Microsoft's Minecraft Set To Launch Its Own Currency (bloomberg.com) 67
Minecraft's popularity shows no signs of slowing down. Microsoft, which acquired the game's maker, Mojang, in 2014, has recently launched the game in China and continues to market it well in the U.S. The next big step for the game is the introduction of a new marketplace and brand new currency -- within the game itself. What this does is it "[opens] up the opportunity for businesses to sell their original content and creations to tens of millions of the game's players for the first time," writes Nate Lanxon via Bloomberg. From the report: Set to go live in the spring, nine businesses will be selling feature packs within Minecraft -- such as new storylines, in-game activities or landscapes to explore -- with prices ranging between about $1 and $10 per creation. Other companies can apply to be allowed into the marketplace over subsequent months. Users wishing to purchase content will need to buy a form of new currency -- Minecraft Coins. A store within the game does already exist but is limited to only items created by the Minecraft development team. The change to allow third-party developers to sell their wares within the same ecosystem opens up an entirely new business model for independent creatives.
Copying mincraft (Score:2)
I should think it would not be that hard to re-implement minecraft in a cleanroom fashion. Which makes me wonder what aspects of a game are actually copyrightable. What would stop some open source team from making a duplicate minecraft then selling logins just like in ye olde days.
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I should think it would not be that hard to re-implement minecraft in a cleanroom fashion. Which makes me wonder what aspects of a game are actually copyrightable. What would stop some open source team from making a duplicate minecraft then selling logins just like in ye olde days.
Minecraft is itself a clone of InfiniMiner; Microsoft doesn't own voxel survival. They would likely own things like creepers and the art style.
Btw, look into a game called Craft that is literally what you described.
Re: Copying mincraft (Score:1)
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Except for the lack of multiplayer mods, which is why most people play Minecraft.
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There are a couple of open-source minecraft clones. They would certainly grow more mature if there was more demand. But minecraft is a community now as much as it is a game.
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It still is a community. As the past has shown, as soon as some corporation starts milking a franchise, communities break apart pretty quickly.
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You act as if there is ANY shortage of "dig shit out of the ground, build something, dig other shit, then build something bigger" games. Usually coupled with zombie survival. Most of them are even in the same eternal beta that Minecraft was.
s/Linden/Minecraft Coins/g (Score:3, Insightful)
s/Second Life/Minecraft/g
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But what has changed? I remember those times too, same deal. Hell, one classmate had his dad display his hunting rifles (he's a licensed hunter and guns are pretty tightly regulated around here), and the person who was most interested about it all was the teacher. Back then we helped him carry his guns to our classroom, without anyone giving half a shit about it.
Ponder a few teenage kid running down the school hallway with hunting rifle openly in their hands today.
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Doom and gloom (Score:2)
I started on the Minecraft bandwagon as a freshman in college, back when Alpha was just getting started, and have played consistently every year since then (thousands of hours over the last ~8 years). So many people here are arguing that micro-transactions etc. are going to ruin the game by making it expensive / unpleasant / pay to win / etc, but I doubt these people have ever even really played the game
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On the contrary - I'd argue that Minecraft has needed a central repository of content for a long time.
Planetminecraft + Minecraftforum
Sites like ATLauncher have been adding wrappers around Minecraft for years to provide "modpacks" to users (often with 100+ mods), but there's still no way the average user is going to get it to work.
You download a launcher, click the modpack, then click Launch. What's hard about that? It's absolutely no harder than using the vanilla launcher. The only troubles with modpacks are the higher resource demands and the hit-and-miss documentation (but since vanilla still has no official documentation and is leeching off fan wikis, I don't think they can throw stones there).
Sure, I also worry that Microsoft could turn this into a walled garden and block out people from doing anything *except* through the store. But that would be the real cause for alarm, and I'm not willing to say they've jumped the shark just yet.
If they're still following Notch/Mojang's example, selling maps is already against the ToS. MS is tryi
Re: Doom and gloom (Score:1)
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Curse launcher has let you do simple 'add this, add that' type building of packs for a while now.
It used to be a shitshow but works decently even for new users these days.
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It reminds me of the development in LEGO. Remember the old sets? A lot (and I mean LOT) of basic all-purpose pieces that would of course build the space ship or house that's on the box, but could easily be used for anything else as well.
Today what you get is a handful of shaped pieces that only fit together in the way they should, no imagination allowed.
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I think you need to review modern Lego. It is not as you describe. I've read that it was like that for a while, but as a father with two kids I can assure you that lego is just as creative as ever. The only difference is that in my day there was no licensed sets.
"Hey this game is super popular... lets kill it!" (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing ruins a game faster than in-game currency & micro transactions.
Fare thee well minecraft... it was fun while it lasted!
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Why do you think that "java beastie" will stay?
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And why would MS allow that to remain that way? Until something changed big time lately, you still have to log in to some sort of authentication server to play. Why should that server give you the a-ok to play a version MS doesn't want you to play?
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Well, The way this ruins games is usually the addition of some sort of currency, followed by a hardcore locking down of the game, heavy DRM, heavy anti-tamper, removal/sanitization of mods, and removal of any kind of community control or modding.
This is because heavy DRM and anti-tamper and a real crackdown on community engagement and modding goes hand-in-hand with selling any kind of thing in-game that the community would have made for free... if you can mod things you could just mod coins in or whatever
Should be free for alpha users. (Score:1)
under the MS eula we don't have to give you any th (Score:2)
under the MS eula we don't have to give you anything and we can make it have a monthly fee + force you to get live if we want.
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"Sort of".. Starting with pocket edition, it was clear that they considered that statement to only apply to the core Minecraft product. With the Win10 version being built off of the Xbox version rather than the original Java version, its likely that it also would fall under the category of "not really the same product so that statement doesn't apply."
Also, from TFS it sounds like this would be more of a place to download pre-built adventure maps and the like. So even if they add it to the core Java versi
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He also promised to open source it at some point when the revenue stream had died down. Can't see that happening now.
BUMMER (Score:2)
Eh... Mods? (Score:2)
And kids into it are very savvy about modding it.
Oh wait, you mean in consoles? yeah, those poor souls have to suck it up.
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Don't worry, they're used to it.
it's not an in-game economy (Score:2)
"The new coins can be bought via any supported device that features an app store, such as iOS, Android or Windows. "
So you can't earn these coins by playing; only if the kid knows their parents' credit card number. When a server has a mod that allows in-game currency, like Towny, older players have a huge advantage and can often automate the means of production of whatever sells - at the expense of newer players, leading to the sorts of imbalance we find in the real world - a few insanely
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How's that working? Either someone is new and doesn't have money to buy anything, or they have been around for a while and can easily get it themselves, and thus don't buy anything.
Ready set GO (Score:5, Insightful)
"The next big step for the game is the introduction of a new marketplace and brand new currency -- within the game itself."
And let the scamming begin!
This will attract loads of scumbags who will pollute and game the system in order to steal money and accounts and whatever else they can get. It happens with every other kind of in-game currency and I guarantee that Minecraft will be no exception.
When Microsoft bought Minecraft they might as well have just renamed it "Minecrap".
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It'll be shame to see it happen because Minecraft is great for kids but the more they monetize it the suckier it gets.
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>It'll be shame to see it happen because Minecraft is great for kids
It's not that difficult to run your own server, even with a few server-side mods.
It's not quite as exciting as having a whole world of people playing so there's always a group to play with... but you know who is connecting (I run a whitelist) and you know who is ultimately controlling the content.
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I see it becoming another Second Life. Heavily monetized, heavily hyped, with headlines about people buying land / designs for huge sums of money. Then it'll crash and burn the way SL did.
Yes, I seem to recall some dingdong who paid $330,000 for a virtual space station in SL...I wonder how his investment is doing.
Free open source version here: (Score:1)
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MineTest is crap though -- the dev's don't know what the fuck they are doing half the time. If you follow the issue tracker like I do you quickly see things are _constantly_ being broken, half-assed, and bike shedding.
None of the open source clones that I've seen come close to just working like Minecraft.
Concerned for non-marketplace mods (Score:1)
Microsoft's Minecraft Set To Launch Its Own Curren (Score:1)