "play offline" button.

I've been trying to keep the kids off the internet, but Minecraft somehow created some bulls--t backdoor social media account for my kindergartner without prompting (let alone asking for consent before making it public!). On top of that, microsoft can trivially tie it to my github and linkedin.

Seriously, WTF were they thinking?!?

I think "what Microsoft is trying to do" starts and ends with your kids having office.com logins.

The problem is not that the feature exists - the problem is that you are locked into it, can’t easily opt out, and if it goes wrong you lose access to a product you’ve paid for.

A good system would cater for everyone adequately.

IMO the best way would have been to enforce it for realms, maybe have a way for privately run servers to opt-in, and let parents toggle some switch that only lets their kids play on moderated servers. but microsoft was completely unwilling to make any sort of compromise in that direction.

Adults tend to generally prefer to play with other adults, and they might also use profanity on adult-only private servers. Unfortunately adults can also be just as petty as kids and may report other adults just to get back at them for something or other. plus we know any moderation system run by a megacorp will inevitably result in some percentage of completely random bans.

Create a child-friendly server setting then and create certain new rules for that section of the game.

You don't just start banning adults for typing swear words into a keyboard.

If that was their motivation then why not simply offer an opt-in to heavily moderated servers? And a toggle to make it where that's all you see (if you want). This would not only make their job much easier, since presumably relatively few people want this sort of moderation, but would also increase the overall satisfaction of their entire userbase. People who want moderation for whatever reasons, can have it. Those that don't - don't have to.

---

A tangential, but related, issue I've observed is that there seem to be an increasing number of measures being carried out in society that, in effect, drive widespread self censorship. Any interesting conversation, regardless of how otherwise sanitary, may be likely to motivate somebody to want to "report" others. See any thread on, for instance, dark matter. An esoteric scientific concept, yet one where emotions run wild.

The only choice, in scenarios where reporting is likely to lead to penalties that are intolerable, is to simply not say anything at all that might cause even a single ripple in the water. And that is, in effect, not especially different than life in all of these unfree societies we were supposed to have learned from. The fact that we now seem to be becoming one of those societies, even if by a more novel path, is becoming increasingly apparent.

Since I am not a parent, my opinion doesn’t count for much—but when I imagine myself one, I wish me and my kids could have an open-source sandbox game that is fully owned by us and is playable on our own infrastructure without any further involvement of game publisher.

No marketplace with coins, no microtransactions, no mining my child’s PII before you allow to play a game I bought, no online login screen, no platform or “community” of any kind (not even if it’s “for kids”, Roblox is an example of what kind of people it becomes a magnet for), no unknown corporate moderators for my family server, nothing but a fun game.

(And because dedicated developers who actually listen to player feedback must be paid appropriately, definitely take my money for every new major update.)

Minecraft used to be a great example of such a game, until it got bought by Microsoft.

It’s a sad world where only children are allowed to have fun.

You should not let you children play with random 30 year olds, if you do not want them to see/hear profanity.

You have the option to install your own chat moderation tools, client-sided, there is not need to force every to "be nice" just because there _might_ be children playing.

If this was just for their own Realm Servers, that would be fine, it is their server, they host it. But why does Microsoft suddenly feel the need to moderate MY server? (public, but only used by friends of mine)

All the big public servers, such as Hypixel, have had their own moderators and they do a fantastic job.

> I don't see anything in their process that suggest that a group of adults playing with their friends are at risk of having their chat audited in the absence of a complaint? The thing is that we have NO IDEA how much it takes to be banned. - Will an actual human look at the reports? Doubtful. - When a ban is to be issued, who will decide when to do that? Some guy who has to follow a script that reads "3 profanities, max" and click the boot button?

The Minecraft community is one of the largest gaming communities, and I have seen very little controversial about it. I do not see the need for Microsoft to suddenly step in and decide to moderate it.

> I also like the idea of a global decision that forces servers open to "the public" to have an enforced global standard of behavior.

A decision made by a bunch of suits; a standard of behavior informed by corporate office spaces, ultimately vetted by the private moral prescriptions of a few HR officers and shareholders.

The children need to know that a negative outlook has no place in the world. Have a positive attitude, play by the rules, and you can have a lot of fun. Start trouble and we'll excise you like the cancer you are.

>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?

There is nothing letting the group of adults easily opt out of the system.

Someone is mischievous and decides to report someone else? Permanently banned. Someone has a falling out and decides to try to piss off their friend by reporting them? Permanently banned. Someone thinks they're funny and report as a joke? Permanently banned.

Not to mention that Microsoft has repeatedly failed to actually implement this correctly so far. I wonder if all the people who have gotten banned by this will ever get unbanned.

If you want Minecraft to be a game for kids, why don't you parent your kids? Minecraft is not your daycare. Minecraft is a portal to the internet (the world), if you wouldn't trust your kid to go on an international trip on their own without any supervision then stop letting them get on the internet without supervision.

Want your kids to play with friends? Pester Microsoft for an easy way to set up a server that YOU can control and manage and they can connect to (I believe realms already did this).

I promise you that Microsoft's changes won't keep your kids safe, they won't prevent them from dealing with adults in Minecraft, they won't prevent them from being exposed to ideas which you might see as too adult for them to thoroughly understand.

You have fallen into the PR trap that Microsoft created. They WANT you to feel like your kids are safe and WANT you to feel like they're making responsible decisions. This doesn't actually create a safe environment, and more likely is just a way to stimulate more sales by permanently banning accounts for a game which parents just can't help to buy their kids copies of.

By trying to make Minecraft servers a safer place you have made it worse because people are now trying to "kill" each other through the reporting system.

> 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?

That sounds like "why want the right to privacy if you have nothing illegal to hide".

Do you guarantee that if your kids end up on an adult server (yes, there are 18+ private servers) you will just get them off there instead of complaining that the chat is full of adult conversation and getting the entire community banned? Considering you want Microsoft to "protect your kids" i strongly doubt it.

And yes, the 18+ server I play on is access restricted, but you can get in (but not build) to evaluate if the server suits your play style before applying. You may get in in the middle of a discussion laced with politics and sex because THIS IS AN ADULT SERVER.

Also, complaints can be malicious. Do you really think MS is willing to put in the resources to evaluate a complaint properly?

The problem arises when one of said adults playing with their friends decides to be a sourpuss and report the chat, in which case microsoft moderators have absolutely no context on the server's group culture nor what was really going on, and they won't bother digging deeper.

At the end of the day individual servers are completely separate worlds that you cannot moderate as a whole due to differences in rules, expectations of their members and culture. You cannot moderate all of that by throwing a blanket rule system over it. Even the unofficial global ban system before this, mcbans.com, had a system to allow servers to only honor bans from specific other servers who they aligned with.

As for children I recommend keeping a mildly distant eye on what servers they visit, and this doesn't just apply to minecraft. As a kid I had a rule with my dad to consult him first about any terms of service I wanted to accept (for example for forums), so he could make sure it was safe. This worked until I became a teen and specifically started seeking out the bad things about the internet, but at that point no public ban system is going to help.

Why not just police what servers your kids join and choose ones that are kid friendly? I don't see why those of us that have been playing Minecraft since before your kids were even born should be forced into the same restrictions as kids.

I dunno, I can just imagine new age of cyber-bullying when a bunch of kids just mass-reports some poor kid (hell, even provoke them on chat so if detached moderator sees that they think it's legit) and sends their account to shadow realm.

Having a closed set of realms servers can opt in with more stringent moderation might be a good idea, but forcing it globally is just entirely stupid; there are things inappropriate for kids that are just fine for teenager audience, and adults play the game too.

If I was in your spot I'd honestly either set up, or rent them a private minecraft server, then they can invite their friends there and you have full control on what is happening with it.

> 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?

Just need one person taking a piss. And it pretty much means no server with strangers is safe as you could be reported by anyone for anything completely benign in context of the server

"Think about the children"....

If I set up a server I should be allowed to disable any form of MS moderation.

By all means, set up a kind of method where public servers that are child safe/friendly (e.g. opt in to MS moderation) are advertised as such. But do not mess with my stuff without my permission.

I feel ya, but at the same time access to an online game is almost equivalent to unfettered access to the Internet these days.

Even with Microsoft's watchful eye, it still won't solve all the problems. Roblox was already poorly moderated. Club Penguin was meant to be well moderated with all sorts of mechanisms to ensure child safety but it was still used as a hangout for all sorts of adults as well.

Realistically there's no solution that will 100% solve the stranger danger that comes with access to the Internet. The only way is for parents to take on the responsibility - have children play on a server that only them and their friends have access to. Any Internet server that randoms can join will always come with a risk and it's up to parents to quantify that risk.

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.

If that system can actually be implemented, it would make playing minecraft as a non-groomer adult so much more fun, too. Child players on these public servers tend to beg hard for valuable in-game items, and frustratingly though understandably, they complain a lot about chat posts above their reading level. If Microsoft/Mojang made an adults-only Java version to solve this problem and I had to use my ID to prove who I am, I would buy the game again, at double price. Worth every penny. And they'd save resources by not trying to boil the entire in-game communication ocean.

Kids can be mean to each other too; so I do support some sort of parental control (OS level) which Minecraft, software generally, should interact with. Also servers which provide parents with tools to better monitor the interactions.

I disagree about splitting up families, but do agree that a safety mode where children are in more heavily allow-listed environments should be standard.

The absolute worst people in the gaming scene (griefers) complaining about this must mean it's a good thing. Why do you enjoy ruining people's servers?

> 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.

Underappreciated aspect is that quite a lot, most actually, 18+ don't like unmoderated spaces either.

As someone who is over 18, and has a child who is under 18, I would quite like to play with them.

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.

> 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.

Sure, but there's a second order issue -- what's overblown is the extent to which "misinformed John Q. Public backed by scary Microsoft" is going strongly argue absurdities like "this is against Minecrafts intellectual property" or some nonsense and fight against it, or say it's bad or naughty or something.

> You can simply mod servers so that they don't have this chat reporting.

This will keep people from getting banned on your server, but it doesn't do anything to help all of the people who have already been banned.

>barely legal (revoking people's access to what they bought ...)

Kind of like when Microsoft bought Mojang and locked one of the world's most popular online experiences behind talking to M$ servers? There is no way to play the game you paid for - even offline - if you are not interested in creating a Microsoft account. They don't seem too concerned with the whole "terrible idea which is barely legal" thing when there's an opportunity to force people into giving them data.

> 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.

This only applies to people who own the JAVA version. People who only own Bedrock/Windows 10 version do not have this option.

Note that you can't mod Bedrock servers (which is the remade, not-running-like-dogshit Minecraft. For now, they are at feature parity, but nothing guarantees that Java edition stays for long)

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-onlin...

I don't know The Reason (probably child exploitation), but it's telling that within the first few comments people are discussing how to abuse the system to get Minecraft YouTubers deplatformed.

The haters are in plain sight.

You staff a company with the kind of people who think this sort of crap is a great idea and that's what you get. Clamping down on people just saying whatever they want, good or bad, true or false, is going on literally everywhere. This is just yet another instance of it. The majority of it comes from tech companies. This should come as very little surprise.

You may underestimate how truly horrific some of the online communications are in any non-trivial service. Especially when kids are involved.

Having been exposed to some of the stuff going on at other companies communication systems, I have total sympathy for mojang wanting some people off of all their platforms, forever.

Most any system is built like this from the ground up, it’s rather surprising it took them this long.

Roblox has been mired in controversy for years for failing to keep their platform safe enough for the kids they target. I'm not familiar enough to comment on the details of that controversy, but I would be surprised if that didn't feature prominently in Microsoft's decision here.

Because the tears of online asshats are super tasty.

There has been increasing abuse with gambling and predatory Minecraft servers marketed towards kids.

This has been coming ever since they bought Minecraft.

On one end is control, and on the other end is freedom from responsibility.

Since MS wants to continuously increase control (for example: by providing a version of Minecraft with a marketplace that they take a cut of), they must also take on increasing amounts of responsibility. Continuing far enough down this path means that every safety and security concern becomes theirs to deal with.

In contrast, Notch originally did almost nothing to control what players did and only trivial amounts of responsibility were placed on him.

The same piling on of responsibilities happened to Apple when they started selling Music.

Game chats have been used for all sorts of criminal activity.

I’d guess that Microsoft gets subpoenas for that stuff and felt it was a risk to be unable to respond.

I'd say this is to appeal to parents, who buy Minecraft and authorise associated micro-transactions for their Minecraft-playing children. It's a much easier sell if MS can "guarantee" that little Timmy won't hear bad words.

At the end of the day it's a big market, one to which Minecraft is heavily targeted, and parental paranoia is very profitable.

Because Microsoft sees what's happening to Roblox and what has happened to countless children-oriented online game platforms and wants to make absolutely certain they don't have headlines about adults abusing children, exploiting children, taking children off-site, or so on from "Minecraft". Because you can be damn sure the parents won't read the nuances of what server it was.

What? Minecraft is notorious for being one of the worst platforms in this regard. Imagine unmoderated Roblox.

Because a new Minecraft account costs $30, and they know people will just make a new one if permabanned. It's an extremely scummy way to squeeze out more money from existing customers.

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?

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.

Embrace, Extract (wealth), Extinguish?

Nah, this take it just conflating unrelated historical talking points about Microsoft without regard to how specific things actually happen. A better question is: what incentive does Microsoft have to alienate its playerbase this way?

The answer is much more mundane corporate decision making dynamics: an online game played by children is ripe for abuse by predators, and someone representing PR or Legal won the argument that this functionality is necessary. It would have been great if someone representing Community, UX or Engineering could have won the argument, but sadly those arguments are harder to make in today's political climate, so that's where they landed.

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.

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.

Honestly, starting a new block engine from scratch with the lessons learned from Minetest and Minecraft would be a better idea. Minetest is just too far behind to catch up, on a dilapidated tech stack with a far worse modding layer than Minecraft.

You shouldn't be surprised considering the amount of racism in USA.

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.

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.

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.

Looks to be a pretty normal Pleroma instance.

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.

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.

> 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.

That exists. That's what Realms is. A moderated, private server, for your kids. It's existed for years.

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.

Already exists for Java edition as a server (Bukkit) mod, which makes it opt-in: https://www.mcbans.com/

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.

> 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.

> 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

> 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

Thanks! Macroexpanded:

Microsoft will start banning players from all private Minecraft servers - 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 - June 2022 (23 comments)

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.

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.

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? ; )

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.

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.

If you get banned for chatting you can't even JOIN any multiplayer server.

I actually wanted to post this under the SAP article…

Quoting the original creator [0]: "Just pirate it".

[0]: https://twitter.com/notch/status/157261795139125248

-> Basically I was considered guilty unless I could proof my innocence

imho this is not comparable. You are considered unknown (account-wise) until you can prove that you are known. That's how a login system works.

Now why Microsoft didn't see your account, didn't accept your "proof" and left you in the rain, that's another story. A bad one. Big tech should care about the small man, they are their income after all.

Good decision on turning them the cold shoulder.

if you use the polymc launcher you can still play offline with a mojang login without transferring your account.

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?

The problem with this take is that it deals with imaginary situation of someone being banned from Minecraft for life due to saying "smelly poo poo". Which is not what is going on at all.

I mean, people in this situation are overly trustworthy toward what is said bae.st by that commenter. Two screenshots somehow prove he was banned for using profanity. But I complain to you specifically, because you kind of took it on the next level.

> And further I'd argue that guys actually bond in part by playfighting and teasing each other.

Some do. And plenty of guys are verbally bullied by guys and they are not ok with it at all. Quite a lot, it is not bonding, it is just hostility and bullying.

I agree with most of it. Insult are forbidden/taboo, that's also why kids use and abuse them when they can (like in a game).

It just crossed my mind : we should be teaching kids how to handle insults and toxicity in life. Non-violent communication principles, and "don't take things personnaly" from the four agreements of Don Miguel Ruiz.

It is likely that the toxicity kids put into game is to help themselves learn how to handle toxicity/insults in life. Can I hurt somebody with words and actions (hello griefing) ? How much ? Can he retaliate ? Do I gain or lose something by being a dick (or victim) ?

Think about it, testing that out in real life is much more dangereous and costly. At worse, in game you may get banned.

My point is that I suspect online toxicity to be a ground for learning some valuables lessons. If we want to reduces online toxicity, we should be providing theses valuable lessons elsewhere (in school for example).

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The enemy of your enemy is really not your friend in this scenario.