I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you • Hacker News Board

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#331

Post by cmeacham98 » Thu, Dec 08, 2022, 10:51 AM UTC

Karellen wrote: post #279

cmeacham98 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible this is true, but then the author needs to stop acting like they are totally blameless and everything is just where the universe took him. All of the author's problems here are self-inflicted.

Where does the author act like they are totally blameless?

> Nobody is the bad guy

> We just didn’t understand each other, because we were playing different language games.

The author collectively places the blame on poor communication from both sides. But the reality is that all of the poor communication was entirely from his side, and he knew in advance he struggled talking about money and had an agent for that very purpose.

There's also this whole weird subsection where he describes things the universe did to him as if he has no agency in his own actions and where he ended up in life.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#332

Post by emptyfile » Thu, Dec 08, 2022, 10:52 AM UTC

dewhelmed wrote: post #243

lelanthran wrote: post #163

Quoted post unavailable.

Wow, what an unpleasant hate-filled response to a single paragraph taken out of context from the entire post. The fact that his work is still referenced, is still part of the game, and wanted by people on t-shirts/mugs/etc is significantly more contribution than the moronic made-up "0.000000000001%" number you claim. He is a flawed person and he admits it several times in his post. But he also uses his story to highl…

No post body was provided.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#333

Post by bowsamic » Thu, Dec 08, 2022, 10:52 AM UTC

wickedsight wrote: post #323

bowsamic wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you think it's socially acceptable to be a flawed person? Flaws aren't something we excuse just because people express them. Expressing them doesn't absolve you of them. They are still there, as flaws, and therefore people react to them as flaws.

> Why would you think it's socially acceptable to be a flawed person? It isn't, but it should be, because everyone is a flawed person. The fact that we have all have to act like we don't makes our current society so incredibly toxic. It causes everyone to pretend to be something they're really not, because otherwise they become ostracized from their community. This is incredibly polarizing and causes (in US politics)…

If flaws were fine things to be accepted, then they wouldn't be classified as flaws.

What is society if we just accept all problems as part of the person or else society will be toxic?

Also has there ever been a society where flaws are just accepted without any kind of judgement? I would suggest that in those societies they simply did not classify them as flaws.

> If we all just accept that everyone has flaws and we can express them, then we can take them into account and deal with them

We can and do accept that but again that doesn't fix the flaw or absolve the person of the responsibility of the flaw.

I personally think the toxicity of modern society actually arises from the fact that we don't feel comfortable openly judging people's flaws, rather than the opposite.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#334

Post by franciscop » Thu, Dec 08, 2022, 10:52 AM UTC

Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #40

I feel for the guy, making a living off of art is difficult. However, with an extensive email chain explaining the story was written as the ending of Minecraft, even going into detail about how it was to be displayed in game, an agreed upon offer (if a bit vague), and then an exchange of funds - with no immediate attempt to return said funds. I'm no lawyer, but that sounds a lot like a legally binding agreement. > So…

Definitely not, one of the first things you learn when becoming a freelancer is that it's very important to specify in the contracts what the deliverables are exactly, specially regarding copyright, source files, photoshop file vs final product, etc.

The reason is because in most cases (this is ~1 decade old personal research/opinion) unless specified the client is paying for access and use to the final product you make, not necessarily for anything else. This is the sane thing though, but in business in many cases you might want to also receive the blueprints, source code, assets, copyright, etc. This might be "obvious" depending on the industry and case, but that means it's not obvious at all in a general sense.

For example here, the company (and that might be why Microsoft backed up) might be happy with just being able to use the work, even if they don't have an exclusive contract or are the copyright holders of that particular bit. I do agree that it seems Mojang had implicit permission at least to use it, but not exclusive/full copyright/etc.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#335

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 08, 2022, 10:53 AM UTC

Kiro wrote: post #309

mort96 wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, he considers himself "one of the creators of Minecraft". Because he is one of the creators of Minecraft; he created a part of the game. He doesn't consider himself "the creator of Minecraft", as you claimed. You can think he puts down regular employees and makes himself seem more important than is warranted. You may think his contribution is tiny compared to the contribution of people who marketed the game or ma…

"The creator" and "one of the creators" are not mutually exclusive. Both can be true. > Steve Jobs is the founder of Apple Inc., along with Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne. Anyway, I changed the comment to "one of the creators".

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Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#336

Post by bambax » Thu, Dec 08, 2022, 10:53 AM UTC

erklik wrote: post #313

operator-name wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit sad because I think many here are missing the lesson to be learnt - artists want to be treated as artists (with emotion rather than rationality). When you treat them as cold hearted rational contractors, this kind of mess occurs. I'm reminded of a similar event with the Doom soundtrack https://medium.com/@mickgordon/my-full-statement-regarding-d...

> artists want to be treated as artists (with emotion rather than rationality). That doesn't make any sense. When you treat people with "emotions" ... this is the issue. Emotions are unclear, confusing and are different for everyone. Treating people based on emotions and feelings just results in inequality and confusion for everyone. This the perfect example where if treated it as a rational and business transaction,…

If you don't want to deal with emotions then it's hard to hire artists, because it's what they do and what they are made of.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#337

Post by pdpi » Thu, Dec 08, 2022, 10:55 AM UTC

As a human story, this is kind of tragic. I feel for the guy.

As a legal story, it’s fascinating, and I’d love to see it go to court, for no other reason than to

There’s some passages in there that could be understood as implied consent — them using the text after the author explicitly tells Carl that copyright assignment is off the table implies Mojang accepts that condition. The author’s failure to respond to the contract in a timely manner once it was sent probably also implies consent, but maybe not?

Then there’s the matter of jurisdiction, as you have a Swedish company dealing with an Irishman (probably irrelevant) living in Germany (definitely relevant). Probably a fair few more complications in there that I failed to notice.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#338

Post by beAbU » Thu, Dec 08, 2022, 10:56 AM UTC

I've had Minecraft since before the pre-alpha days. I think I had a pirated copy of Alpha late in 2010 and some time in 2011 or shortly thereafter I actually bought the game. I might have easily sunk 1000s of hours into this game.

I think I played the ending only once, in Creative Mode, to see what the fuss was about. I never cared for the ending, because to me Minecraft never had an ending. We had a Survival server in our university computer science lab and we mostly played on there, just hanging out and building cool stuff.

Reading TFA, I feel like the author is gaslighting me into feeling guilty because he did not manage to cash out big time like the rest? He amplifies his contribution making it sound like this big thing when it's not really a big thing. Other than the ending, I don't recall there being any other story in MC? What purpose does a poetic ending have if the journey up until that point has no real impact? The ending of Portal 1 is significantly more poetic in my eyes, and it's left a lasting impression on me that makes me sad when I realize that I can't share it with anyone else.

Going on and on about how much the game was sold for, how nice Notch's new house is, how Notch made so much money that he could just hand it out to his team, how the author thought they were all friends reads to me like someone who is very bitter and jealous. Writing more than 12k words to bring is point across does not help. Then claiming loudly that he's made peace with the universe and his lot after a magic mushroom trip in the middle of the forest just kind of puts the cherry on top for me. He comes across as an insufferable "artist" and maybe that's why he was pushed out/excluded like this.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#339

Post by skolsuper » Thu, Dec 08, 2022, 10:57 AM UTC

dcow wrote: post #98

widforss wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But he doesn't have a case, does he? He wrote the piece _for_ Minecraft and accepted the payment as such.

Then he would have been told as much by any lawyer he approached. Point was that not having money wouldn't be a nonstarter. And of course, even though he said he didn't approach anybody, the speculative part of my brain actually thinks he informally may have done so and received such advice (that he didn't have a case) and conveniently omitted as much from the narrative.

I doubt any lawyer would bring a suit against one of the biggest corporations on the planet on contingency. Its going to be a hell of a lot of work to win even a clear-cut case against an opponent with this much resources. See also: the cave-diver that sued Elon Musk for defamation. Or Miller UK vs Caterpillar Inc (they won, but it took 5 years)

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#340

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 08, 2022, 10:57 AM UTC

soneca wrote: post #324

cmeacham98 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible this is true, but then the author needs to stop acting like they are totally blameless and everything is just where the universe took him. All of the author's problems here are self-inflicted.

Very weird take. The author talks several times that “there are no baddies”. At one point they literally say about the conversation with the CEO: ”The misunderstanding was all mine.”

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