Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bae.st

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 474 posts

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

#101

Post by joshspankit »

8jy89hui wrote: post #2

Does anyone have any insight into why Microsoft thought this was necessary? Minecraft has been server-moderated for years now and has been wildly successful. I've never heard of any hate groups or even hateful servers (I'm sure they exist, but they don't make the news in a way that would harm Microsoft). Is there some legislation that would make it a liability for Microsoft to not moderate all the chat? This move jus…

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.

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

#102

Post by OrangeMonkey »

pvg wrote: post #52
OrangeMonkey wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re speech - The government typically does not fare well when they try to restrict a persons speech. Re Swatting - because there was no proof. The forums actually had a pretty hard policy about anything that appeared to be swatting related and banned users immediately for it. With the forums taking a hard stance against swatting, with proof, why would they have been found liable. So because nothing was provable or ill…

Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Fair. I've edited the comment. Let me know if you think its still an issue.

Thanks.

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

#103

Post by ckemere »

dmix wrote: post #99
ckemere wrote: post #94

It's apparently a minority voice opinion here on HN, but I for one appreciate what Microsoft is trying to do. As a parent of a 6 and 9 year old who have really gotten into Minecraft during COVID, I appreciate them basically deciding "We want Minecraft to be a game for kids and an online community that is nice." I get why people are frustrated, but I also like the idea of a global decision that forces servers open to…

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.

I guess I don't understand - the troll will report your 6 year old for dropping f-bombs? And the chat logs (which MS will now have) will back then up? And why are you inviting trolls to play with your 6 year old?

(We're somewhat new to Minecraft, so I may be missing something here.)

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

#104

Post by StanislavPetrov »

caslon wrote: post #100
ckemere wrote: post #94

It's apparently a minority voice opinion here on HN, but I for one appreciate what Microsoft is trying to do. As a parent of a 6 and 9 year old who have really gotten into Minecraft during COVID, I appreciate them basically deciding "We want Minecraft to be a game for kids and an online community that is nice." I get why people are frustrated, but I also like the idea of a global decision that forces servers open to…

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.

How many people bought the game before these draconian policies were implemented? They should offer refunds.

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

#105

Post by caslon »

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #104
caslon wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How many people bought the game before these draconian policies were implemented? They should offer refunds.

That's not the deal with proprietary software. The deal is that you buy a license to software, the terms of which can be altered at any time.

It's fundamental to the model of proprietary software.

It's not theirs. It's the company's, and the company can do what they want with it.

There's no reason refunds should be offered, as the consumers got what they paid for: A license to software, with certain conditions for termination and conditions allowing the company to alter the terms of the arrangement.

It's like saying that a person should be able to get a refund on an ice cream cone that melts: The deterioration is part of the standard deal, and you know it's coming.

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

#106

Post by dane-pgp »

kimmeld wrote: post #76
bisby wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft profits off Bedrock ("Minecraft for WIndows") because they can charge for basically everything, because there are no mods (addons). Java edition is where the mods are. Which is why hypixel/skyblock are on java edition. Ive seen speculation that Microsoft is adding this to have a process for banning java edition players. And then they just... stop selling java edition. Then there are no new java players ever…

Sounds like they learned from Apple pretty well.

Speaking of Apple, this reminds me of the story that when Microsoft bought Bungie Studios in 2000, they got an angry phone call from Steve Jobs, since Bungie were the last big game studio that made games for Mac computers.

https://www.macrumors.com/2010/10/26/apple-history-jobs-rage...

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

#107

Post by autoexec »

dasil003 wrote: post #87
amiga wrote: post #8

Anyone who has ever seen an MS acquisition play out before knew this was coming. Minecraft has been open for some time, and that has an effect counter to the control that MS seeks over its products. "Embrace, extend, extinguish" has been the strategy for decades.

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 argume…

> A better question is: what incentive does Microsoft have to alienate its playerbase this way?

It does continue to condition the peasant-consumer class, especially the young ones, that the products they pay for can be taken from them on the whims of their corporate overlords. That they should expect to censor themselves and each other to appease their betters. Xbox users learned this already (https://www.ign.com/articles/2018/03/27/microsoft-can-now-ba...), now minecraft users will lean their lesson, and tomorrow it will be Windows users (and therefore 80% of the worlds computer users) who will learn to obey Microsoft's will. Software is a Service and no matter what you paid or how long you've used it, that Service is still only a privilege. Displease your masters and that privilege can and will be taken from you.

Okay, that is an exaggeration, but not nearly as much of one as I'd like.

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

#110

Post by zbird »

ckemere wrote: post #103
dmix wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I guess I don't understand - the troll will report your 6 year old for dropping f-bombs? And the chat logs (which MS will now have) will back then up? And why are you inviting trolls to play with your 6 year old? (We're somewhat new to Minecraft, so I may be missing something here.)

> I guess I don't understand - the troll will report your 6 year old for dropping f-bombs?

They'll report for no reason, that's the point of trolling.

> And the chat logs (which MS will now have) will back then up?

I have not played Minecraft, but I'd be surprised if the server admins of any game of such scale acted on logs.

Also, I wouldn't want my kids to be logged on a corporate server.

> And why are you inviting trolls to play with your 6 year old?

Are the rooms invite only? Then what's the point of Microsoft's draconian measures here? I thought the point was to censor public servers, but again, I haven't played this much.

In any case, this situation already looks like defeat for an online community.

Post reply on HN