Is Minecraft free, and has no license? No.

So it’s piracy.

They just don’t have any DRM on the client, but to answer your question in the past people didn’t call it piracy, they called it not using Minecraft with a premium account.

The only reason we do now is because Mojang and Microsoft removed the ability to play the demo mode from the official launcher (which is a piece of garbage by the way) and told people they needed to pay to play Minecraft. Unfortunately a lot of people are neoliberals and they take that advice to heart and consider it wrong to violate those wishes.

But I do agree with you that they shouldn’t I only do it with the display name of my community !minecraft4free@lemmy.dbzer0.com because it largely keeps the whiny neolibs who would whine about piracy away from the community.

It’s basically a free single-player demo with extra steps. Not being able to play on legitimate servers is realistically a huge drawback, honestly. And also, Microsoft knows it’s a huge opening for “piracy” which is why they’ve created Bedrock edition which is where all their monetization efforts and future content updates will be increasingly directed.

Neither you nor I are supposed to ever care about Bedrock, or are ever expected to pay a cent for Minecraft. We are a tapped resource financially with nothing left to give and trying to get more money out of us and our community would be like trying to get blood from a stone. But that doesn’t mean we’re not important. Our role, even as free-to-play pirates in the Minecraft ecosystem, is to create content and create brand awareness, to keep it trending and on people’s radar, so that when children and whales are drawn to it, Microsoft makes sure the first thing they see is some Bedrock edition thing and they can start shelling out cash immediately.

The whales, children, and naive parents are where the free money is. We’re just part of the advertising pipeline aimed at those demographics. We create buzz, they buy.

This reminds me, the Mojo Launcher is available on Google Play. You can download the app for free, create a local account, download whatever version you need, and you’re already in-game.

I only created a local account because I was too lazy to log into my MS account (can Mojang die for this migration sin?) before I realized I just downloaded Minecraft Java Edition for free with an app from the Play Store.

You didn’t hear anything from me.

Luanti is cooler.

There are some hacks that can connect you to servers.