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

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

#221

Post by arboles »

kragen wrote: post #41

Minetest is probably the best Minecraft alternative; it's free and open source software, which avoids the danger associated with centralized retaliation systems like the one Microsoft is operating. Also, it's easier to write mods for, partly because mods are written in Lua, and you don't have to install mods on the client, just the server. https://www.minetest.net/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6Fyav6FiIs The vide…

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

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

#222

Post by JetAlone »

jacknews wrote: post #169
ezfe wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bedrock Edition and Java Edition licenses have been "merged." That being said, if you're banning your kids from playing Minecraft because Microsoft Bad, that's just shitty.

They are perfectly happy playing in the current open ecosystem, why should they be forced to change? I'm maybe being a bit dramatic by saying I'll ban them, but they will certainly be given a lesson on taking a stand, and if necessary making sacrifices, to defend freedoms and not give in to coercion. It's not at all 'microsoft bad', except in this case, it seems they are.

Precisely, it's a teaching opportunity. My parents denied me certain things, and while I "hated" them for it sometimes, I have grown to understand why. It did have the very real cost of making socializing more difficult, and yet precisely that prepared me for this kind of sacrifice. Long term, I'm grateful for that, they were real, actual parents.

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

#223

Post by RUN12 »

TakeBlaster16 wrote: post #40
lolinder wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What if they ran official Microsoft servers with moderated chat, but also let you join custom servers after showing a scary warning message (and maybe checked your account birthday or something too). Would that not be enough to free them of liability?

Why the assumption that they care only about liability? Minecraft is now a multi-decade game and they want to keep it as the #1 king of it's domain to sell copies for many more decades.

That will be hard if parents see headlines about "Minecraft" (no, the specific server host won't matter) being used to exploit or otherwise prey upon children and stop buying it.

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

#224

Post by RUN12 »

amiga-workbench wrote: post #6

I think now is the time for people to be putting their energies into something like Minetest[1] so they can't have the rug pulled on them. There are already some mods available, but it would be great to see more ported. [1] https://www.minetest.net/

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.

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

#225

Post by simion314 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #202
jaarse wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

> Every couple of months one of his friends will get banned for no reason. I know you want to trust your child’s friends, but “it happened for no reason” is exactly what kids say when they don’t want to own up to the consequences of their actions. Obviously, you can only monitor your own child’s gameplay and not what their friends are doing on their own time. I strongly suspect there’s more going on than you realize.…

My son was banned by Sony for 2 months, there were a few things Sony did wrong so they are now on my shit list

1 the bastards did not send me the parent any detaisl about the ban, just a extremely vague reason so I have to guess all possible reasons (maybe chat, maybe screenshots shared in chat, maybe Sony devs fucked up with native languages, maybe my son tells the truth and it was that guy that demanded Fortnite gifts otherwise they will report them and get them banned

2 Sony did not let me appeal, or ask for details, fuck you Sony, you lost a customer

3 at that time I had a 12 months subscription that is required for online play, so the banning robbed me for 2 months subscriptions.

IMO, I believe my son , that it was a troll, Sony lost a customer , they could avoided this if they could show me exactly the "crime", I could then educate my son if he used some "bad word" (we are not native speackers so he might not know that some word is dangerous, soem can use it but if you get reported you are screwed)

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

#226

Post by gjs278 »

socialismisok wrote: post #143

Oh shit, they are moderating chat in a game for children and responding to player reports? Pretty ghoulish, if you ask me. /S Come on, are we really complaining that public chat is moderated now? Is that really where the bar has sunk to?

No post body was provided.

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

#227

Post by jonathankoren »

jaarse wrote: post #116
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…

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 h…

As the father of a 10 year old that’s into Roblox right now,I think you’re being a bit naïve about your kids’ actions.

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

#228

Post by GlitchMr »

zarzavat wrote: post #157
caslon wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 te…

When I bought my license it came with a promise that the game would be made open source in the future. That never happened.

Minecraft website said the following:

> Once sales start dying and a minimum time has passed, I will release the game source code as some kind of open source. I'm not very happy with the draconian nature of (L)GPL, nor do I believe the other licenses have much merit other than to boost the egos of the original authors, so I might just possibly release it all as public domain.

This did not happen yet, Minecraft is still selling really well.

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

#229

Post by RUN12 »

causalmodels wrote: post #218
RUN12 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet far less naive than believing a group of 10 year-olds are being repeatedly banned for no reason with their chat off, instead of the obvious that when parents aren't looking they're being abusive to others in chat. Reminds me of the classic: > No, I wasn't looking at dirty websites, it was a virus!

Can you name a single moderation system that operates on this scale that will not automatically ban someone for getting mass reported? This is a fairly well known phenomenon.

That's obviously not what's happening here though. I have plenty of adult friends who go on public and private servers and actively trash talk during games and have never been banned. And none of their friends have been banned. A small group of 10 year-old children aren't having a coordinated attack of hundreds to thousands of reports against them repeatedly over many months.

Not to mention tacking on the requirement that instead of a bunch of 10 year-old children being - as they tend to be - offensive/testing limits when adults aren't looking, Microsoft is publicly lying to their customers (creating liability) and implementing an automated system so poor it doesn't so much as check if the reported user even uses chat.

EDIT: To further substantiate what I'm saying, I just checked and you cannot submit a report without selecting the specific messages that relate to it. The UX requires that the individual messages are selected and cannot be submitted empty. The parent is at least being misled in thinking their child or their friends don't use the chat feature.

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

#230

Post by curiousgal »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #202
jaarse wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

> Every couple of months one of his friends will get banned for no reason. I know you want to trust your child’s friends, but “it happened for no reason” is exactly what kids say when they don’t want to own up to the consequences of their actions. Obviously, you can only monitor your own child’s gameplay and not what their friends are doing on their own time. I strongly suspect there’s more going on than you realize.…

> what kids say when they don’t want to own up to the consequences of their actions.

Oof. They're kids. Cursing here and there is not the end of the world.

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