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Comment by luxuryballs | Hacker News Reader

This makes the Minecraft model look all that much better than it already was, users pay for an account, the servers are self hosted by the community, as far as I can tell on the surface level Minecraft would already comply with this legislation.

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Not quite, afaict. When the auth servers are shut down, you wouldnt be able to play it anymore, even in single player.

In addition to the sibling comment, even Minecraft server has an "online-mode" setting, and if it's set to false, it doesn't authenticate players. Whenever my family has played on LAN, we've never used any auth servers (which is clear because we don't give Minecraft any credentials). The setting only applies to LAN players, but that should be easy enough to work around with a VPN or something.

Doesnt the client need an initial authentication to microsoft servers?

You need to authenticate to download the game, but then you can play it as much as you want even offline. This is true for Prism Launcher, anyway. I haven't used the official launcher in years.

Does Minecraft's offline mode not work indefinitely? I'm not familiar with the official launcher but this article [1] doesn't say anything about needing to reconnect occasionally.

[1] https://www.practical-tips.com/games/play-minecraft-offline-...

> First, you need to make sure Minecraft is installed on your device. Once this is complete, log in to the launcher while you are still online. This will save your login details for offline access.

It still requires an initial authentication.

A connection to Microsoft's servers will also be required to download the game in the first place, so I'm not sure this is really a problem (for compliance with the bill). I think the official launcher won't even let you download the game without authenticating first, but I'm not sure.

I imagine people will immediately patch out the auth requirement once the auth servers go away for good.

the auth servers aren’t a meaningful blocker in terms of technical debt imo

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