Microsoft Minecraft EULA

[overload1]

Sources: https://account.mojang.com/terms#commercial

 

Explaination: So basically mojang which is now owned by microsoft started sending out emails to everyone who owns minecraft server(s).

The content of which is available here: https://www.spigotmc.org/threads/eula-dmca-requests-being-sent-out.125792/

What this means is that previously you could sell pay2win goods in the game and now they're enforcing a complete 180 and saying that is not allowed anymore

 

Opinion: I could see why they would do this, that makes game more appealing to the audience as it is more fair, but starting it out right now is not the ideal situation as this change would reduce profits dramatically.

For example if youtube issued that promotion on the videos is no longer tolerated and that you should only profit from ads instead, that would be a fairly similar situation. Makes video content more appealing to the user as there's no promotions on it, but hurts the content creator(s) incredibly.

 

For those of you whom this is completely irrelevnt, I apologise for wasting your time with this but if you do find this relevant or know anyone else who does please do share it so that everyone is informed about this

 

Feel free to leave your opinion at the bottom, I'm quite curious to see what people think of the situation here

[Enderman]

Just fyi this news is a few years old

[HPWebcamAble]

2 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Just fyi this news is a few years old

Damn, I'll say. I think it might have even been since before Microsoft bought Mojang.

[Enderman]

1 minute ago, HPWebcamAble said:

Damn, I'll say. I think it might have even been since before Microsoft bought Mojang.

It's always been in the EULA

They only started enforcing it about a year or two ago because some servers were taking in hundreds and thousands of dollars by selling minecraft items to kids, such as "$100 for a diamond sword" and its not legal to sell parts of the game which are not considered "perks"

 

They need to enforce it so that some kid's parents dont sue them because their kid spend $1000 on game items from a server that some random person is hosting completely unrelated to mojang

 

[Gregrs]

No, the rule was always there that you couldn't have your server be pay2win, it was just never enforced.

 

When they decided to enforce it (even though they didn't really do anything besides target the massive servers like mineplex and hypixel), everyone freaked out saying that they're "changing" the rules because they hate server owners.

 

It was always there, just never enforced.

[dalekphalm]

32 minutes ago, overload1 said:

Sources: https://account.mojang.com/terms#commercial

 

Explaination: So basically mojang which is now owned by microsoft started sending out emails to everyone who owns minecraft server(s).

The content of which is available here: https://www.spigotmc.org/threads/eula-dmca-requests-being-sent-out.125792/

What this means is that previously you could sell pay2win goods in the game and now they're enforcing a complete 180 and saying that is not allowed anymore

 

Opinion: I could see why they would do this, that makes game more appealing to the audience as it is more fair, but starting it out right now is not the ideal situation as this change would reduce profits dramatically.

For example if youtube issued that promotion on the videos is no longer tolerated and that you should only profit from ads instead, that would be a fairly similar situation. Makes video content more appealing to the user as there's no promotions on it, but hurts the content creator(s) incredibly.

 

For those of you whom this is completely irrelevnt, I apologise for wasting your time with this but if you do find this relevant or know anyone else who does please do share it so that everyone is informed about this

 

Feel free to leave your opinion at the bottom, I'm quite curious to see what people think of the situation here

You do realize that YouTube DID do this, right? They changed the Content Creator Agreement (Or perhaps simply clarified it/expanded it?) making it against Terms of Service to use unauthorized integrated sponsorship ads in a video. They forced Content Creators to enter into an agreement with YT, so that YT earned a cut of the sponsorship spots.

 

Basically, they said "You can run your own sponsor ads in-video - but only if you give us our cut". The reasoning behind this was that having in-video ads undermines the ad-network built into YouTube - which is how Google pays for the damn thing (They pay for operating costs via the cut they take from Ad Revenue).

[manikyath]

okay, i realise you're probably new to this, so i'll not do the full fledged rant about the serverhosting communtiy and keep it to a short:

 

"they have very good reason to do this"

[rockking1379]

1 hour ago, overload1 said:

Sources: https://account.mojang.com/terms#commercial

 

Explaination: So basically mojang which is now owned by microsoft started sending out emails to everyone who owns minecraft server(s).

The content of which is available here: https://www.spigotmc.org/threads/eula-dmca-requests-being-sent-out.125792/

What this means is that previously you could sell pay2win goods in the game and now they're enforcing a complete 180 and saying that is not allowed anymore

 

Opinion: I could see why they would do this, that makes game more appealing to the audience as it is more fair, but starting it out right now is not the ideal situation as this change would reduce profits dramatically.

For example if youtube issued that promotion on the videos is no longer tolerated and that you should only profit from ads instead, that would be a fairly similar situation. Makes video content more appealing to the user as there's no promotions on it, but hurts the content creator(s) incredibly.

 

For those of you whom this is completely irrelevnt, I apologise for wasting your time with this but if you do find this relevant or know anyone else who does please do share it so that everyone is informed about this

 

Feel free to leave your opinion at the bottom, I'm quite curious to see what people think of the situation here

This was always the case. As others have said it was never or very loosely enforced. Microsoft I think is going to crack down on it. And I'm okay with that

[christianled59]

13 hours ago, Enderman said:

It's always been in the EULA

They only started enforcing it about a year or two ago because some servers were taking in hundreds and thousands of dollars by selling minecraft items to kids, such as "$100 for a diamond sword" and its not legal to sell parts of the game which are not considered "perks"

 

They need to enforce it so that some kid's parents dont sue them because their kid spend $1000 on game items from a server that some random person is hosting completely unrelated to mojang

 

Well one of the major things it changed was it made it where servers were unable to provide special server side benefits as well. I used to code plugins for a popular Minecraft server called Aurora Gaming Networks. Our plugins was what kept us unique, and as far as I'm concerned, it was OUR creation the people were buying, not just a sword or a perk. After we the EULA, we had to give it all out for free which REALLY pissed off a lot of people. On top of that, donations fell so drastically we couldn't meet our monthly fees to keep the server up.

 

Essentially, the EULA obliterated an 8,000+ active community by bringing our monthly income down from $8k to about $15. Advertisement alone costed $2500 and hosting (for a mass network) costed roughly $3k a month. The only thing I had left to show for it was our channel which was removed..

I still got some screenshots though from the projects I got paid $500+ for.

 

Sorry I just ranted about minecraft, I just really had a lot of nostalgic moments with that game. 

 

Server hub I did for $650:

 

 

And a thing I did on survival in the same server. I am really salty about this:

 

Spoiler

 

[Trik'Stari]

10 hours ago, manikyath said:

okay, i realise you're probably new to this, so i'll not do the full fledged rant about the serverhosting communtiy and keep it to a short:

 

"they have very good reason to do this"

Yes they do, it's:

"They (M$ or Mojang) aren't selling the pay-2-win goods"

[overload1]

My point wasn't "omg they just changed this and they can't do this"

I know they introduced it (I believe) 2 years ago and that it has been sitting there ever since

I'm not saying that they can not do this, they can and I could see why they would want to.

 

As you saw from christianled59's reply it just ruins the community that owners have built over the years

So while it eliminates the issue of people abusing and selling shit for thousands of dollars it also ruins it for everyone else along the way

 

Basically what I want to say is that I believe this is a wrong approach to the matter as it hurts hundreds or thousands of people that have (much like linus) made it their full time job and make a living from it.

[CommandMan7]

6 hours ago, christianled59 said:

Well one of the major things it changed was it made it where servers were unable to provide special server side benefits as well. I used to code plugins for a popular Minecraft server called Aurora Gaming Networks. Our plugins was what kept us unique, and as far as I'm concerned, it was OUR creation the people were buying, not just a sword or a perk. After we the EULA, we had to give it all out for free which REALLY pissed off a lot of people. On top of that, donations fell so drastically we couldn't meet our monthly fees to keep the server up.

 

Essentially, the EULA obliterated an 8,000+ active community by bringing our monthly income down from $8k to about $15. Advertisement alone costed $2500 and hosting (for a mass network) costed roughly $3k a month. The only thing I had left to show for it was our channel which was removed..

I still got some screenshots though from the projects I got paid $500+ for.

 

Sorry I just ranted about minecraft, I just really had a lot of nostalgic moments with that game. 

snip

 

And a thing I did on survival in the same server. I am really salty about this.

 

Hidden Content

 

About the same story on my end. I ran a large merchant town on a medium sized server, and there was nothing before or after as fun as trying to manage the intricate diplomacy between towns. We even went as far to build massive fortifications, complete with moats, lava walls, and underground bunkers with weapon caches. I had played for about a year, EULA hits, and suddenly the server funding dries up in 6 weeks and goes offline forever. I personally had contributed around $100 over the year I had played.

 

Why is Microsoft so intent on killing their community/userbase, not just for minecraft, but also windows and xbox?

[manikyath]

41 minutes ago, Trik'Stari said:

Yes they do, it's:

"They (M$ or Mojang) aren't selling the pay-2-win goods"

its a whole lot worse than that, it went as far as "cracked" (pirated) servers asking €20 for "premium" accounts, and people that are somehow dumb enough to pay that, then get banned, cry at mommy, and mommy sues mojang.

 

their issue was it was a very big grey zone, and it was either everything and deal with the fallout, or nothing at all.

 

theres very legitimate ways to stay within the bounds of the EULA, and theres even attempts at implementing stuff specificly for the EULA. (hats mod, anyone? xD)

 

its not that they mind you microtransaction diamonds, its that they mind theres people who use such a system to scam people out of their money, like that one server where you could pay to become an admin, every admin got an infinite stack of an item of their choice, and then got banned for duping.

[overload1]

8 minutes ago, manikyath said:

its a whole lot worse than that, it went as far as "cracked" (pirated) servers asking €20 for "premium" accounts, and people that are somehow dumb enough to pay that, then get banned, cry at mommy, and mommy sues mojang.

 

their issue was it was a very big grey zone, and it was either everything and deal with the fallout, or nothing at all.

 

theres very legitimate ways to stay within the bounds of the EULA, and theres even attempts at implementing stuff specificly for the EULA. (hats mod, anyone? xD)

 

its not that they mind you microtransaction diamonds, its that they mind theres people who use such a system to scam people out of their money, like that one server where you could pay to become an admin, every admin got an infinite stack of an item of their choice, and then got banned for duping.

Yes, the goal is to eliminate the bad fruits from the radar, but as they're tiny servers they are not as likely to get reported to the enforcement team + those servers don't last usually anyways, they're just there to make a quick buck so for the most part it punishes those who weren't even abusing this grey zone.

[manikyath]

Just now, overload1 said:

Yes, the goal is to eliminate the bad fruits from the radar, but as they're tiny servers they are not as likely to get reported to the enforcement team + those servers don't last usually anyways, they're just there to make a quick buck so for the most part it punishes those who weren't even abusing this grey zone.

but they're still there. honestly i'm convinced they just put that in the eula to have a legal leg to stand on if it got so far.

 

if they actually wanted to ban MC servers and money interacting they'd been banging on giantwaffle's door with a DMCA already

on paper his prison server idea kinda breaks every part of the eula on servers, but he's trying to do it in a very honest and forward way so i'm not sure what mojang is gonna end up doing in his case.

[overload1]

24 minutes ago, manikyath said:

but they're still there. honestly i'm convinced they just put that in the eula to have a legal leg to stand on if it got so far.

 

if they actually wanted to ban MC servers and money interacting they'd been banging on giantwaffle's door with a DMCA already

on paper his prison server idea kinda breaks every part of the eula on servers, but he's trying to do it in a very honest and forward way so i'm not sure what mojang is gonna end up doing in his case.

well, they've already issued emails to servers that are playing it nice (selling cheap stuff and so on, not overcharging)

The thing is that the enforcement team is small and as a result he might have some time left before they contact him, but by the looks of it they are going after everyone

[manikyath]

9 minutes ago, overload1 said:

well, they've already issued emails to servers that are playing it nice (selling cheap stuff and so on, not overcharging)

The thing is that the enforcement team is small and as a result he might have some time left before they contact him, but by the looks of it they are going after everyone

because if they dont go after the smaller guys, they dont have a legal leg to stand on against the big guys.

 

sadly, thats how our fucked up economy works.

[AlTech]

On 3/5/2016 at 8:52 AM, HPWebcamAble said:

Damn, I'll say. I think it might have even been since before Microsoft bought Mojang.

It has been but Server owners have been disobeying and doing it anyway.

[overload1]

11 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

It has been but Server owners have been disobeying and doing it anyway.

It has been introduced after microsoft bought mojang, not before.

[AlTech]

1 hour ago, overload1 said:

It has been introduced after microsoft bought mojang, not before.

I heard about it before the acquisition.

[overload1]

10 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

I heard about it before the acquisition.

It got leaked from a skype chat or something like that, basically "he said she said" without any solid facts.

Only after microsoft has happened to mojang did the eula was officially introduced.

 

Time for me to find a job and become another regular Joe I guess

[DarkBlade2117]

2 public servers I sometimes play on just said they were told to start following the EULA, maybe they are sending out another wave like they did a few years ago, not just targeting big servers now. The one server I used to play on charges $600 for a rank where you, hear this, PROT IV Unbreak 3 DArmor lol. This falls under the unreasonable amount of cash, also crate keys are another big thing.

[DarkBlade2117]

On ‎3‎/‎5‎/‎2016 at 9:01 AM, manikyath said:

because if they dont go after the smaller guys, they dont have a legal leg to stand on against the big guys.

 

sadly, thats how our fucked up economy works.

Btw, going off your GiantWaffle comment, he is changing his whole idea because it was brought to his attention it broke the EULA, he had no knowledge of if before.