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Microsoft's Minecraft Set To Launch Its Own Currency (bloomberg.com)
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.
... but don't worry, we'll sell you a 64-pack of dirt blocks for only five Minecraft bucks. Sold in packs of 100 Minecraft bucks for only $24.99.
I predicted this bullshit when Micro$oft bought Mojang and immediately closed my account.
s/Second Life/Minecraft/g
The original game was so basic and open ended and lent itself to creativity. It was dying for a modding API almost right from the start. Clever devs managed to make plenty of amazing mods and do things with the game that were really inspiring, then Mojang slowed down then Microsoft bought it... now we see "sets" and predefined stories... what's the purpose of in-game currency beyond nickel and diming kids?
I'm glad it was a thing but I hate to see it go down this way. What a shame
Nothing ruins a game faster than in-game currency & micro transactions.
Fare thee well minecraft... it was fun while it lasted!
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.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Well looks like I have to get rid of my alpha account for a knock off Minecraft. I knew it would happen but Microsoft took so long to do it I thought that just maybe it wouldn't.
You have no idea the ability of 8 years old have to separate their parents from their money.
Didn't Notch promise back in the alpha days that people who buy during alpha would get all future expansion packs for free? This sounds like it would qualify. Microsoft almost certainly won't care about Notch's promise, though.
Minecraft was fun while it lasted. This will kill it.
I let my kids play Minecraft because it is free of smurfberries. If Microsoft follows through with this they are going to have to find something else to play instead.
In todays world walk around with a knife and that local mother will call a cop on you for endangering yourself and others.
Given what mods already give you for free, I fail to see the business model of microtransactions in Minecraft.
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.
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.
On the contrary - I'd argue that Minecraft has needed a central repository of content for a long time.
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. Then just as much as now, the thing that makes Minecraft an amazing game is what creative people have built on top of it - not the base game itself.
There are mapmakers that spend literally years building an immersive dungeon crawler map with 30-40 hours of gameplay, and then just give it away on the forums hoping for donations. A unified way for users people to post up their map on some official Microsoft-owned store and have users find it? A central location where people with no technical skills could click one button, pay $5, and get many hours of extra gameplay content? That would be awesome - and I bet they keep giving it away for free on the forums too.
Have you ever tried to actually install Minecraft mods? They're great - but even with the simplest of mods, eventually you get two together that conflict. 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. Maybe Microsoft could figure out a way to package (and monetize!) these packs - that would be good for both the players AND the people who created the packs.
Not to mention the number of outright scam websites that use search engine optimization to list their scummy mirror with 100 ads for every legit creative work (map/mod/etc) that people have developed.
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.
Sad, but true. I'm old enough to remember when every boy had a knife in his pocket. We carried them everywhere, even to school. In twelve years of school, I never saw one person pull out his knife during a fight, and there were plenty of fights. It was as if there were a code of honor about fighting fairly. I averaged getting into about one fight per school year, winning about half of them. Never used a knife even though I always had one in my pocket.
Most teenage boys back then had a shotgun or rifle in their vehicle at school. It made it easier to go hunting before or after class. Nobody ever used one on a person. Times have changed and not for the best.
Anyone else have problems with the password retrieval on the minecraft.net website? I can never get it to send me an actual email for password retrieval. There's no way to contact a human.
"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 rich people selling things to a mass of poor who can't afford food. Although I never got very rich selling steak to new players, principally because they never had any money. I usually ended up giving them away.
Years ago they switched XBox Live marketplace over from points to just plain dollars. Now they're putting Minecraft on a points system again?
Nah. This is only for the Win 10 and Mobile versions (not the original java beastie). Who cares what they do with this?
Think ahead just ONE or TWO hops away... please.
Meh, my experience is that when these are added it usually means that the game is past its peak. From Google trends Minecraft is now below the halfway point - https://trends.google.ca/trend...
"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".
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
http://www.minetest.net/. Also, if you like free and open source software, I got more links to some cool stuff here (not games): https://theouterlinux.com/rese...ðY"--/. I try to only list things that actually work with the most bang per byte and most are cross-platform. I'm also not a big fan of eye candy over functionality. If anyone has website suggestions to add to the open source info and archives section, I'd love to know. I need to add http://ibiblio.org/catalog/, for example.
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 items / stories are the equivalent of the ones you get from coins. Gotta put a stop to that.
Same kind of thing happened when they had the bright idea of selling people cheat codes in the Assassins Creed games. They realized that hang on, people just have cheat codes on PC anyway, without paying, because its PC. So a large portion of the 'anti-cheat' measures in a mostly single-player game were there to stop you from accessing single player cheats/trainers purely so that they could then sell them to you as DLC.
Another reason to break my kids' addictions.
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Why do you think that "java beastie" will stay?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Because it will just keep running? many mod packs are still using old versions.
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?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Well atleast modded 1.10 will hold up for a few years like 1.7 did.
Will it fix the HORRIBLE way someone can find Forge Mods or any tweaks for that matter? That Spam riddle jungle of crap all over the internet
I'm an mid-aged guy and remember high-school parking lot very well. It had trucks & cars of all types, with gun racks in the back windows with one or two rifles in them. And fishing rods too of course. They were just 'kept there', sometimes from that very-early morning's hunting trip or yes, even as a conversation piece for after school.
No one caused trouble. Those were different times, when rifles were 'sporty' and 'outdoorsy'. Now it's all about the military styled & survivalist lifestyle- which can appear to be trouble causing. (and the fact that some have caused trouble over the decades). So unfortunately such items are now verboten, (and I can see why- not all are responsible & some are even trying to be bad-ass with such displays).
Nevertheless, ahh the halcyon days of just waking up early- hunting- then going to school. (and the teacher understanding if you're late because you baged a deer).
I saw this and thought, "Wait, we have modpacks that extend the story, the in-game content, the involvement of the community. What is this going to offer, and what will it cost the modding community?" Why do we need a marketplace for this, honestly? It seems Microsoft is trying to squeeze money out of a community that loves the openness and freedom of Minecraft, including its mods and packs. We have people willing to create new worlds and experiences for the joy of creating. If they leave the modded community alone, fine. If they block that content... There will be a problem. But, this is just my opinion, in rant form.
Great!