English
Gamereactor
news
Minecraft

Notch defends Mojang from accusations

Studio accused of being "literally worse that EA".

Subscribe to our newsletter here!

* Required field
HQ

Marcus "Notch" Persson has written a lengthy blog defending a recent change to Minecraft's EULA, refuting suggestions from some quarters that the studio is "literary worse then EA".

After a recent change to the end user agreement, whereby Mojang sought to formally clarify that players weren't allowed to profit from making gameplay-changing features, the studio were hit with a wave of protests.

This situation started when Mojang's Erik Broes tried to clarify the state of play on Twitter, saying: "you can charge for hosting servers, but not for gameplay features".

Basically the studio wants gamers to all have the same basic experience, that servers are fine for players to charge access for, but the basic code belongs to Mojang; points that Notch reiterates in his blog:

The EULA for Minecraft says you can't make money of Minecraft. If you make mods, they have to be free. If you host a server, you can charge for access to your hardware, but not for individual elements in the game. Once YouTube and streaming got bigger, we added specific exceptions saying you can totally monetize video content about the game.


Some privately run Minecraft servers do charge for ingame items, for xp boosts, for access to certain game modes. Some of them even charge quite a lot. I don't even know how many emails we've gotten from parents, asking for their hundred dollars back their kid spent on an item pack on a server we have no control over. This was never allowed, but we didn't crack down on it because we're constantly incredibly swamped in other work.

Someone saw that the EULA says you can't charge for these things, and asked one of the people working at Mojang about it. That person said that yes, it is indeed against the rules, and then everything exploded. A lot of people got the impression that we're changing the EULA somehow to only now disallow these things, but they were never allowed. A lot of people voiced their concerns. A few people got nasty. Someone said we're literally worse than EA.

We had discussions about it internally, and eventually had a big meeting where we said that yes, people running servers are a huge part of what makes Minecraft so special, and that they need to be able to pay for the servers. So we came up with all sorts of ways this could be done without ruining the "you don't pay for gameplay" aspect of Minecraft we all find so important. These rules we're posted in non-legal speak here: mojang.com/2014/06/lets-talk-server-monetisation (our lawyers are probably having a lot of fun trying to turn that into legal text). There are new rules. These are new exceptions to the EULA. All of these make the rules more liberal than things were before.

Minecraft

Related texts

0
Minecraft: Xbox 360 EditionScore

Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition

REVIEW. Written by Mike Holmes

"Time disappears in Minecraft. It is an absorbing experience, one that demands just one more minute in perpetuity."

1
MinecraftScore

Minecraft

REVIEW. Written by Jesper Karlsson | GR Sweden

"I would like to compare Minecraft to my favourite TV show of all times - Seinfeld. It's a game about nothing."



Loading next content