Thoughts about legal problems using minecraft assets in plugin

Plugins Plugin Discussion
1

So, i am currently developing a mapping tool BlueMap.
To render those maps i obviously need a big part of the default Minecraft-Resourcepack, which i currently include directly in the plugin for a “plug and play” experience…

However before i do any alpha-releases i want to hear your thoughts about what kind of legal issues you think are going with doing that?

I noticed that e.g. Dynmap does the same but Overviewer requires you to provide your own resourcepack or a minecraft.jar containing those resources.

Do you think i should exclude them too?

I am aware that none of you will give me any legal advice here, i just want to know your thoughts :slight_smile:

2 Likes
2

I think it’s against the EULA to do so - relevant bit below, emphasis mine:

When you buy our Game, you receive a license that gives you permission to install the Game on your own personal device and use and play it on that device as set out in this EULA. This permission is personal to you, so you are not allowed to distribute the Game (or any part of it) to anyone else.

To me, the assets are part of the game - you cannot redistribute them within the EULA unless Mojang give you permission to do so.

I don’t think you should be distributing them.

2 Likes
3

That’s not to say you can not provide your own custom resources pack.

1 Like
4

It’s not only the textures i need, also the block-states and models, i can’t really modify much there from the originals ^^’

And if i don’t include the resources admins have to provide their own client-minecraft.jar on every server that wants to run the plugin :confused:

5

Would you think that obfuscating the default-resources would help a bit? It sure doesn’t fix it completely ofc…

6

No, not at all. The resources are theirs, obfuscating, encrypting, putting a random pixel in the image somewhere does not change the fact that you are distributing their work. Distributing their assets in any format is still distributing their assets which they do not give you permission to do.

1 Like
7

Yeah i think you are totally right there.

Ok, other approach:
I just had the idea of automatically downloading https://launcher.mojang.com/v1/objects/8c325a0c5bd674dd747d6ebaa4c791fd363ad8a9/client.jar or similar and extracting the resources from there on the first plugin run.
That should be ok, right?

8

As long as you ask, and you make clear that you are downloading assets from Mojang servers, that they cannot be redistributed AND that the owner of the server also owns a copy of Minecraft, I would think it’s probably okay. However, I’d personally play it safe and tell them to just download the file, with a link, and these caveats.

Big disclaimer, I AM NOT A LAWYER. I do not know if what you are proposing is legally watertight. For actual legal advice, ask a lawyer or contact Mojang and ask for clarification on that point.

3 Likes