In my opinion, their website is broken in some ways the old one wasn't, back when Mojang still owned the IP, and broken in new ways that couldn't have been possible before.
I've already migrated my account, but forgot about having done it. If you try to remigrate, it will tell you that you already have an account associated with the Microsoft account, and it will encourage you to buy it again?
When you're logged in, the Get Minecraft button... also encourages you to buy the game again, instead of taking you to the download page.
How do you screw this stuff up?
How do you screw up account migration?
Look at these other comments here. This is a technical audience. Those poor parents who aren't technical are going to end up rebuying these stupid copies for their kids because of Microsoft's incompetence.
Edit: I'll take a minute to also share this related article I just posted. "Changes I Would Like To See in Game Development and Industry " - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35865390
They have other issues as well. I went to buy my son Minecraft: Dungeons as a gift, and after the purchase, it was associated with my Microsoft account. I was unable to gift the game to him, so had to purchase the game again while logged in under his Microsoft account. Nowhere did it state that the game would be associated with my account, and I wasn't even aware I was logged into my Microsoft account.
I had to buy the game as a gift, then type the product key in manually on the kids account, because for some reason it wouldn't send it as email...
I also tried to buy the game as the kid, parental control blabla, I got a request that the kid wants the game, and when I went to pay for it as myself, on behalf of the kid, it wouldn't let me change the country from United States, so I couldn't enter a valid billing address...
All this took hours, while the kid impatiently nags "can we play, can we play, can we play"...!! And then it's the /insane/ launch times to start playing... At the very least, once you're in the game (java edition) it all works very well with LAN multiplayer.
> All this took hours, while the kid impatiently nags "can we play, can we play, can we play"...!!
As a fellow minecraft Dad (who hasn't yet purchased Dungeons...looks cool but Create mod is the current addiction), pro tip - don't give a small child a gift you haven't confirmed is ready to go yet.
There are times when it's good to teach a kid patience, how to assemble and adjust the derailleur on a bicycle, or how to install software updates, or how to configure port forwarding for a server, or how to safely charge and maintain lipo batteries, or whatever...but the start of limited screen time on the weekend, or Christmas morning unwrapping presents, or their birthday party with everyone watching....that is not the time. It's definitely not the time to find out that the new gadget is dead-on-arrival and teach them about the RMA process.
Kids don't care if the shrink wrap is not intact or if it doesn't have that "new car" plasticizer smell, they just want to play with it. And if you can keep them from getting addicted to peeling off the clear membrane from a glossy new gadget, later they'll be more open to the possibility of more frugal used goods.
If the gift needs to be on the kid's account, how would you ensure it was 'ready to go' before christmas day, without the kid being able to see it on their account, getting a bunch of notifications etc?
The is a reason that Santa only comes when the kids are quite and in bed in my house, and it also explains why my dad was always tired in the morning growing up
> All this took hours, while the kid impatiently nags "can we play, can we play, can we play"...!! And then it's the /insane/ launch times to start playing... At the very least, once you're in the game (java edition) it all works very well with LAN multiplayer.
I wish this was true for me. My experience was after Microsoft extorted my phone number out of me (for 'verification' of my 10 year old account that I converted) that it now demands a text message 2FA authentication any time I haven't played for awhile. Which since my kids are usually the ones playing means they're usually blocked from starting up again unless I'm home. Which means they kind of just don't play it anymore.
I never wanted a Microsoft account in the first place and I want one even less now.
I got into Minecraft a bit later, and when I purchased it, I got the Windows 10 Edition. I had to have a Microsoft account to play, so I was already set. Minecraft: Dungeons is a completely separate game, more of an isometric perspective. It looks fun, was just hoping that I didn't have to buy it myself until I had a PC to start playing on.
Yeah, this is insane. I also bought the game twice due to that buggy sh*t and that MS/Mojang poor integration, but fortunately they reimbursed one of the purchases after I opened a ticket to the support. But yeah, that UX is so bad...
I setup a new Microsoft account and tried to buy minecraft. Maybe I mistyped a digit, maybe I just got flagged for being an unusual user agent, but I got the account stuck in purgatory indefinitely, along with my credit card number (no starting a new account).
Having gotten flagged that way, there’s no way to buy it anymore; other payment methods also fail due to the flag.
Support took weeks and multiple escalations to figure it out, by which point I had migrated the family server to minetest (which has so many qol improvements that the kids were thrilled to change).
I appreciate it. My gaming PC died at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, but I have new parts to build another PC. I just have to take the time to switch my work PC (at home) with my home PC, and all the software development programs I use, and then I'll end up using my purchase to play with my son. I've setup Minecraft Java servers in the past, and have enjoyed Minecraft Java edition, so I'm hoping I like Minecraft: Dungeons and can make use of my extra purchase.
They also make it really, really hard to purchase the goddamn game for your kid and set it so they can play on your local server. I've done it three times, and just budget a full damn hour for it at this point, though I think the first time took more like three hours.
I mean, they did get my money so I guess why should they care, but I have no idea how people without an actual computer science degree and mumble years of experience un-fucking broken computer horse-shit manage to get through the process.
[EDIT] Oh, advice to any parents considering embarking on this: just lie about your kid's age. Don't try to use their child accounts. It makes the whole thing a much bigger pain in the ass.
And while I'm at it, may as well ask: anyone got a good list of allowlist addresses for Minecraft? I lock down my kids' laptops (you know, like a responsible parent is supposed to) but modern Minecraft is so full of friggin' spyware that it can't even launch without connecting to a bunch of never-seen-before IP addresses every time it starts, which means I have to go put in a pin multiple times to allow those new addresses every single time.
Sure, but even the purchase itself is painful. Having to navigate to an account management screen (which one? There are wrong ones that will be of no help) and change some XBox setting (LOL WTF?) to get local-network multiplayer working is just adding insult to injury, the core problem is that doing anything with Microsoft accounts including trying to give them money is bizarrely complicated in a way that zero other services I've ever used has been.
Aah, I can't speak to the Xbox experience at all, I've only used the Java edition on PC where they give you a jar for the server and you run it somewhere
Oh no, this is for the Java PC version, hence the "WTF?" at the option being buried in XBox settings (in the MS account management settings screens in a web browser, not while trying to do this on an XBox, which device we don't even own, all this was taking place on desktop and laptop computers)
I believe it only happens when the age on an account is under 18. Also requires a Microsoft family account with parental controls to enable chat for <13. Some restrictions of this type can be modded out of the game, though IIRC the restriction on multiplayer is not possible to bypass due to servers checking each login with Mojang servers.
At this point it's just really a pain to make a server and have some of my son's friends join it. The parents need an MS account, then need to associate with the kid, they need to approve things that seems like you want to show their kids a gory horror film. It's like MS is the parent, or MS thinks I'm a bad parent. Come on, I'm the parent, I'm perfectly capable of guiding my kid online.
The excuse is simple: Microsoft is completely disinterested in maintaining two disjoint account management services (complete with all the security, auditing, and attack-surface headaches that entails).
Same reason one's YouTube login is their Google login is their Blogger login.
I held on to my youtube-only YouTube account for a long time, until I realized they'd shadow banned me and my comments to creators weren't getting through, for no reason that I can think of.
Not exactly. G+ was contemporary with / the spearhead for that initiative, but the desire to reify login was something Google was planning to do for awhile; they just used G+ as the focus project around which to pin the initiative. Nobody at Google was really thrilled with having three (four? five?) credential stacks, all with their own bespoke tooling, concept of what an "account" was, security stories, and administrative needs.
(... the one thing that came out of G+ that has stuck around is infrastructure improvements. A lot of the stuff the G+ team wrote to support Google+ behind-the-scenes is still used at Google for other projects now).
And yet it is ridiculous that I have to respond to a 2fa on my phone just to watch youtube on my laptop, every. time.
I have a paid yt account fine, but watching trivial videos is not in the same class with accessing my gmail, or managing my gmail, or even managing my own videos if I were a youtuber. I'm fine with being one identity (well no I'm not but pretend I am) but those are not all the same activity or class of activity.
Not the first rodeo; the MSN Messenger + Skype merge was concentrated janksimus maximus that played no small part in me ultimately dropping Skype all together. (I still use my Microsoft account, originally my Hotmail account, though.)
So when Google locks someone’s account, it’s never because their automated systems are being overzealous or misinterpreted data, but because Google is choosing to be deliberately evil towards that person?
If the cashier at the supermarket rings up something wrong, do they have something against you specifically?
More importantly, do you never make a mistake when interacting with a stranger? If we meet and you make an error during our interaction should I assume you did it on purpose to screw me over?
A straw man fallacy (sometimes written as strawman) is the informal fallacy of refuting an argument different from the one actually under discussion, while not recognizing or acknowledging the distinction. One who engages in this fallacy is said to be "attacking a straw man".
The typical straw man argument creates the illusion of having refuted or defeated an opponent's proposition through the covert replacement of it with a different proposition (i.e., "stand up a straw man") and the subsequent refutation of that false argument ("knock down a straw man") instead of the opponent's proposition.
Copy-pasting a fallacy definition doesn’t make it true, nor does it advance a conversation.
If you believe my comment was unconnected, consider you might not have understood what I meant (then ask for clarification) or that I might not have understood your original point (then clarify it).
Don’t start by assuming malice from the other person, or a productive discussion becomes impossible.
To be honest, Microsoft is in general really clunky when it comes to auth. Azure is a forest of browser redirects, re-logins, wrong tenants. Teams doesn't do multi-tenancy ala Slack and Discord. School/work or personal account? You really shouldn't have to choose, just log the user in. If you can't do that, you've failed.
I think their oauth service is really decent and easy too use (comparatively, since oauth is its own hell in my opinion, I want to join the "basic auth isn't unsafe-club").
For a company that large, it really does login you to many websites if you authenticated at your own third party app of questionable origin. Not every site, but I think office and azure are covered (with corporate accounts at least, which are treated differently I belive).
That said, I really, really dislike using such large auth providers because there are repercussion for anonymity and behavior spying. Microsoft doesn't need to know which services I use. I don't use my private MS account for anything, especially not for Windows.
I wouldn't want to save user info for my webservices anymore, but if I have to I would recommend specialized auth providers like auth0. Don't give that to big tech too.
>When you're logged in, the Get Minecraft button... also encourages you to buy the game again, instead of taking you to the download page
Did a fresh install on Windows 10 this weekend since, you know, I had to upgrade to Win 10 since Microsoft dropped support for Win 8 earlier this year and hadn't installed MC on it yet. I spent probably about 10 minutes trying to find the download page through the site before finally clicking log in to find it.
Then I ran the installer and after the installation finished I logged in but gave me an error something about that I wasn't logged into Windows Store or something. I've never run or logged into Windows Store and intend to never do that. I don't even think I have it installed right now. I tried finding a workaround for another 10 minutes before copying over an old installer from 2017 I had saved somewhere and that installer just worked flawlessly. I've now made a backup of that installer for long term use and just plan on using that one from now on...
I think it would be prudent to download and archive older versions of the game, especially ones that let you run it offline, for long term use before they take those down, as well as older installers and install them in a container/image/VM as a backup. Just be careful running old versions of the server with vulnerabilities like log4j etc. Of course you can also run cracked versions but there's no real need when you already have access to these if you don't care about having the latest updates to MC and you already own those older versions if you had the Mojang account.
>so many of you are already enjoying benefits
Not enjoying it at all. I just want to use the Mojang account. Haven't used a single 'feature' of the Microsoft account that wasn't on the Mojang account.
Beware when migrating, Microsoft will lock you out of your migrated account on first or second use and the only way to get it to unlock it is to receive an SMS... except it rejects a large proportion of SMS numbers. When I first migrated it worked the first day and the next time I logged in they locked me out of the account for no reason (I also only logged in from the same computer both times from the same IP address so not like there was any suspicious activity...). This has also been reported by many users. I spent about half a day trying to find an SMS service that I could use to unlock the account and none of them worked. As a security engineer, I find this to be a poor design pattern -- don't require or assume the user has access to SMS, or even a cell phone, or even any phone (even though I did, wanted to avoid using my personal SIM for it), although allowing the option of 2FA through a phone is still a good practice. Also allow users to use older insecure options if they really want to as long as the risks are made really clear (but don't make it the default either).
edit:
Looked at the original email when buying it from Mojang a decade ago and amazingly the links to download the launcher still work:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/MinecraftDownload/launcher/Minecraft.exe (Windows)
https://s3.amazonaws.com/MinecraftDownload/launcher/Minecraft.zip (Mac OS X)
https://s3.amazonaws.com/MinecraftDownload/launcher/minecraft.jar (Linux)
I have tried repeatedly to move my old account over, and it didn't work. No error code, just fails silently after the second step. Emails to MSFT have gotten responses, but no ROI has happened as a result. This is par for the course for MSFT accounts and Minecraft. They are terrible. MSFT has the WORST account management of any platform. Oh well, I guess I'll stop playing with my kids soon.
If you think MS is bad, try Square Enix sometime. You get to bounce around between about 3 different terrible websites to scratch your nose. Some use email, some use username... it's just a disaster. Oh, and they use some ancient font on at least one of the sites that doesn't even support hinting/AA.
For a span of years, I would periodically (every month or two) manage to get Google in some weird state where it'd just redirect-loop me through a half-dozen domains forever when I tried to do anything. I'd have to delete cookies and start with a fresh session to fix it. It hasn't happened in a while, but I think that might mostly be because I interact with Google a lot less these days.
Crap like this is why people hate computers. How's some non-geek supposed to figure that out?
What’s the second step? I once had trouble transferring a domain between registrars and it turned out to be because I had “!!” at the end of my password which is something like “repeat last command” in some terminals and whatever backend process they were using used my plaintext password somewhere. I had to figure it out on my own and I only thought of it because I had recently ran into issues setting up a local MySQL instance with the same password. I changed my password with the registrar to fix it.
That's the holy grail of backend mistakes, right? Unescaped user input fed into a shell, and worse, that input is their password. How long ago was this?
2009. I couldn't believe how lucky I was to even think of it. I had never run into the issue using that password, which I used everywhere (wouldn't do that these days) except when I tried playing with MySQL on my local machine a few months prior. I think the issue was I couldn't log into the db as admin on the command line, even though it didn't have any trouble setting the password. I don't remember how I figured out that was the problem with MySQL though. I think it had set my password to [start of password]+[last command] and I was able to see that somewhere and deduce how something like that could possibly happen.
When I tried to transfer the domain, support was baffled about why their standard transfer processes was was failing just for my account. I think it went on for a few weeks but I wasn't in any hurry so I didn't bother them much. They kept asking me to try again a bunch, but nothing they changed ever worked. At some point the idea just hit me that the password was the same from that MySQL issue. By that time I had moved on to using a new password everywhere because of that issue, but had never switch it for this account. So I switched the password, tried the transfer again, and it finally worked! I told support what I changed and why I think it might have been causing an issue but they never did directly confirm that was the problem. I'm still pretty sure it was. After I changed the password, they sent me an email with the new password in it, naked as the day it was born.
I had the same problem, but just called MS Support, like they listed in the help section. I had to provide proof of purchase (which I luckily had moved from machine to machine since 2012). They sent me an e-mail with the log-in information.
I've heard back from emailing, but it's useless. They say, "take screen shots". Of WHAT? Of it saying, "it's failed"? There's no error code, nothing. As other posters in thread have said, we're a technical crowd (for me 30+ years in IT, and 15+ at FAANG) and we can't get this crap to work. I think it's WAI – they want us to repurchase.
(For the record, for me, it'll be like 10th time I've bought it, so it's working for MSFT. [The first time I bought it was 5$ to Notch's PP account.])
Take a screen recording of the page, with the devtools javascript console or network tab open. A technical crowd should know what's useful for troubleshooting :)
I hit an issue that sounds like this. There was a captcha URL that was getting blocked by my adblocker. Never ran into a thing like that with any other site. No error, no redirect, just silent failure.
I was migrating 5 accounts at the time, and it hit on the second or third so I was baffled for a bit.
That account migration sucks bigtime. I had to do it for my account and all of my kid's accounts and every single time it was a chore. You aren't signing up for a "Microsoft" account, you're getting an account on like 4 different services that don't talk to each other. Then you have to dig way deep in the settings on one of the services to find the poorly labeled switch (I believe it says something like "allow online chat") that allows the accounts to connect to my local server.
Even more fun for me: The email address I had used to create the Mojang account had long ago been registered by some bot on the Microsoft side. So I had to do an account recovery/takeover in order to do the migration, but it turns out you can't completely switch the language settings so even though the web pages are in English any email from Microsoft comes in German. There's also the possibility that the bot will take the account back at some point, even though I've tried my best to change all of the information in it and I own the associated email address. I'm actually pretty annoyed that Microsoft let the bot register it without ever verifying the email. Also, it gave me a super lame XBox handle and I can't seem to change it.
The old Mojang account was way easier to use.
The only thing worse is when Oculus forced everybody to make new accounts for the headsets to be more (or less?!?) Facebook/Horizon Worlds tied. That was an even bigger headache.
Microsoft seems unable to do language settings as well. I bought a laptop in Germany that came preinstalled with windows, so the first thing I did was switch the OS's language to English. At some point during setup it also asked for my region or some similarly called info and I said Italy. The result is that now most of the OS is in English but random pieces of it revert to either German or Italian every now and then, especially error messages and similar things... Luckily they are languages I somewhat understand at least!
The weird thing is those Java licenses weren't term SaaS subscriptions, they were perpetual. Mojang has some remarkable level of courage to just discontinue access with no pathway to re-enable it.
I wish it were remarkable. Companies discontinuing support for older authentication methods for software that runs completely on the desktop seems to a totally normal if depressing part off using software these days.
I miss the "good" old days when I just had to fight with authentication keys, keeping the right CD-ROM/DVD in the drive for a game to load, and maybe the occasional physical dongle for expensive specialized software.
They’re transitioning everyone to the account system that will exist perpetually and have given lots of warnings; how is that breaking a deal? Software buyers expect to own the license forever, not necessarily to prove ownership the same way forever. I have several old licenses that are accessed through a different system now but still get me what I bought.
Yeah, except that if the migration process doesn't work for some reason, you have zero recourse. Mojang/Microsoft tech support is apparently extremely uninterested in helping people who bought a supposedly "perpetual" license a decade ago. (Or at least, extremely unreliable at doing so.)
After not playing the game for a few years, I tried to migrate my account back when they first announced the migration. Emails from their "password reset" button never arrive, and every time I go through their support ticket system, all they tell me is that they "can't verify my information" -- even though I still have the same email address I signed up with, and the original PayPal receipt. But they won't tell me what other information they want, so I guess I'm SOL.
That definitely sucks. I saw some other reports in this thread that Microsoft phone support can fix problems with the email/account connection flow. Maybe that’ll work for you. I’ve had to call MS to fix Office 365 problems before at work, that shouldn’t have been a problem. Calling can bypass your ticket system status if you escalate.
Because not everyone with a Mojang account can migrate to a Microsoft account. They require you to reverify your email address that you originally used maybe 10 years ago, which Mojang never required for login. A lot of longtime players perma lost their accounts when they forced this transition.
Also, even if it works, the migration is a major pain that nobody asked for. First migration was Minecraft.net onto Mojang, and that was a lot more ok.
The article-- even the title-- says last call. Mojang changed the locks, and they're telling the subset of users they're about to throw away the only mechanism to swap keys from the old system. Any real-world analogy would illustrate the policy is incompatible with any sort of perpetual right of access. I actually think it's Microsoft taking the reputational hit.
That’s consistent with what I wrote but I won’t rehash. I agree Microsoft should take those hits. (Count me as one who wishes Mojang had never sold, for multiple reasons.)
It is transitioning to a Microsoft account, right? Does a Microsoft account have another set of terms and conditions you have to agree to? If so, they’ve broken the old deal and added a new one you have to agree with.
No not really. If they uphold the old agreement under a new set of terms then it’s kind of like switching an already-drunk person from Ketel One to Bacardi Silver.
Maybe the drunk analogy was dumb. I mean practically no ToS in existence has language saying “these terms are set in stone forever and will never change.” Rather they generally stipulate that the terms can change given some kind of reasonable notice period.
This can be done without breaching any existing agreements if whatever being offered under new terms is a commercially-equivalent substitute for the old thing (such as switching from a Mohammed login to a Microsoft Account)
I don’t think that’s a common expectation either. Even when software doesn’t change ownership, terms of ongoing use will change periodically. You can avoid this with some kinds of software by keeping an old version downloaded. With other kinds, like one that requires a login to validate a perpetual license, it’s not possible. I understand being dismayed by it.
Because logging in is baked into use of the software. You can't just store a fully functional offline version of Java Minecraft, at least not without mocking all the server responses it needs (not a meaningful option for most people) or the cracked version that pulls out account features (piracy, an option for slightly more people.)
It does, unfortunately. Standard software terms have had most strong licensee rights ironed out of them for years now, and they were only accidentally present (from the perspective of the vendors) due to imprecise wording and implicit agreements in the first place.
> Mojang Account holders automatically got access to Minecraft: Bedrock Edition for Windows upon migrating to a Microsoft Account as a bonus! What could be better?
People have said they're going to stop support the Java edition since the day Microsoft bought Mojang, but I really doubt it's in their current plans. If they were planning to, they'd just stop updating it, there would be no point in doing this migration in the first place.
I mean, they’ll shut it down eventually, because nothing lasts forever. But that’s a different claim than “this is part of the plan to shut it down in the next few years”.
I can't migrate my account to a Microsoft account because I don't recall associating any e-mail address with my Mojang account and they've never sent me anything. I have the PayPal receipt from 2010 but due to bad bookkeeping on their side they can't verify my account with it. It's a real mess.
An additional bit of silliness I've noticed: they can't even get their EULA and terms of service correct. The EULA at https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/eula points to a binding arbitration agreement that doesn't exist...
Ah yeah my MSFT is in a state where everything is usable except Mojang account transfers. Support was unhelpful to gracefully resolve the situation, and recommended I give up and create a new MSFT account to hold the Mojang account, which I ended up doing. So now I have several MSFT accounts to hold various Mojang accounts.
That is every company these days. If you don't give them a phone number they assume you're a bot. The only people who know how to avoid this are the people who run bot farms.
I wonder why they even keep the "suspicious behaviour" front. My account got locked within seconds after creating it and I had to add a phone number. Who are they trying to protect against? Scammers who bought Minecraft? I didn't even have a chance to behave suspiciously.
I bought a license over a decade ago and refuse to migrate anything to a Microsoft account on general principle. I don't care what IP they bought, I shouldn't have to have any relationship with that company when I didn't buy a single thing from them. I hope Notch and everyone else involved is happy with their piles of cash, because they're never going to see another dime of mine.
But when you click "Submit", nothing happens. I can see that their CORS config is broken and doesn't allow requests to zendesk's API.
I did eventually get my migration to go through. The trick was to enter my security question answers and click the button (where nothing happens, also a bug). Then close the tab and re-open it (control + shift + t).
I bought Minecraft back in 2010. Haven't played in ages, but figured I'd merge the accounts, and give it another go. After I merged, it now says I don't own the game and have to buy it again.
Edit: Logged in again and now it's working. Go figure
I don’t know what Microsoft does in the back end but every damn change seems to take 30+ minutes to percolate through their damn caching on every level.
Migration was a complete nightmare for me. I had a couple of accounts for myself and kids. I used Gmail "plus addressing" for all the accounts. MS actively prevents creating accounts using email "plus addressing" so I had to go through the nightmare of creating several MS accounts and migrate each Mojang account. Every step of the process was painful and slow. And that was just the account setup part. Then I had to create user accounts on their Windows 11 machine and fight with the account linking there. Several hours, and an absurd amount of cursing, later, it was done. Never again. I'll just make my kids play on their Switch if anything goes wrong on the future.
Wow. I was expecting at least to be able to keep my account even if I can't use it to play the game.
The nickname is two characters long, I've received multiple offers from people trying to buy it. I don't want to sell it on the principle that it holds more sentimental value to me than I think its worth.
Now with Microsoft trying to force new TOS (alongside their accounts) down everyone's throats and the game becoming unplayable anyway due to the constant threat of your account being permanently banned just by sheer existence, I don't know what to do.
Do I let the account get lost in the ether as a silent stand against Microsoft?
Do I sell the account for a few thousand $?
Or do I cave into the petty demands of this large corporation and migrate the account. As a bonus, if I tie it to an email address on one of my domains, nobody will be able to ever buy it. (Without also needing to buy the domain. Assuming you can even make a Microsoft account with a non Microsoft email address).
If I fight Microsoft on this then at best I can get a tiny refund for the game.
Is that really true? I see a lot of abject filth on certain servers to this day, it's hard to see how even a simple keyword search for certain particular words wouldn't catch the messages.
Or is it something like those people are using the old accounts still and it won't be a thing after this cange?
> Once sales start dying and a minimum time has passed, I will release the game source code as some kind of open source
I doubt Minecraft's sales are going to drop any time soon. And also, given that Microsoft owns it now, we might never see this anyway. Still something that we can look forward too, though.
That is what I like about using custom launchers. I am using Prism Launcher [1] which keeps all instances (mod packs for me) locally. It includes the MC version, Forge and all mods. If it gets too big for my main partition, I can just archive and move the instance folder to my NAS. I can launch an instance "offline" which doesn't seem to connect or auth with anything. I have never tested though what happens if I do not have a recent-ish auth session.
Bonus feature: I do not have to deal with the Curse client.
I am running prism but I'm not sure that helps if you want to play on a private server (that has disabled auth checks, like I'm sure a bunch of private servers will do if Java dies officially) after the auth servers are shut down.
Edit: anyway, you don't have to deal with the curse client if you're comfortable with installing plugins by hand. Or so it was before i switched to Prism, i could download the jars off Curse without their client.
I bought MC in.. I really don't know when. 2010? maybe?
A long time ago.
I will never migrate my account to microsoft. I hate them with a passion.
Back when google tried to force everyone with a youtube account to singup to that +1 account (what was it? google plus or something?). I never did that. I was not able to reply to any comments on my videos for a years!
Then suddenly I noticed I can comment/reply again. They just silently removed their forced account migration procedure.
microsoft will do the same or they will go to hell for sure.
Ugh, dealing with Minecraft/Microsoft account management is a nightmare. I think somebody really just set out to make it as difficult, obtuse and frustrating as possible. How could Mojang make it painless but Microsoft make it "going to the dentist"?
Is this REALLY what You think? That the only possible reason for this is intentionall malice and not the fact that microsoft account is probably one of the biggest if not the biggest integrated service on the web (from cloud management with azure, trough apps and office suite, trough games, domain control and finally entire OS control across multiple different hardwares), which would inevitably lead to their system being more complicated, thus error prone?
I went through this migration years ago and have been forced to do it twice now. I understand the first migration (since I started a player who sent money to paypal for my license), but it makes no sense having to do it again.
I think I migrated at some point, but I bought a damn alpha license that promised free updates forever. idgaf about minecraft at this point, but, its Microsoft, so I'm not sure why anyone is surprised.
Hmm, I tried logging in there but I get "You seem to be offline, press reload to try again." oddly enough. Seems like this will be more painful than I wanted to deal with.
I would love to migrate and keep my Minecraft account (I paid for it, damn you Microsoft). However Microsoft deleted my live.com email for inactivity (without notifying me at all) so its been lost since microshit bought out mojang. I still know the password but it can't be migrated or changed without access to the email... Support never even answers/replies. Guess its a small cost for doing a deal with the devil.
I migrated to MS by creating a new MS account last year and then forgot about the email. Now I can no way access that email or change the password since I never used it for anything else except minecraft. No matter what I can't answer those damn questions to access my MS email and lost my minecraft as a result.
For about a year, I would receive a password reset notification from Minecraft, every day. Someone thought they had the account name "mark", I am sort of glad they moved to emails and eventually MS accounts. Although I suppose I lost a short name because of it.
I bought the game when it was just leaving alpha and migrated to Microsoft when I got the mail demanding I do so. Immediately afterwards, Microsoft closed my account for reasons and I've not been able to use it since.
I've been fooling around with Veloren instead. It's nothing like Minecraft but I'm not paying Microsoft money to buy something I already paid for.
This should still work on Minecraft accounts that were created 5 minutes after Notch first launched the minecraft.net website in 2009. You will use your username to login, but a verification email will be sent to whatever email you signed up with. If you don't remember which email you used, you might be out of luck, but they also have a support form where you can enter payment proof and maybe get the account back. All of this is ending in September, so take this opportunity soon to be able to talk to an actual human at Mojang rather than a useless robot at Microsoft/Xbox support.
A gift code will present significantly more trouble. Almost certainly not valid anymore.
I wonder the same. I bought an extra code back in alpha because Notch promised it'd grant all future versions of the game. I wonder if it will still redeem as a valid code after two different system migrations (Minecraft account > Mojang account > Microsoft account).
I successfully migrated my Alpha account. I did it back when they first turned off the Mojang authentication server. It was an absolutely awful experience, but in the end I'm able to log in to Minecraft using the Microsoft account.
Yup. I did this about a year ago. They had actual humans, who can read and understand, but they didn't seem to necessarily have all the pieces of the puzzle and Minecraft is very old, so there was some amount of (fake examples but similar):
Them: You should have a sixteen digit Game Token from your purchase
Me: I don't have a Game Token, I think those were introduced six months after I bought Minecraft, I have an eight letter Login Code, it's FKLEMOKN
Them: I'm afraid we can't trace Login Codes to a game purchase, do you have a Receipt Number?
Me: My PayMeNow Receipt Code was 1234-5678-LD-23
Them: I'm afraid we only have FastPayment Receipt Numbers, not PayMeNow Receipt Codes, do you remember your PayMeNow email address ?
Me: I used a lot of email addresses back then, maybe minecraftgame@throwaway.codes.example ?
Them: Maybe we can start with what was your Minecraft Foozle Weeble DingDong. That was a six digit code used for eight hours one Tuesday morning in 2016 ?
Me: That's the only Tuesday in 2016 that I didn't play Minecraft, but I do have a Wongle Dongle BingBong if that helps?
Eventually I just basically flooded them with stuff and they were like "Good enough, you're in" and so I'm not sure which of the random facts I had were enough or whether they just decided this guy seems really into Minecraft, and he is named tialaramex, the same name as the account so, I guess it's probably him.
The Mojang to Microsoft and Java to Bedrock migrations have lost me as a customer. I have a text file of passwords and I have no idea which is which and constantly get it wrong. Once I get in, it's the same nightmare to get someone else in. I also apparently have two launchers on my PC now? I would play more if this was easy. My kids would play more if this was easy. Opportunity lost.
There hasn't been one of these? You can have both Java and Bedrock versions on Windows, yes, but there's been no requirement to move from Java to Bedrock (yet.)
If I remember correctly, they've stated they don't have plans to ever migrate from Java to Bedrock. They've been doing a lot of work to try to get parity between the two versions but they're architecturally very different.
I'd be surprised if they hung Java out to dry - it's definitely seen as the "definitive" version of Minecraft among most of the dedicated playerbase. Although, Bedrock definitely seems like it's their big money maker with how many microtransactions are in it.
The Java version is the one with mods. The mods are several times the size of the base game at this point. If Microsoft said they were going to quit development on it many players would just shrug their shoulders and keep playing the last released java version forever. There would definitely be modpacks that recreated any features added to Bedrock if this happened.
Maybe if Bedrock got an officially supported API, especially one that is stable between releases so people don't have to redo their mods for every release, then it might start pulling in players. But honestly, they'd probably charge for the API and it would be stillborn.
Heck, 1.7 is STILL one of the most popular versions for the modded scene, and it came out in 2014 (because it was an unusually long gap between updates, as was 1.8 which a lot of mods didn't bother updating to due to not much being added to the base game).
1.7 has RTG [1], can be worth a try. I always enjoyed the RTG worlds, but now I am mostly playing skyblock(-ish) packs, so I do not really care about terrain anymore.
Oh, I thought RTG was all about removing floating islands and making the mountains more mountainous. I didn't realize it also made the huge cave systems you get with 1.18.
They're fucking up on purpose. This is a request for consent that they steal from you. Microsoft intentionally, n w a criminal mind (in light of all the what in light of their stealing from me was harm they were doing in court) fucked up like oops oops whoopsie this button oh why doesn't this do it right, oh it's your job to do this this n this. No. They stole it from me in the hopes i would buy it again.
Or maybe they're shit at writing code, right? It's not either or. It's intentional. N then they whine about piracy n intellectual property, yeah.
I've already migrated my account, but forgot about having done it. If you try to remigrate, it will tell you that you already have an account associated with the Microsoft account, and it will encourage you to buy it again?
When you're logged in, the Get Minecraft button... also encourages you to buy the game again, instead of taking you to the download page.
How do you screw this stuff up?
How do you screw up account migration?
Look at these other comments here. This is a technical audience. Those poor parents who aren't technical are going to end up rebuying these stupid copies for their kids because of Microsoft's incompetence.
Edit: I'll take a minute to also share this related article I just posted. "Changes I Would Like To See in Game Development and Industry " - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35865390