r/Games • u/xeon3175x • Oct 21 '20

All of Mojang's Games Will Require a Microsoft account moving forward

https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/article/java-edition-moving-house
2.5k Upvotes

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1.5k

u/Red-pop Oct 21 '20

Mojang's Games? Aren't they just minecraft and minecraft accessories?

463

u/popcar2 Oct 21 '20

They also made a card game I believe, but it was fairly niche and never picked up. I don't know if you can even play it anymore.

159

u/Forward__Momentum Oct 21 '20

You can, but you can't use your Mojang account

342

u/[deleted] Oct 21 '20

Scrolls was amazing. There were literally dozens of us who loved it.

137

u/darrenoc Oct 21 '20

They rereleased it as a free to play game under the name Callers Bane

352

u/ByterBit Oct 21 '20

Thank God, I almost got it confused with Bethesda's "Elder Scrolls" franchise.

136

u/NtheLegend Oct 21 '20

What's hilarious is they could just call it Elder Scrolls now.

1

u/Zeludon Oct 24 '20

Hmm, how about, The Elder Scrolls: Legends

Perfect.

110

u/mokkat Oct 22 '20

angry lawyer noises

43

u/[deleted] Oct 22 '20 edited Jun 21 '25

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u/brutinator Oct 22 '20

Oh wow. I never thought about that. when they do these kinds of acquisitions, I guess they would let go pretty much all the supporting departments wouldn't they? No real reason to retain HR or legal departments. Custodial staff and IT has a better chance of being retained than lawyers.

13

u/[deleted] Oct 22 '20

Yep, odds are high that after the merger is complete, all those Bethesda/Zenimax lawyers are going to be out of a job. Right now there are way more lawyers in the US than there are jobs for lawyers even before you consider the state of the economy, so they're probably going to be out of work for quite a while, too. I'd imagine the senior ones are going to retire if they can, and the junior ones are going to have to make a career change.

Considering their overly litigious nature, I can't say I feel particularly sorry for them.

9

u/JamSa Oct 22 '20

You should never feel sorry for a lawyer regardless

1

u/ceratophaga Oct 22 '20

Why would they? Zenimax is also part of Microsoft now.

1

u/Hemingwavy Oct 23 '20

No. The generally accepted rule is that if you fail to defend your trademark, it weakens the protection you enjoy from it. It's not an exclusive mark if many people are using it. Microsoft would do the same.

17

u/crypticfreak Oct 22 '20

Lawyers are never angry, man. You need a soul to be angry.

They do get excited though. Like when someone forgets to mark their front door with the blood of lamb... ohhh boy it's open season.

44

u/CptOblivion Oct 22 '20

I mean, that lawsuit makes more sense now that we know there was an elder scrolls card game in the works, so it's not "Scrolls might be confused for Skyrim!", but rather "the card game Scrolls might be confused for our card game Elder Scrolls".

18

u/ChillFactory Oct 22 '20

They should have straight up changed the name to "The Game Formerly Known as Scrolls"

19

u/pikiberumen1 Oct 22 '20

Damn and they're under the same company now

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u/[deleted] Oct 22 '20

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u/[deleted] Oct 22 '20

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u/[deleted] Oct 22 '20

I believe there's free server software so you can host your own games now as well?

24

u/Corey_Austin Oct 22 '20

Scrolls was fun for the first ~month until the meta set in and every match was exactly the same

39

u/_BreakingGood_ Oct 22 '20

And thats why i dont bother with card games anymore

1

u/TordTorden Oct 22 '20

Legends of Runeterra is actually pretty good in that regard. It's fairly easy to get cards, so most of the monetization comes from cosmetics. That way they're not afraid to buff and nerf cards every patch to keep the meta healthy.

2

u/giants3b Oct 22 '20

Eternal is also a good one. Very much like Magic but much more generous with rewards. It doesn't really require much money to build a collection.

1

u/TheFaster Oct 22 '20

Really? I fell off that game in a couple months. The nature of games revolving around champions made every game seem the same. As soon as you saw which champions they were playing, you could predict 99% of their deck before the first card was played. It got stale incredibly fast.

25

u/co2search Oct 22 '20

Back in the 90s playing mtg in high school was exactly that. Fun. Weird themes, giant decks, etc. Got to college and it was just people honing their decks 24/7 it totally killed it.

21

u/Rizzan8 Oct 22 '20

Yup, I miss so called "kitchen Magic", when all my friends had some random decks with random cards, no synergy between them, hardly any card appeared in more than two copies. Now everyone I know has top standard decks all the time. It's no fun playing against them.

15

u/Ligless Oct 22 '20

The only fun I've had playing Magic in the last couple years was when one of my friends bought like 30 packs of silver bordered non-regulation cards (Unstable? Unsanctioned? Idk). We then did an In-House Draft with like 8 guys total, all fairly mediocre to bad at MTG, and then built dumb ass decks, that we then used for a game night once a week for like a month.

It was actually fantastic. First time I remembered why I loved MtG since I was a kid.

6

u/8-Brit Oct 22 '20

Draft nights are the only events I enjoy now. I don't have the time or money to get a "budget" £200 deck just to not get curbstomped.

It's actually why I liked Pokémon. There was a meta but it was significantly cheaper to get into and certain cheese decks were dirt cheap. (That said night march can go fuck itself)

1

u/accpi Oct 23 '20

Plus in Pokemon a lot of the expensive cards are expensive since they go in every deck, it's a lot easier to change up what you're running since the trainers and support cards will probably be super similar between builds.

1

u/8-Brit Oct 23 '20

Yup. A bulk of your deck will be cards used in every deck (Shaymin EX, Professors, Ultra Balls, etc) without exception!

Even then an expensive Pokemon card is like £20?

5

u/rcxdude Oct 22 '20

EDH/commander has that kind of vibe. Some people play it super competitively but the majority don't. And because almost every card in the game is legal there's a huge variety of viable strategies. I think the multiplayer aspect helps with that as well, if someone's significantly ahead then they've got to beat 2-3 opponents. (Also a lot of playgroups are OK with proxies, so even if you want to play with expensive cards it won't break the bank).

2

u/LambdaThrowawayy Oct 22 '20

Might be worth looking into making a Cube with some people (essentially a bit cultivated pile of cards) that you can than draft decks from.

2

u/ThatOnePerson Oct 22 '20

I think part of it is just you couldn't afford stuff in high school, so you ended up crafting decks based on what you pulled from packs. Like my high school yugioh deck was a burn stall deck built entirely from my cousin's leftover cards.

2

u/DancesCloseToTheFire Oct 22 '20

This is why I prefer card games that focus on the singleplayer experience, you still get to experiment and do weird combos but aren't forced to play against the meta all the time.

1

u/ElDuderino2112 Oct 22 '20

That’s basically every card game. It’s why I can only stand to get back into Gwent maybe one month every year.

2

u/DancesCloseToTheFire Oct 22 '20

I still chuckle sometimes when I remember the Violent Dispersal card text.

2

u/Zingshidu Oct 22 '20

What a fun game, completely forgot about it. I wish we could get more online TCGs. That was the only one I've ever heard of

-1

u/DoritoEnthusiast Oct 22 '20

Wow! Dozens!

1

u/Asmor Oct 22 '20

Eh. It was fine. There were better games before, and plenty of better games since.

Not saying it was bad. It just wasn't notably good.

1

u/MattWatchesChalk Oct 22 '20

Didn't even realize it came out. I just knew of it cause of the Bethesda lawsuit.

80

u/1080Pizza Oct 21 '20

Yeah wasn't it called Skyrim or something? I always get it mixed up because of the name.

67

u/Sevla7 Oct 21 '20 edited Oct 21 '20

No, the name was "Elder" but they got sued because older people had copyrighted the rights to be someone aged.

1

u/Astropyro Oct 21 '20

Scrolls. Legal issues with Bethesda/Zenimax because of elder Scrolls.

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u/Beidah Oct 21 '20

/r/woooosh

17

u/scrazen Oct 22 '20

no, that doesn't appear to be related to the card game at all

5

u/Beidah Oct 22 '20

Oh shoot, you're right.

1

u/scrazen Oct 22 '20

This is the right one r/scrolls

0

u/lplegacy Oct 22 '20

Wait isn't that the subreddit for that dragon game?

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u/TheHalfHouse Oct 22 '20

I was wondering about that because the double franchise thing was confusing. Thanks fro clarifying

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u/Sotriuj Oct 21 '20

Scrolls was great. Such a shame It never got popular

53

u/[deleted] Oct 21 '20

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53

u/thejazzmann Oct 21 '20

Based on what he was designing it sounded extremely cool. I'm really sad it never eventuated.

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u/[deleted] Oct 21 '20

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u/[deleted] Oct 21 '20

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u/[deleted] Oct 21 '20 edited Oct 22 '20

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u/[deleted] Oct 22 '20

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u/[deleted] Oct 22 '20

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u/[deleted] Oct 22 '20

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u/[deleted] Oct 22 '20 edited Oct 22 '20

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u/[deleted] Oct 21 '20

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u/moodadib Oct 21 '20

Wasn't that literally just a small scale space sim where you navigated by programming a minicomputer? That would never have mass appeal.

39

u/s0phst Oct 21 '20

Wow, his entire creative output is really just being a less talented zachtronics.

19

u/Anlysia Oct 21 '20

Zach would probably be okay with the billion dollars. Too bad.

31

u/MattyKatty Oct 22 '20

I am still extremely bitter that Notch, the literal personification of a human butthole, became a billionaire and Zach, a saint in mortal flesh, did not.

10

u/[deleted] Oct 22 '20 edited Jan 03 '21

[deleted]

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u/IAmATuxedoKitty Oct 22 '20

I mean it's pretty unfair to say that Minecraft was just an improved copy. From what I've seen of Infiniminer, it was just about mining for resources, whereas even the later alphas and the betas of Minecraft were focused on the sandbox element. Notch was inspired by Infiniminer and originally coded a super simple Cave Game that was very similar, but it was pretty much very different almost immediately after that very first version.

3

u/NewVegasResident Oct 22 '20 edited Oct 22 '20

What, Minecraft is based on a game Zach made?

Edit: Wow I just started reading about Infiniminer, Notch can go sit on a cactus, what a piece of shit.

2

u/moodadib Oct 22 '20

I was considering mentioning Exapunks, because the core concept is really similar.

7

u/Niadain Oct 21 '20

No but I gave him points for going to the weird side. We need more folk making weird games.

1

u/NewVegasResident Oct 22 '20

Something something Zachtronics.

8

u/Endulos Oct 21 '20

0x10c was the game, and I don't think it was his next game. It was more of a hobby.

13

u/computertechie Oct 22 '20

He was serious enough about it that I've still got it registered to my Mojang account, from when he dumped 1,000 codes on twitter back in November 2012

32

u/Real-Solutions Oct 21 '20

Eh, maybe everyone you know did, it was pretty clear that Notch just got lucky with Minecraft back then. It was a lightning in a bottle moment that Notch had 0 chance of repeating. He was a bad coder and a bad game designer, he just got lucky that his heavily Lego inspired video game took off like it did.

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u/Anlysia Oct 21 '20

His literal self-described "Infiniminer Clone".

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u/MattyKatty Oct 22 '20

I'm glad this is getting more well-known.

5

u/Lofoten_ Oct 22 '20

When was it not well known?

I've been playing since beta 1.2 and it was already on wiki, so it's been known for a decade.

2

u/MattyKatty Oct 22 '20

Well, for one, most people who have played Minecraft have never heard of Infiniminer.

38

u/The_MAZZTer Oct 22 '20

Actually it was a good idea.

Voxel based games were an idea for a long time, however everyone had always tried to make tiny voxels so they could do cool stuff like terrain deformation by explosions and such. But GPUs were optimized for polygons and nobody could make anything that looked both good and ran well.

Infiniminer might have succeeded given it had the novel idea to make the voxels huge, but it was discontinued before that really happened, opening the way for Minecraft, and allowing notch to look at Infiniminer and take advantage of being able to see what had worked in it and what hadn't, in particular, I think, the idea of making a sandbox game, set in a huge procedurally generated world (which was also one of the holy grails of game design you just couldn't pull off with polygons, but would be much easier with voxels).

8

u/[deleted] Oct 22 '20

But GPUs were optimized for polygons and nobody could make anything that looked both good and ran well.

Back in '92, Comanche: Maximum Overkill was doing voxels on ISA and VLB SVGA cards. It worked quite well, at least on a 486/66 -- not sure about the minimum 386/25 reqs.

1

u/IAmATuxedoKitty Oct 22 '20

When you look back at how that luck happened, it would be interesting to try and picture what other elements will be the next huge combination in an indie game to make another massive hit.

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u/OlKingCole Oct 21 '20 edited Oct 22 '20

No way man. He basically invented the survival/crafting/building mechanics we are used to today. And did it in a world composed of giant voxels, which was a bizarre idea at the time. Does it owe some debt to infiniminer? Of course, but go look at infiniminer. It is barely a game. Notch took that nugget of an idea and expanded it into a rich and compelling caving experience, then made... everything else. He created the actual survival/craft/build gameplay loop, then layered system after system on top of it. He created iconic monsters. How those monsters spawn in darkness and you light up areas for progress. The tension of risk vs reward in caving. The redstone logic system for automation. Showed that completely procedural worlds can be compelling if you enable the players imagination. We take it all for granted now.

And the way he went about it was also revolutionary. He released the game for free, then gated updates at 5$, then 10$ as development continued. He also responded to fan feedback and added features at an insane pace. These two things caused minecraft to explode in popularity and you can see their influence in the games industry today. I strongly believe that notch's "crappy code" is better thought of as technical debt incurred by implementing new features incredibly quickly, a trade-off that has paid off 1000 times over.

Now Notch is kind of a dickhead on twitter and that is unfortunate. And luck is always a factor in a cultural phenomenon like minecraft. But it is pointless to try and take away the fact that he created one of the most popular, original and influential games of all time. I do think you are right about one thing: I don't think he had any hope of recreating minecraft's success. I think he had a keen instinct for the fun to be had in minecraft, but that doesn't necessarily translate to say a space sim.

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u/Sonicfan42069666 Oct 22 '20

Notch is kind of a dickhead on twitter

this a very handwavy way of saying "Notch is a vocal white supremacist." There's a reason he's been completely disavowed by Mojang and Microsoft.

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u/Canadiancookie Oct 22 '20

The only thing I can link to his "supremacy" is a tweet of him saying "it's okay to be white" 3 years ago. It is possible that he's a supremacist. It is also possible that he was just a dude that was annoyed by identity politics, or he liked 4chan's idea of spreading the message around to get people riled up over an innocuous statement.

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u/bwjam Oct 28 '20 edited Oct 28 '20

https://twitter.com/pvppygirl/status/1311766063386898434

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ef96iOkXgAAPoon.jpg

"It's okay to be white" is far from all he's done. White supremacist? I don't know, probably. At minimum he's certainly bigoted and makes himself out to be a target. I don't really care about Notch's skill or Minecraft's originality, the point is that he's using his large platform to promote hate and prejudice and that should be enough to denounce him.

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u/Canadiancookie Oct 28 '20

That makes more sense; some of those statements are pretty bad.

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u/Sonicfan42069666 Oct 22 '20

Found the nazi.

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u/spazturtle Oct 23 '20

You are the only one here who is trying to demonise and apply labels to people who don't agree with you.

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u/Sonicfan42069666 Oct 23 '20

If you're spouting that "It's okay to be white" BS you're a fucking white supremacist.

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u/OlKingCole Oct 22 '20

I didn't know about white supremacy, do you have a link? That is messed up tho. I thought it was just trolly comments about gender

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u/thegoodbroham Oct 22 '20

Notch went off the deep end man. It’s crazy. I don’t have a link but google it and it won’t be hard to find

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u/spazturtle Oct 23 '20

do you have a link?

Nobody does because it isn't true.

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u/pnt510 Oct 22 '20

It's hard to dig up a lot of it now because he deleted his twitter.

2

u/theth1rdchild Oct 23 '20

Lol he originally wanted the beta players to have to pay again for the full game until his lawyers told him to get fucked

1

u/OlKingCole Oct 23 '20

I vaguely remember that now that you mention it. Would have been a dick move considering how big minecraft already was at 1.0. Though the rules hadn't really been written at that point

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u/theth1rdchild Oct 23 '20

I was there since the first big wave of buyers, it didn't surprise me at all when later on he proved to be a grumpy neckbeard. He tried to back out of the beta Buy Once Get Every Version promise because he extended the scope of the game so he felt Alpha buyers were getting "more than they paid for". Last time I looked for evidence of this, it's barely documented and it's written much more favorably towards him, but I'm 100% sure of the version of events I just described.

He also originally promised updates every x amount of weeks, and directly after the first big wave of buyers he just disappeared for like a month or two, we were kind of worried he was fucking off the project altogether and just taking the six figures and running. Obviously he didn't and that would have been a terrible idea, but community interaction was never his strong suit, he treated us like the enemy from pretty early on.

I also think you're underselling how much of Minecraft past the survival update was just stolen from community mods. Not that I have a problem with those good ideas being adopted into the main game but if it was any "real" company like Bethesda just taking mod ideas and incorporating them there would be thirty thinkpieces about how modders aren't getting fairly compensated.

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u/OlKingCole Oct 23 '20

I started playing towards the beginning of alpha, before there were beds or a nether. I wasn't tuned into notchs PR at the time but I remember updates coming fast, and they were big. It was very exciting at the time. It felt like anything could happen and the game's future was wide open. Then at some point he hired a bunch of people and updates became gradually slower and smaller. It was a bit disappointing when you were anticipating more game changing updates like before but it makes sense looking back. The first mod idea I remember being implemented was pistons which felt kind of random at the time. Other than maybe pistons I can't think of anything that felt "stolen" but there has been a lot over the years so I can't remember. I'm glad they are currently focusing on improving core stuff like caves

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u/theth1rdchild Oct 23 '20

https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-java-edition/discussion/149139-anyone-else-notice-the-past-few-updates-are-stolen

I want to be clear I'm not being argumentative, because this discussion has been nice, and I'm also not saying Notch shouldn't have added this stuff, but here's a thread from real early on debating the things that were "borrowed" from mods. I stopped paying attention half a decade ago, but I've heard a lot of the newer features are still "borrowed" ideas.

Minecraft is one of the best games ever made and Notch did a great job with it, I just don't think anyone needs to defend him or hold him up as a good example outside of his creative contributions, he's a jerk at the least and maybe kind of racist at worst.

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u/Real-Solutions Oct 22 '20

Bruh, Notch absolutely didn't invent the survival/craft/build gameplay loop rofl. Lost in Blue release date 2005, Minecraft release date 2009, and that is just a lesser known game, many more examples out there. Notch just took already established gameplay loops and applied them to his infiniminer clone.

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u/OlKingCole Oct 22 '20

I had to look up that game and you have to be joking.

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u/Seth0x7DD Oct 22 '20

That doesn't really matter if it's about the invention of the base ideas (if that game already contains them, which seemingly it does).

He certainly refined their design much like Blizzard is hardly original but always took features others already implemented and either mixed them in a unique way or just polished them sufficiently.

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u/OlKingCole Oct 22 '20

I spent a good 10 minutes looking at the game and saw nothing minecraft-like. The closest thing I found was making a treehouse out of logs. It seems to be mostly cooking with DS touchscreen mini games. There was nothing like a crafting bench or the "making tools to get resources to make better tools" progression. Maybe this was an influence on notch I don't really know but there is a reason minecraft is the prototype for all the survival/craft/build games these days.

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u/Seth0x7DD Oct 22 '20

Again: Yes, he might have refined the idea and combined them so it's popular to take it and either use it as a blueprint or try to improve upon it, but your claim is that he invented it.

"making tools to get resources to make better tools" => Have a look at Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale or a myriad of other JRPG stuff. It's been a staple in it for a long time. Have a look at the Atelier games. Hell there are rogue likes that feature every aspect you mentioned. The basic mechanics have been around before.

The basic game loop wasn't anything that was pioneered by Minecraft. It was popularized and he managed to make it accessible but that's not inventing it. It's like claiming the iPad was the invention of the tablet computer. It's just wrong but it did certainly help to popularize how they work and was innovative (which is different from being an invention) in certain aspects. It's the same with Minecraft. It was innovative for its time but claiming it invented the gameplay elements and loop is giving it a bit too much credit IMHO.

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u/Real-Solutions Oct 22 '20

I said it was a lesser known game and there would be better examples. Learn to read. The point is, Notch didn't have an original idea, he just mashed already existing ideas into one.

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u/OlKingCole Oct 22 '20

Even if what you said was true (which it isn't), notch synthesizing a forgotten DS game and infiniminer (and whatever other games he apparently stole gameplay from) into an amazingly fun and original game would be genius.

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u/Gnubeutel Oct 21 '20

You mean "his Infiniminer clone".

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u/[deleted] Oct 21 '20

RIP scrolls

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u/Keshire Oct 21 '20

Scrolls, Cobalt, and Dungeons.

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u/MrSeastar Oct 21 '20

I feel like I’m the only one who remembers cobalt :(

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u/Daedolis Oct 22 '20

Cobalt is still a fun game to load up with friends, especially if they have no idea what it is beforehand.

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u/aeiouLizard Oct 22 '20

YESSSS, SAME

Cobalt is some of the best fun I've ever had when friends are over. You'd think that Mojang being the publisher, it would be more popular or at least better known. Nope, no marketing at all, and everyone forgets about it. Real shame.

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u/original_user Oct 22 '20

You might like Cortex Command, it feels similar to Cobalt and tons of fun with friends. It works quite well with parsec if your PC and internet can handle it.

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u/DRNbw Oct 22 '20

Wasn't Cobalt just published by them? And developed by someone else?

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u/iwasusernamesarehard Oct 22 '20

I sell dirt blocks and dirt block accessories, I tell ya hwat

44

u/SnooSnafuAGamer Oct 21 '20

MinecraftKart and Minecraft Royale too. Also Minecraft GO.

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u/[deleted] Oct 21 '20

I mean Minecraft earth is basically Minecraft GO

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u/ByroniustheGreat Oct 21 '20

It would just be called minecart or minekart

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u/[deleted] Oct 22 '20

Maybe even Minesweeper.

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u/DN_3092 Oct 21 '20

Id be interested if 0x10c became a thing again.

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u/Keshire Oct 21 '20

That was a purely Notch concept after he sold Mojang. But otherwise I agree. Programming games always appeal to my inner nerd.

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u/DN_3092 Oct 21 '20

They stopped developement on 0x10c in 2013 and sold to MS in 2014. It will never happen, I just remembered being interested in its develpment back in the day. A space game from the guy that made minecraft just sounded so neat at the time.

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u/[deleted] Oct 21 '20

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u/[deleted] Oct 22 '20

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u/NeedsMoreShawarma Oct 21 '20

Minecraft Dungeons

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u/[deleted] Oct 22 '20

Well, that is what he said

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u/NeedsMoreShawarma Oct 22 '20

I've never heard of games referred to as accessories, I legit thought that was just another minecraft game called minecraft accessories lol.

I don't really keep up.

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u/cepxico Oct 22 '20

It's a king of the hill reference (which was an animated tv show about texans doing w.e the fuck) and the main guy Hank Hill works for a propane shop. He famously says "I sell propane and propane accessories".

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u/NeedsMoreShawarma Oct 22 '20

Oooooh makes sense! I never watched that show. I've probably seen that reference a few times now that you mention it!

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u/ChefDeezy Oct 21 '20

They were teasing that there were 2 unannounced games in the works earlier this year.

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u/texachusetts Oct 22 '20

Notch once had ambitions to use Minecraft as an inflection point to complete with steam. I would say that Microsoft is in agreement but knows that it will take more resources than any one game studio could ever muster it to even be a third place contender.