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Two bits of big Minecraft news for you today, one being a change in the account system and another to deal with social interactions on servers.

Firstly, Minecraft 1.16.4 pre-release 1 went out recently with a change to make playing Minecraft online a more pleasant experience. They're introducing the "social interactions screen", which will let you disable chatting with certain players, and have their messages hidden - helping to deal with players you don't get along with. 

Here's an example of how it looks currently:

Mojang said that hidden players will reset each time you rejoin a server. So it seems it's not a proper block list, but a way to temporarily hide people from social interactions on each session.

The other big change is that in 2021, Minecraft Java Edition will be moving to the Microsoft account system as announced in a blog post. Any new players who create an account starting "this Fall" will instead be sent to a Microsoft account rather than Mojang, whereas every existing account will get a notification about moving over at some point which they're doing in batches and not all at once. After that, they're also giving out a special cape to players who transfer as a reward for being an original MC player.

What's the point of this? Well, it keeps all Microsoft owned games under one account and Microsoft security will be better with their account system compared with Mojang's original system. It's hard to argue against that.

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14 Oct 24, 2020
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Since I manage multiple Mojang accounts for the kiddos, my real concern is how often will I have to re-enter the password in the launcher. Also, now this account that was limited to Minecraft can be used for a lot of things that I'd rather not deal with yet.


Last edited by 14 on 24 October 2020 at 6:45 am UTC
tofuhead Oct 24, 2020
hmm.. I find it a bit funny that people stop playing the game just because owner of the company changes.. I was ofcourse worried that linux support would be dropped when Microsoft bought it, but instead of giving up, me and my kids just kept on playing and building worlds.

for these years that Microsoft has been the owner, things have been working just fine, very nice new releases of the game, and everytime I update my servers and we start new worlds.. I've been very happy so far.

now, if they just change the way you login, and not something like make you buy the game again, who really cares? nowadays everything requires registeration, I have millions of accounts to all kind of services and sites. I'm sure some of those are already owned by Microsoft anyways ;)

.b
Tyron Oct 25, 2020
I feel obliged to mention that my reason to develop Vintage Story was in part motivated by Mojang being sold to Microsoft. I loved the idea of this small indie game studio being able to do their own thing and genuinely just wanting to make a great game.

Discarding the Mojang accounts seems like just another step of slowly embracing and eventually gobbling up the game for maximized monetization, in an abstract sense. They need to get back the investment, after all.


Last edited by Tyron on 25 October 2020 at 7:55 am UTC
tofuhead Oct 26, 2020
Quoting: TyronDiscarding the Mojang accounts seems like just another step of slowly embracing and eventually gobbling up the game for maximized monetization, in an abstract sense. They need to get back the investment, after all.

what do you mean? the game wasn't free, I paid for all the accounts already.
are you saying you think they will start charging monthly fees or something?

btw. nice game that Vintage Story, I bought it for me and my daughter as we love everything crafting and surviving and farming.. and it has lot of good in it, but some things threw us away a bit like the complexity of crafting. it's a whole lot of hassle to just produce a simple thing, and then you need it again you forgot how you did it :)
but, actually a nice reminder, thank you, haven't tried it for some months, and I see there has been updates, so time to check it out again!!

.b
chris.echoz Oct 31, 2020
Quoting: ShinyaOsen
QuoteAfter that, they're also giving out a special cape to players who transfer as a reward for being an original MC player.

Man this will be the second time needing to migrate my minecraft account first was from minecraft.net account to mojang and now this. Man wheres my cape for doing it the first time.

Feels weird that original minecraft players are from alpha to 1.16 according to them. So me and my friends will have the same capes as newer players even though iv played since release 1.0 and some of my friends since beta. Saying that makes me feel old even though im only 20 6th grade feels so long ago.
Yeah where's my alpha cape, I don't want one for making a Microsoft account :(
twinsonian Oct 31, 2020
Oh look. GFWL is back. We know you hated it in individual games so we will use it for all the games and all the services under the Microsoft Umbrella.

Won't be long until Java edition receives the in game purchases that bedrock has now. Given enough time -- mods and skins will be against TOS unless purchased through the in game store.

I personally can't wait for paid expansions and season passes!

Also, make sure you don't screw up on ANY other Microsoft service and offend anyone or your ENTIRE Microsoft account can get locked/banned.

And sure, Minetest isn't Minecraft. I dont think it is supposed to be. Mineclone 2 is a lot of fun -- we have a world in our home that we play as a family frequently. There are other game modes too that are almost nothing Minecraft like and are their own thing. They are fun too. Some are janky etc. I think given enough time the game is going to just get better and better. I mean look at SuperTuxKart and how far it has come. These are amazing games. No one cares if people addicted to live services are threatened by them. Don't like them? Don't play them.


Just for fun:
http://web.archive.org/web/20100301103851/http://www.minecraft.net/about.jsp

"I plan on developing Minecraft until it's a finished complete game, with a downloadable client (with fullscreen mode), custom key re mappings and possibly modding support.

For as long as people enjoy and purchase the game, I will develop extensions after the game is done. These will be free for anyone who has purchased the game.

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."

- Notch
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