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Comment by ezfe | Hacker News Reader

I have lots of problems with Microsoft but the Minecraft transition was handled very responsibly.

I ran into problems because some time before the transition happened some bot use my email address to sign up for an XBox account, in German for some reason. So I have to first do an account takeover on some bot account that has been used for no doubt unsavory purposes meaning my Minecraft account is now tied to something that's likely to be randomly locked. Also, some communication has to be done in German because there is no way to change the original language set on the account, although most pages can be converted to English if I look through the various settings pages. Email is always in German though.

Also, can I say what a mess the whole Microsoft account thing is? There's at least three different systems kinda duct taped together and settings are scattered seemingly at random among those systems. Want to connect your Java Minecraft instance to a server you are running? Be ready to dive through pages of kid protection and security settings looking for the option that lets you do that again. Also, logging in used to be "enter your username and password when the game starts", but now involves a bunch of bouncing around half a dozen or so Microsoft pages getting redirects that fail 60% of the time for no stated reason. It's kinda killed any enthusiasm I have for checking out new releases, just knowing that I'm going to waste 10 minutes just trying to get the damn login working again.

> can I say what a mess the whole Microsoft account thing

absolutely agree

Fun fact, Xbox profiles can be disconnected from Microsoft accounts without doing 2FA verification. It's a whole problem right now.

Using a third-party launcher (e.g. Prism) mostly fixes that nonsense, at least.

Mine wasn't. I lost my main account as I couldn't verify I owned it given it was bought on a whim years ago through a giftcard, and they didn't have many recovery methods for those users. Then they permanently deleted the account after the transfer window was over. Luckily I had a second account I could transfer, but even if I could transfer the other account, you cannot have multiple Minecraft accounts tied to a single Microsoft account and having multiple Microsoft accounts is against TOS.

You couldn't verify you owned it because you didn't have access to the email presumably? What account system doesn't work like that?

Also - having multiple Microsoft accounts is absolutely permitted, I have multiple due to their Xbox profile messiness (it is possibly to detach Xbox profiles and they can't be reattached if you ever navigate to the Xbox website while it's detached...) and senior support endorsed it as the recommended solution.

The biggest issue I have with it was the lack of support for multiple accounts a la World of Warcraft style: why do I need 3 Microslop accounts?

I would agree.

They honored my account, and I originally bought the game when you had to send Notch money directly for him to send you a copy.

Microsoft was great in this instance.

As one of the Devs responsible for the technical part of that transition: thank you. We tried real hard to give users the best possible experience, but I think it has nevertheless been the least appreciated piece of code I have ever written. So it's nice to finally hear some positive accounts from users!

So, again, just thanks for saying this.

I truly think you folks did the account transition in the most user-friendly, considerate way you possibly could. There was SO MUCH TIME to migrate and SO MANY WARNINGS about it needing to be done. I'm sorry you haven't been appreciated for it. Well done!

Really? I still have my 9.95 PayPal email receipt from buying the game in 2010, but I don’t have a single email sent to that email address about any sort of migration.

As if giving users more time to accept bad terms before the rug pull is commendable.

"It needing to be done"?

I didn't accept any terms with MS and I haven't received any refund or whatever other compensation.

>the best possible experience

It's comforting to know that a game I bought and paid for, that was taken from me, is "the best possible experience".

It soured me so much on Minecraft that I can't even be bothered to pirate it.

I paid for Minecraft and can no longer play it. I'm supposed to be thankful for this?

If you choose to work for EvilCorp don't be surprised when you get assigned to work on tickets that make people unhappy.

When you "buy" anything digital, you're not ever owning it.

It's unfortunate, and Microsoft is no saint, but Mojang's depreciation was inevitable.

Notch's terms of sale were that you get access to every version of Minecraft forever.

Notch has said a lot of things that are rather evidently untrue in reality.

The solution is consumer rights laws, not victim blaming.

Minecraft has an authoritative nameserver. Even regulation wouldn't decouple it from the owner.

I can't even download and play the game that I purchased in single player mode. The name server doesn't matter for that.

I mean, the code is unappreciated because the fundamental premise was broken. Locking users out of their paid accounts if they don't respond within some X deadline (no matter how long X is), without a refund, is a completely unacceptable "solution" to technical debt. The fact that you tried your best to give users a good experience doesn't matter if it's serving a fundamentally broken goal.

I don't love that I need a Microsoft account to log into minecraft, but the alternative was losing it permanently.

barely made it myself. Turns out the MS username namespace didn't allow all minecraft names. I repeatedly failed migration because it was trying to auto-port an illegal username. the error was of course entirely opaque.

The MS username space is completely unrelated to the Minecraft one. You have two usernames and the old ones haven’t been changed.

don’t know why you’re getting downvoted, they gave legacy users literal years to migrate

I just downloaded a game I bought on steam 12 years ago and played it. I hadn't really thought of the game in the intervening time. If this had been minecraft, I'd have had to pay for the game again because I didn't convert my account.

But no, subnautica was ready to go, though the base building was just as buggy as it was before.

They should have made it a seamless transition for legacy users.

They could have just emailed new codes to every legacy email on file and that would at least given the possibility of keeping most customers whole.

I really don't care about Microsoft's maintenance costs. I should be able to play the game I paid for 20 years from now without having to jump through hoops in the intervening period. It's not my fault that they decided to make my perfectly normal account a "legacy" account, that was their decision.

It would have been better if they hadn't required you to migrate at all. And a lot of people, including me, ran into issues during the migration process. Thankfully I was able to get it sorted out after contacting support, but other people weren't so lucky.

Just want to chime in as an anecdote who could not migrate. I attempted to migrate within the deadlines, yet the system refused to work. Contacted support and they were no help, in spite of my receipt and presumably, Notch’s log of my purchase.

But hey, trillion dollar company tried hard. Nothing more could have been done.

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