Minecraft creator attacks Microsoft's Windows 8 plan | Hacker News Reader

Minecraft creator attacks Microsoft's Windows 8 plan

bbc.com

44 pointsbootload59 comments

This is the most overdone news story in recent months. It was two tweets, and yet entire articles are being written analyzing a small quip.

Now how many times do we have to go over the argument? x86, for the moment, is just as open as Windows 7. ARM is not, it's very locked down. Windows 8 as a whole consists of both versions, in that respect it's considered less open. The fear is that we're going to see ARM become the major OS (for various reasons, mostly tablets/phones/mobiles becoming more popular) and at that point there won't be an open Windows. That's the concern. Yes, it's a slippery slope argument, but it looks to be the direction we're headed in.

And please, stop with the "then why did he release on iOS/Xbox" argument ad nauseam, it's an ecosystem which was locked down from the beginning, nothing is being "lost".

This story has really embittered me, so I apologize if this is brash. But all the personal attacks I see on various websites against Notch are incredibly disheartening.

My worry is that openness may die with this move, not to ARM per se, but to locked down ARM devices. Ubuntu and Android run just fine on the hardware Microsoft demands their OEMs to cripple (and yes, none of my Android devices is locked down). Microsoft is pushing towards a world they can enjoy without having to compete as much as they do now - they don't want to make software people love: they'd rather live with people having no option.

The problem is that what Notch is saying is terribly unclear. Is he talking about the desktop game or about Windows RT? The two tweets are pretty ambiguous, and so it may seem to some that Notch is trying to cash in on the publicity with this while happily contributing to the death of the PC by selling the iPad version.

Here's an excellent series of articles about the confusion that Notch needs to clear up.

http://www.withinwindows.com/2012/09/28/notch-doesnt-hate-wi...

Not related to the point at hand, but why don't people mention the millions of copies sold on other platforms?

    More than 7.5 million copies of the title have been sold

Minecraft has sold 7.5 Million (+) of the PC version, it has also sold millions of copies of the iOS version, the Android version and the Xbox version which just recently broke 5 (edit: sorry, 4) million sales. Seems strange not to say something like:

    More than 14 million copies of the game have been sold across all platforms, {relevant figure for relevant platform here}.

Although maybe with the article being about the PC version it's assumed readers will understand the figures are for the PC version alone.

It's really surprising (to me) that 10k people per day are still buying pc minecraft. I'd think pretty much everyone that was interested in a game like that would have gotten it by now? How can there still be 10k new people per day (over what, 3 years now?) that have just found out about minecraft?

The game is still getting new features through official development and through addons. People who weren't interested in the pure survival or "3d drawing" modes might be more interested in the improvements in interactive storytelling, both creating them and running through maps by others.

The game has also gained a significant community on YouTube (and probably elsewhere), which ends up promoting the game. I watch Minecraft videos occasionally -- some of the interactive storytelling is quite good --, despite the fact that I've never actually played the game. And it's just an impulse buy away if I ever see a video which makes me thing I need to play this myself.

Currently (I'm in London UK) Minecraft has a huge folllowing among boys aged (roughly) 8-14. As long as that demographic remains obsessed there'll be a constant new market.

My 8yo son is obsessed, as are two of his friends.

I am really impressed that a system with simple graphics has been so successful. A more traditional games shop would have screwed it up by trying to make things look pretty.

[Java still remains a poor gaming platform. I had to fiddle with the VM settings for a while before it would even run.]

Yeah, my 13yo just latched onto it recently.

I have a question for you if you've got a moment: what part of Minecraft is your son most involved in (eg: playing with his friends, creating modifications, building cool things alone)? And if he's involving in playing online, do you know if he has any involve with Minecraft communities?

I'm getting the feeling more and more recently that Minecraft may eventually become what BBSes were to the 90s: a way for "new" to the internet people to get involved in the community side of the internet (vs. just being a "consumer") and by extension the technical side. We (the Minecraft forum) have 10s of thousands of teenagers that are now programmers contributing code and creating things just because of Minecraft, people that probably wouldn't have got involved in programming this early in life otherwise.

I'm curious if that sort of effect extends beyond those actively involved in the official Minecraft communities, but I have no real way to find out as my reach only covers the Minecraft forum.

My 8yo son, 11yo daughter, 10yo niece, and 14yo nephew all recently got into it. I set up a server for them.

My nephew I think might become an architect, he loves making real-world looking buildings, complete with furniture, rooms, bathrooms.

The daughter and niece make houses where they live with each other. My daughter in particular takes her room, and adds a panic room (for when the mobs attack).

And my son has recently taken to building redstone gadgets. He took a room and put a switch on the wall, then ran redstone on the outside up to the attic to power glowstone blocks that he recessed into the ceiling. That way he can turn the lights on and off.

They mostly use the tekkit mod, and I've been trying to get them into programming by showing the how the computercraft turtles work ... it's a work in progress :P

(And the Wiki, of course.)

I think Minecraft as a programming teaching tool would be a whole lot more valuable with a proper API and hopefully that will be introduced before the game starts to fizzle. It would be one less barrier to entry for kids, as currently they have to learn Java and get thrown into a messy (deobfuscated) codebase. Not exactly the best first experience with programming.

I think Valve's Portal 2 map maker is another good example. They give you a really nice interface for the easier stuff, and then for advanced changes you can import it into Hammer.

Sorry, just noticed your query. He plays alone - I've asked him if he's interested in the multiplayer aspects, but he just likes building things like automated mines, and watching replay movies on YouTube.

I have found that kids are particularly attracted to it, and a new generation of kids matures every year - most of them have access to funds, so it is often purchased on special occasions (i.e. birthdays). It is kind of the new Legos for kids. They had drawing from kids up on the wall in my local supermarket - roughly 10 of the 50 drawings had Minecraft characters in them.

The game format is pretty conducive to "casual" gaming. I'm sure with all the new features getting added it's more and more attractive to these gamers.

In the agreements for some of those distribution channels there are stipulations against releasing specific sales data.

Specific? Maybe, but Mojang are open about the general sales figures. They frequently talk about them and we republish them, example of the Minecraft studio announcing 4 Million sales: http://twitter.com/4JStudios/status/252480126128885761

From the article:

Mr Persson revealed his views in two tweets.

From twitter:

Got an email from microsoft, wanting to help "certify" minecraft for win 8. I told them to stop trying to ruin the pc as an open platform.

I'd rather have minecraft not run on win 8 at all than to play along. Maybe we can convince a few people not to switch to win 8 that way..

But certification isn't new, and is still optional... I don't understand why developers are up in arms over it?

Also, is it intrinsically bad? It's proving that the software you installed is from a particular publisher and hasn't been tampered with, isn't that a good thing?

Could you name second bigest Android app store?

I think there are at least two problems:

1) average user will not download anything what's not in win8 app store; a) There are extra burden to upload app to store and pass QA process (I think the only exception here is Google). Haven't you heard horror stories about clueless QA people?

2) there are extra warnings for apps that are not from win8 app store (like in Mac OS X). E.g. I find it annoying because I use relatively lot of tools that are not from app store. Again average user might prefer safe way over risky one and it is problem for indie (game) developers.

I think it's a minority of developers that are up in arms against in. As a user and developer I've welcomed it on the Mac. Developers can easily certify their apps and it gives customers confidence. If you choose not to certify your app you don't lose out, your software will still run. It will be pretty much the same on Windows (although I find their policies a bit more restrictive). If you don't want to certify, it doesn't prevent your software from working.

But if you certify and offer a shop for certified apps where the shop owner gets a cut this creates a huge incentive for the owner to do everything in its power to get more apps into the shop.

There will always be apps people need that don't fit in the store. e.g. 18+ games won't be available but lots of PC users want to play them. If Microsoft made it so only certified apps could be installed they would lose a lot of users to alternative platforms. People are looking at this like it is a slippery slope. It could be but it's highly unlikely as it would hurt consumers and the barriers to switching OS aren't that high for most people.

There's no need to completely prevent non-certified content from being accessed, you just make it a second class citizen, e.g. by making installation more difficult or restricting the access to native interfaces. E.g. you can increasingly fall back to distributing stuff that's incompatible with Apple's morals using HTML5, so customers don't need to switch devices to access some version of it.

Barriers to switching are falling as more people are using cross-platform stuff (first and foremost, web content and apps) but at the same time they are increasing as people get a large portfolio of content that is either not available or that they haven't bought for other platforms. E.g. switch from iOS to Android and lose access to game X that's not available on Android, app Y that's available but you only bought an iOS license and, of course, convenient access to your collection of iTunes music and videos.

Contrast this to a waning desktop era where most casual users seemingly only used and paid for three pieces of software (office, browser, something else) and had much of their other content in cross-platform containers (CD/DVD, MP3, Xvid, office files).

There is no cut for Microsoft for desktop apps while Apple takes a cut for OS X apps sold from the app store. But for desktop apps in the Windows Store, it will be only linked to the dev's website. Downloads and updates are handled by the developer.

I still think he's being a sensationalist. Even the BBC are less biased here. There is no requirement to get it certified and you can just use minecraft how it is now without having to go near an app store.

This is all hot air.

The BBC has always been biased toward microsoft.

It definitely hasn't. They've been terribly critical over the years.

I think the issue is that they are not as biased against them as the rest of the industry who know how to get clicks for Microsoft bashing.

Some think so.

http://www.slated.org/bbc_microsoft_bias_summary

But I think they're biased against everybody. At heart, journalists tend toward cynicism...

I've seen that before. To be honest, most of it is crap. It's cherry picking. They're always splurging over Ubuntu and raspberry pi.

the only bias I see is pro war and pro current government And the occasional shoddy piece of journalism.

Have you noticed a pattern in BBC's malware reporting? When it's about windows malware, they deliberately avoid mentioning the name windows, instead calling it "PC malware" or "computer virus". But when it's about Android malware, they make darn sure to call it what it is, Android malware. In that case they don't do the dance of calling it, say, "mobile malware". I don't know about you, but to me this is a blatant form of bias.

Hmm like?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12067295

>> ""Microsoft owns the Xbox. Apple owns the iOS. The charm of the PC is that nobody owns it... "

Yes, but Microsoft owns Windows. The certification change doesn't affect the PC it affects Windows users. His final comment is a lot more balanced:

>> "Microsoft is free to do whatever they want with their OS. I won't support all of what they do, however"

His comment about Microsoft trying to ruin the PC as an open platform is nonsense. Obviously Windows runs on the majority of PC's but no matter what Microsoft does they can't ruin the PC as an open platform. Linux is available. Build Minecraft for Linux and actively promote Linux. Refuse to build the game for any closed platform and make it clear people can only use your game on open platforms.

The whole thing seems to be misuse of 'PC' and 'Windows'.

You haven't been following the trusted computing for windows 8 row then?

you won't be able to run linux on these machines.

"... Build Minecraft for Linux and actively promote Linux. ..."

Is this a tech problem? Maybe the MS strategy is to move gaming to the XBox where it has greater control, where greater control >> revenue.

Minecraft is written in Java ~ http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Development_Resources there are also various ports with other code bases ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minecraft#Ports so it's available on Linux but I would guess Microsoft is the biggest source of revenue. So you're right it won't ruin the PC, just the coffers of the parent company.

Yeah, the reality is that most game vendors ruined open desktop platforms. There was a time when Windows and PCs were still big and mobile gadgets were only used by business people. During that time the biggest hurdle for many people that wanted to leave Windows was that the cool games just worked on Windows.

I think nobody will feel sorry for the game industry loosing their last desktop platform. After all you need a lot of cash to make games experience on the desktop comparable to game experience on a top-notch game console.

The thing is Windows 8 is radically changing a lot of stuff and that won't sit well with most businesses in the PC world. Maybe Windows 8 won't give Valve or Notch a death blow by removing the "desktop mode", but I think it's pretty obvious that Microsoft wants the future of Windows to be "Metro-only", and these guys can see that.

So it's not Windows 8 per se that they are mad about. It's the whole direction Windows is taking. If they and others can get Windows 8 to fail, and get Microsoft to revert back to the old style Windows, then they win. If not, and Windows 8 is successful, they lose, because you can bet Windows 9 will be even more locked into Metro and with fewer options or less access for the desktop mode.

I'm not sure Microsoft is explicitly wanting this change. It's a reaction to the shifting computing environment; the iPad showed that the PC isn't the only platform that people want to use, and that some people only want to use tablet computers. I feel Microsoft would have been more than happy to keep developing Windows the way they always have, but they've seen the writing on the wall. Windows isn't what the users want.

Microsoft didn't start the locked down tablet market. They're just the newest player. If you want to assign blame, blame the users.

Microsoft is the only company demanding the ARM devices other companies make to be locked down. What Apple does to its hardware is their problem, but it's not Microsoft's business to demand hardware manufacturers to deliberately kill competition on software (which would, ultimately, benefit both manufacturers and end-users).

I'm not sure that's an apples to apples (so to speak) comparison. How is it any different with Apple not only locking down the software but also locking out any competing hardware versus Microsoft letting multiple partners make hardware with locked down software? It patently is Microsoft's business to demand hardware makers follow the rules of their software agreement. If hardware makers don't like it, they can make Android tablets. Microsoft isn't the only player in the game, and in fact they are the least successful player in the game. This isn't the 90s, and Microsoft doesn't control the world anymore. There's choice.

Let's not forget that Apple's locked down hardware and software combination is what started this whole craze.

Microsoft doesn't make its own hardware like Apple does. What Microsoft is trying to do is to make it difficult for hardware manufacturers to build devices that can run both Windows or other operating system. When you buy an ARM device with Windows preinstalled, it'll not be able to run any other OS. When you buy an ARM device that can run Android (or Ubuntu, or WebOS, or ChromeOS) you won't be able to install Windows on it. Unlike any x86 PC, you have to make a choice before you buy the device. You just won't be able to buy an ARM-based tablet, notebook or desktop computer with Windows (paying for it) and run something else. Microsoft hopes that, confronted with this choice, users will opt to lock themselves into a "safe" option.

This is Microsoft leveraging its Windows monopoly to pressure hardware manufacturers into fragmenting the market in ways that restrict competition.

The problem with ARM is, there's no standardized platform like there is on x86. You need SoC specific drivers for every chip, and in some cases these are only available to hardware partners. This is an ARM problem.

Microsoft cannot leverage its Windows monopoly in the ARM tablet market. Mainly because it doesn't have a Windows monopoly in the ARM tablet market. And Microsoft does make their own hardware. The only difference is, they also license their OS out to third party partners. You want to use their software, you agree to their license. Don't like it? Run Android (most of the world does).

> Microsoft cannot leverage its Windows monopoly in the ARM tablet market

Really? So, Windows software won;'t need a recompile to run on ARM?

> The only difference is, they also license their OS out to third party partners.

As long as they limit competition and prevent the devices from running anything but Windows.

> You want to use their software, you agree to their license.

Except that it doesn't work like that when you try to leverage the power one monopoly affords you to prevent competition in another market.

You're being intentionally dense in order to spread FUD about Windows 8. What you're saying is demonstrably untrue. Whether you want to accept that or not, it'd be helpful if you refrained from joining a conversation if you don't have anything constructive to say.

> What you're saying is demonstrably untrue.

Citation needed.

No that's plain wrong. Microsoft is demanding that only for Windows RT tablets. The same manufacturer is free to make tablets that run Android or Ubuntu or whatever.

Apparently, that's not true. Atom Clover Trail devices will not support anything but Windows 8, and I don't think it's just a driver issue. It's a bootloader issue, too:

http://semiaccurate.com/2012/09/27/intels-clover-trail-is-a-...

That's a decision between Intel and Microsoft on how to make an x86 computer that is optimized for Windows 8. It has nothing to do with a Microsoft policy. You can install Windows 8 on any x86 hardware you want alongside any other x86 compatible OS of your choice.

Let's be clear: the rules for Windows 8 certification is that manufacturers must allow the user to disable secure boot and allow them to install another OS. This is the exact opposite of what people here are arguing. There is a lot of FUD being spread, and it's just not true.

> the rules for Windows 8 certification is that manufacturers must allow the user to disable secure boot and allow them to install another OS

This is not true for ARM-based devices. Any ARM-based device that comes with Windows pre-installed will have its bootloader locked and only be able to run Windows.

True, but since this particular sub-thread is about an x86 processor, I don't think I'm wrong.

As far as I remember, it started with a comment on locked down tablets. Since the x86 tablets with W8 won't necessarily be locked down, I assumed you were talking about ARM-based ones.

mtgx moved the conversation to Intel Atom processors.

The mix of plain desktop and touch environment is what draws me to Win8. I didn't get a Asus Transformer, as the only emacs I could get there was in a terminal, and in a sandbox. With a Win8 tablet, I get tablet-y stuff, and a full desktop env with a full unsandboxed emacs. Exactly what I want.

So I hope they keep this best-of-both-worlds for the forseeable future.

Only if you get the x86 version. Arm version only runs Explorer, IE and Office in desktop mode

No, they don't want "Metro-only" . This is bullshit. Stop spreading it.

That's a very weak counterargument. Why would Microsoft prefer to carry on developing both interfaces when the majority of users will clearly prefer Metro?

Its how MS marketing works: Metro is new thing they must sell and they are promoting it best they can (and that's not always the best way it could be done). Classic mode will remain on desktop in the future, and Metro is for tablets and desktops. New versions of Photoshop, Premiere, Audocad, Maya, 3d Studio, SAP, VisualStudio, SQLMS,... will be desktop versions, installed directly, not from MS Store. So really dont know why Minecraft can't be sold on Minecraft web, files downloaded and installed manually, like its done last 20 years, and it will be done probably in next 10 years?

I really think you should read this: http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html

BBC is using their platform to issue counter-attacks to legitimate complaints by independent developers. Nothing new here people, move along.

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