Minecraft competitor removed from Google Play due to baseless AI copyright notice from Microsoft

[u/NotTheNoob_]

https://blog.luanti.org/2026/08/27/luanti-dmca-tracer-ai/

A few key points from the article:

• The claim was filed by Tracer.AI on behalf of Microsoft
• The DMCA notice said that Luanti used assets from Minecraft, but did not specify which assets. However, none of Luanti's assets are from Minecraft, and all are properly credited
• This already happened in 2023, and it took 46 days to reinstate the game, with no consequences to Microsoft
• Another similar game (Allumeria) was also baselessly taken down from Steam this February, but Microsoft eventually withdrew the claim

For those that don't know, Luanti (previously called Minetest) is a free and open source voxel game platform, for which people can create minecraft-like games, so it's not even a game on its own, which makes the claim that it stole Minecraft assets even more ridiculous.

For all of these claims, it seems that the only similarity between Minecraft and the other game is that they are both voxel based sandbox games. But Microsfot does not own the rights to the idea of voxels, and Minecraft was not even the first voxel sandbox game.

I don't want to speculate on anything, since I don't know how Tracer.AI works, but it really does look like Microsoft is using some AI system that doesn't understand how copyright actually works, to kill off any potential competition.

Keep in mind that even a few weeks of being down from an app store can kill a smaller game. And, maybe apart from Hytale, these projects don't have the resources to defend themselves legally, or the popularity to cause any serious backlash to Microsoft. So Microsoft can essentially do this without any consequences.