Friendly, and unsolicited reminder that the Minetest engine + its game Mineclonia (or alternatively Voxelibre) are a pretty good open source alternative as of late.
Minetest is also getting some pretty nice upgrades to its graphics lately. The upcoming release should be looking quite pretty.Can you use minecraft mods with any of these clones?
If not it’s kind of a deal breaker.
Highly unlikely. Minecraft has a lot of quirky code, and the mods would have been built around that code.
For all intents and purposes, the clones are a different game entirely, and unless the mod author specifically goes out of their way to make their mod compatible with the clones, or a different version for it, they won’t work.
Nope, you can just use these mods for the time being.
On the flip side, it’s orders of magnitude easier to write a Minetest mod, and keep it updated with later versions and compatible with other mods.
its game Mineclonia (or alternatively Voxelibre)
I see that Voxelibre has considerably more players, but you list Mineclonia first. Do you have a preference between the two?
Well for the sake of context Mineclonia is a fork of Mineclone2, which has now rebranded itself as VoxeLibre. The project was forked due to personal and design disputes. In fact the most productive developer of Mineclonia, used to be the lead dev of mcl2.
Currently VoxeLibre maintains the continuity of the original project and the community which explains its higher popularity. Mineclonia by comparison has very little presence, the discord server was set up like a couple of months ago I think.
But in terms of code, mineclonia has been the faster evolving of the two. More features, more bug fixes, and advances from voxelibre that are deemed valuable are cherry picked. In terms of specific features, I really prefer the double digging depth, and the better villages. And voxelibre has significantly shortened the attack range which I find really annoying.
Other than that, mineclonia is more commited to being a true clone of minecraft, with voxelibre going out of its way to diverge, especially after the rebrand, which might turn out to be wise if microsoft’s trademark lawyers come knocking.
+1 for Minetest
I run a server on our local network that kiddos love
It was fairly simple to setup including which game type and mods
I see Minetest is available for android. Can you run Mineclonia on a phone?
Indeed you can. Personally I find the phone interface a bit too clunky, but if your phone’s hardware is up for it, it does run, and all platforms that support Minetest are compatible with each other.
Haven’t they been warning about this for like a year?
I only saw the warning the first time it was announced, which I transfered over back then. But then I never heard of it again, so if someone happened to have been busy and missed it the first time it made headlines I could see how they could be caught off guard with how I completely forgot about it until it made headlines for it being discontinued.
For people that didn’t transfer right away, like me, I got so many emails telling me to transfer the account. So people that didn’t transfer right away, stil got plenty of notice
At least three, as far as I can tell. Probably more.
Yeah I had been getting those emails for a long ass time
I looked through my email, they first asked me in February 2022.
That doesn’t matter. You don’t get to just unlitaterally revoke something people paid for because they didn’t want to sign up for an account at a company that was unrelated to Minecraft when they bought the game. This should be illegal.
What was the original license that people paid for? Is there anything in there that would protect them?
That doesn’t matter. If you buy a house and miss a sentence buried in page 2,784 of the agreement that says that the previous owner can arbitrarily decide to take the house back whenever they feel like it, that still won’t hold up in court. Digital products need to work the same way.
Clearly not , which only makes the point. Consumer protection for digital products is weak and needs reform.
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I mean, there are open-source clones, right, like Minetest, yes?
The angry Redditor wrote, “The fact they can just take away your license to the game like that is [expletive] insane. This is why I’ll never support DRMs, if a game has a DRM you do NOT own it. Only a license to temporarily play it.”
I mean, I get that complaint on a broader basis – and I think that that might be a problem moving down the line. If a company can buy a company that has sold you access to a game, and that company can cut off your access to that game, then they get leverage that they can use to extract other things out of you. Like, that is a real, legitimate issue. And it applies to anything that you buy digitally, not just games – books, music, software packages. If a vendor can change the terms on which you have access to the thing, they have ongoing leverage over the customer, and at some point, if a game isn’t generating an ongoing revenue stream, I can definitely imagine someone thinking “I can monetize this leverage”.
However, specifically for Minecraft, it seems kind of like complaining that someone is cutting off your access to Microsoft Solitaire. It might be annoying, but…you can go out and download a free and open-source package that can do essentially the same thing, yes?
No one wants to play Minecraft, they want to play dragons reloaded two, or harvestcraft, or whatever. Minecraft is really kinda bad as a stand alone thing, that’s why people will still get excited when they hear the name hytale. The modding community is what people buy the game for, and that isn’t replicated anywhere else.
kagis
Fair enough. It looks like Minetest has about 1,620 mods:
https://content.minetest.net/packages/?type=mod
And Minecraft 169,849 (assuming that Curseforge is comprehensive):
https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft
Though I also see a lot of stuff online saying that Minetest also has considerably better performance and is a lot less buggy, so…shrugs
Buying a game for the modding community
Buying
(which doesn’t get you ownership)
for the modding
(which doesn’t get them to own)
Buying
Paying
…What kind of idiots…?
Hard disagree, of i play Minecraft, it’s for vanilla Minecraft. Clones just don’t capture that arm feel and vibe of Minecraft either
Minetest isn’t really a substitute for Minecraft. Yes, its similar, but its far less polished, lacking in content, vanilla and otherwise, and is missing a lot of the technical functionality that makes much of Minecraft’s content (esspecially on the modding side) possible. Don’t get me wrong, I want to like it, and I’ve debated trying to contibute to it myself (although my skills are very lackluster) but as it stands its only really a substitute in the context of things like casually playing Pocket Edition.
Just out of curiosity, what content is it that you play with on Minecraft that you’d like on Minetest?
Personally, Im more of a creative-mode player at the moment so the majority of the problems don’t affect me. Its also been a couple months since I last tried Minetest (mostly on Mineclone). From what I remember, my personal dealbreakers were:
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IMO much uglier graphics, and more significantly, its harder to graphically customize with mods and resource packs. Maybe its more versitile than I’m giving it credit for, but at the very least, its not used as there aren’t enough modders and artists making content for the game to even remotely compete.
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Performance - Minecraft may not be optimized, but I was getting much worse performance on Minetest. In particular, I was getting massive frame drops any time I placed or broke a block, making it extremely nauseating to play.
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UX - There were a ton of small roadblocks to actually playing the game as I wanted to. First, customizing the graphics settings - the menu was disorganized and defaults were really weird for my hardware. Then, I had to find and edit the permissions file to be able to fly and sprint on my creative world. Even after that, if I remember right, the controls or flight movement were limitted or weird but in a way that couldn’t easily be fixed.
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Lack of world editting commands - Im sure theres mods for this one, but its more work to find, figure out, and set up and by the time I got to this point, having to put in even more work just to make the game comparable was a dealbreaker.
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Not quite the same as what was purchased… just let them download and play the old version they bought
Welp, guess my account is gone. That’s kind of shitty but I bought it just out of alpha and realistically wasn’t going to play it again. And now if I ever want to I’ll just pirate it.
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These people had years to migrate their accounts, were told to migrate their accounts, and warned to migrate their accounts because the old mojang auth system is insecure and needs to be sunsetted, and when it does, they will lose access.
They sat there and played the “no, I won’t move” game, and now they’re upset because the thing they were told for years would happen happened.
And they would have had to have no social interaction with any minecraft player on any online platform and in real life in all those years, as well as ignore every email from mojang, never look at the minecraft website, and so on, to not be notified.
I basically agree with all of that, but it was totally possible to upgrade the auth system and keep it separate from Microsoft. Obviously Microsoft wouldn’t do that, but that’s kind of the point, isn’t it?
I don’t think any company would want to keep a separate auth system if they can help it, though. No one wants to spend resources maintaining redundant account systems and interfaces between them when they have the option to consolidate.
But I suppose I just don’t see why there had to be a deadline at all. They know the email addresses associated to the original accounts, so there should just be a database they can reference to check if that email address has an unmigrated account and prompt to convert when next they log in. This is beyond “I don’t want to maintain two account systems,” it’s “Let’s just throw away this old table of email addresses so we can make more room on our servers for telemetry data.”
I bought Minecraft when it was first purchaseable. Only converted my account last month as my new-school-entrant kid has asked what it is.
And honestly, I wish I didn’t. The MS launcher is an absolute shit show in usability for adults, let alone kids. Next time it forces me to log back in I’m just pirating it.
I bought two copies, I’ll fucking run them how I please.
I’m amazed at how much better the official launcher is on Linux than on windows.
Windows:
- complains if your logged in account doesn’t match your game account
- Requires you to log out of one account to log into another in a not very clear or user friendly way
Linux
- No logged in account to complain about
- Lists all your accounts and lets you swap by clicking on the one you want in the accounts list
I also get the feeling that Linux Fans would jump on the opportunity as well.
I bought the game at the of alpha with an email I lost access to at some point. I remember my Password and Username but forgot the email address I used. I think it also wasn’t even possible to change the email address in the Mojang Account back then. So I definitely didn’t sit around and ignored the migration, I even tried contacting the support.
Anyways what sucks is that I remembered my email address this winter, but already after the cut off point. Would have been nice to get to keep that very old account. But as others have mentioned, the experience is probably better with a pirated version anyway.
I am against DRM just like everyone else but trust me they tried. They emailed me constantly telling me to move the account. There has to be some personal responsibility right?
I guess it’s too much to ask the richest company on the planet to keep a list of a few accounts indefinitely. I’m sure that database is a whole gigabyte sized and maintaining it requires a whole person to check in on it once in a while. Obviously they can only afford that level of effort for a year or two. And we’re only taking about removing access from millions of people to something they paid good money for, and also doing it because. Yeah, I’m with you on this one, totally not their fault.
The richest company on the planet is Walmart.
I think that depends on your metric.
Market cap, revenue, profit, assets? They will all have a different leaderboard.
False. It’s Microsoft.
- Microsoft has the highest Market Cap
- Walmart has the highest Revenue
- Saudi Aramco has the highest Profit
“Richest” isn’t really a term you can compare without further clarification.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by_revenue
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_public_corporations_by_market_capitalization
Responsible for what? Getting something I paid for stolen?
Couldn’t they have closed the migration but sent out redemption codes to people’s emails for those who hadn’t migrated?
The migration has been going on for multiple years (I believe more than 5). Anyone who wanted to keep their account would’ve done so.
So why not send a code to them before closing it for good so they have an option to redeem versus none at all.
They got sent a link before closing for good. That was their option to redeem. If they didn’t in all that time, it’s probably because they don’t want to keep their account.
Keeping legacy systems costs money, they have no reason to keep those codes valid for 30 years just in case someone decided they wanted to keep their account after 30 years.
They gave users more than enough time to migrate. 3 years is a lot of time. In most Democratic countries elections come up every 4 years, it’s almost a full election cycle.
If they didn’t in all that time, it’s probably because they don’t want to keep their account.
That’s an assumption that leads to corporate bullshit like this.
Who said 30 years. It’s just a code sent to email with expiration. And when digital codes are sold what is this supposed legacy system. Did Microsoft suddenly stop selling digital codes?
I thought you meant they send a code that never expires so you can recover your old account. What you are proposing is give everyone who didn’t migrate a code to redeem Minecraft?
That is even less viable. That’s basically giving everyone that didn’t migrate a full refund (+ extra because now Minecraft is cheaper so you can sell it for more). Which would also lead to a potential customer lost because they bought the “second hand” key.
Why would Microsoft do that. They’d be better off just paypaling every non-migrated account 20€.
They got sent a link before closing for good. That was their option to redeem. If they didn’t in all that time, it’s probably because they don’t want to keep their account.
Or… and maybe we think about this for a second. I wanted to buy a game. Not an account to Microsoft. Migrating to another service wasn’t in the terms I agreed to… especially to Microsoft.
Because those people could then sell those codes and reap profit that belongs to poor, poor, Microsoft
I think that’s not a good idea for the same reason that password reset emails expire within minutes.
On another platform, they might have transferred the accounts anyway and force password resets, but that’s likely not an option since they’re MS accounts.But the alternative is just closing it and now there being no option at all.
They could create a MS account for you based on your email, and have it locked such that you need to reset through their system. Seems reasonable to me.
It was one post on Reddit. It had a ton of comments but it isn’t a huge number of players mad about it. It was in a piracy sub and still most of the comments were along the lines of “Why didn’t you migrate your account during the 3ish years they were emailing people who hadn’t done it?” And the rest were either “DRM bad” or “Just pirate it, it’s not hard.”
Not really a news worthy thing. People had more than enough time and warning to move their account and the people who didn’t have nothing to stand on other than misplaced anger. I’m not a fan of Microsoft but they really did handle the migration well and gave people way more time and notice than they needed to.
I lost my Minecraft account to this, but that’s because the email address I bought the game with was with Lavabit, and thus never was able to receive any of the emails. Couldn’t verify I owned it either because again, no access to the email address.
I was just a kid when I signed up for that Lavabit address sometime in the 2000s, a kid who was vaguely interested in the idea of privacy and software freedom (I used PPC Ubuntu on a G3 iBook btw). Bought Minecraft Alpha in 2010 for €10. Now because of time passing and some bullshit happening I don’t have access to any of it.
But tbh I never opened a support ticket or anything, because fuck Microsoft. Its the principle of the whole thing
I was in a similar situation but I ended up creating a support ticket. They responded by asking me to verify my ownership by responding to their email from the account I didn’t have anymore… So you saved yourself some wasted time by not attempting to resolve the issue with them.
Yeah, I figured as much.
What a big brain move from their support team, lol
It’s bad enough when these companies are monopolistic and malicious. But monopolistic, malicious AND incompetent - argh, it’s just too much.
So many Microsoft bootlickers in this thread.
Bro its not bootlicking to say its a legitimate interest to delete stuff that could lead to lawsuits and is a security risk. Its also not bootlicking to say that they where warned repeatedly for at least 3 years now. You are just stupid.
So, how does it taste?
Is it that expensive to just keep a database of codes that can be redeemed for people who haven’t migrated yet? Like humble bundle keeping track of what you buy? Or even lemmy with comments linked to users?
It is. A good database is waaay less expensive and not a security risk. Microsoft is a company operating in areas with privacy laws, a leak could cost millions of completely unnecessary compensation.
They could handle it through support. Remove the automated process and do an email verification check and support could manually migrate the license.
I totally understand Microsoft’s desire to remove obsolete services like account transitions, but they should still have a mechanism for resurrecting old accounts if you can prove you are the original account holder.
They need more than email verification. Some privacy minded people signed up with throwaway email, but probably have other proof of ownership
A proper corporate database with the security it needs and the amount of people accessing it (remember how many people bought Minecraft) yes it would be expensive to have multiple databases doing the same thing.
If people haven’t transferred would they be accessing it? Not much incentive for people who already transfered to go back to just claim a code, and people who haven’t yet probably aren’t going to be logging in all the time.
No it wouldn’t, millions of people bought it but the vast majority migrated, even if there were still millions of people to migrate this wouldn’t get hit very hard because people would not migrate all in one go, so any simple master+slave database system would work, even an SQLite is capable of handling this volume. The total cost of this would be less than $100 per year if they wanted to outsource everything (which is essentially nothing for Microsoft), if they used any of their existing servers for it the coat would be a lot less possibly very close to 0.
Its Microsoft - they offer multiple DBaaS themselves.
But it costs a lot more than $100 in man hours to properly propose, approve, and implement any production system.
Yes, but it also costs as much to sunset a system, so they spend that money regardless.
🥾👅
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Linux is not a corporation, there is no boot to lick.
What a wild take. I’m genuinely baffled that someone thought that “Linux bootlickers” was a remotely salient thing to say.
Man I made my Mojang account so long ago that when I tried to transition I couldn’t recover the account password to do it.
Normally im biased against Microsoft, but bro they warned for at least 3 years about this and now people are mad… Thats just idiotic. And i absolutely understand Microsoft deleting the Old stuff as its probably a security risk. Migration Took 5 minutes when you didn’t have a MS account… 1 if you had. There is nothing to be mad about now.
What’s so hard about login to get code if they didn’t want to do the migration process when that’s something even sites like humble bundle and other online stores offer without offering direct downloads of games or anything like that. Or even send a code to their email with an expiration date after closing the migration process for good. When poorer sites can do it what’s Microsoft’s excuse.
Its illegal. Its absolutely illegal. Also the people most likely have a MS account and just don’t want to link it. And Microsoft cant make new accounts for them automatically.
Minecraft migration service has reached end of life. Redeem Minecraft code 1234-ABCD by June 30, 2024 through Microsoft.
See
Illegal activity detected
Thats complete BS, they logged you out and send you the last and final warning.
I pointing to your previous claims of illegal activity and making fun of how you’d probably see the sending of a code as illegal.
we shouldn’t have had to transition but if you didn’t know they were doing this then you probably haven’t tried to play the game within the last 5 years
I’m one of those people. I haven’t played in years. I may never have played again. I only found out because my daughter is now at an age where she asked if we could play together. I received no notice from Microsoft and I don’t do social media so it was a complete surprise to me when I couldn’t log in, then find out through their support that I had lost access to something I had legally paid for.
I believe that you didn’t receive any notices, but I think that’s an exception rather than the rule, there was probably something wrong going off on their side. I personally received several emails, they were getting kinda annoying, to be honest.
I got so many emails from them telling me to transition the account or I would lose it. So they did give lots of notice.
Even tho it sucks losing access, it’s still a great game worth every penny
So did most of my friends, but I checked multiple times and confirmed that I had nothing. I would have been a lot less annoyed with them if I had received an email and missed or ignored it. For whatever reason, the notifications never made it to me.
Probably spam filter? I remember consciously ignoring them for over a year until I finally gave in and converted.
A search in Gmail (which that used) finds stuff on spam. Also Gmail won’t put a Microsoft company’s mail in spam
Also Gmail won’t put a Microsoft company’s mail in spam
I highly doubt that’s true. I have gmail, and it puts official stuff in spam all the time.
Official stuff, sure, but not system generated email from giant companies like Microsoft
I did check that at the time as well. Nothing was there.
yeah I just wanted to say the “we shouldn’t have had to transition” but I didn’t want the hivemind to get mad at me if I didn’t add a negative to the end
I sincerely doubt you received no notice from Microsoft. I received multiple emails from them, even though I didn’t play back then. If I hadn’t transitioned I’m pretty sure they would’ve kept sending me emails.
Doubt all you like. I checked multiple times after opening a ticket to make sure I hadn’t missed something. I would actually be a lot less annoyed with them if I had.
Were you using a weird email provider? Maybe the emails were sent to spam. Or you were looking in the wrong email.
Nope, it was Gmail and I know it’s the correct account because I have other emails regarding that account going back a few years including confirmations and a password reset.
I did check spam at the time. I really tried to give them the benefit of the doubt but all I can figure is my account slipped through some weird crack. It’s likely I never would have even known if it weren’t for my kid asking me one day if we could play together.
I got no notice. I’ve got an alpha account.
You come off sounding like an ass.
I’m just pointing out misinformation. Me (and many others) received plenty emails from Microsoft. I doubt that they only sent them to some people and not others.
You could put in a support ticket explaining your situation. It would probably get resolved as this was an honest mistake.
I did. Unfortunately the chain ended with repeated canned responses to me that the grace period had ended and the only way I could get access again was to repurchase the game.
No, MS doesn’t care. Had to rebuy for my daughter.
Could have just migrated like everyone else that isn’t an idiot.
That happened to my sister unfortunately. She tried to transition her account and kept getting strange errors and minecraft support was very unhelpful. I ended up buying her a new account for her birthday, which I’m glad we can play together again, but it sucks that some strange bug took her account in the first place.
What’s fucked up is they still have a custom skin my ex made for me on my account, but I don’t own the game.
It wasn’t the big, it was Microsoft. They forced the transition and refused to solve the issue you faced.
If your mad it’s your own fault you had 3 years
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If your mad it’s you’re own fault
