What if Microsoft?

Sponge Sponge Discussion
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The decision of not rewriting completely the server for sponge is justified, in the FAQ, like this:

It is to our knowledge and our understanding that Mojang does not wish to stop Minecraft modding, and the recent events have not been directly caused by them.

Now let’s say the rumors are true and Microsoft will buy Mojang. Would this still apply?

It is to our knowledge and our understanding that Microsoft does not wish to stop Minecraft modding, and the recent events have not been directly caused by them.

It does’t.

I know it’s a bitch do to, and I should shut the hell up because I’m not even a good developer, but isn’t it worth it to write a server from scratch? I’m really afraid that we might end up in a terrible situation…

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I feel like even if a server is written from scratch, if Microsoft are determined to kill it off, they will… They probably have 10x more lawyers than Mojang has employees.

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Mojang stated that they don’t have very many employees anyways… I’m sure Microsoft has 40x more lawyers than Mojang has employees.

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That’s a actually an interesting way to view this.

Sure, if Microsoft does indeed remake the MC server, it will kick down the community to the ground (even more than it already is). However, the community, ideas and the API of Sponge will be made, so in worst case scenario the only remake would have to be the actual Sponge Mod (and possibly Forge).

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I’d like to point out that if the rumor is true, it doesn’t mean a heavy blow will go to the community initially. Microsoft, probably more than any current competitor, likes a strong community. However, the minecraft community and this smallish one may not be Microsoft’s interpretation of a community. They’d love to organize themselves.

I think Microsoft knows what they’re getting into if they’re planning on spending 2 billion dollars on a single brand! Microsoft isn’t run by idiots. (Subjectively, haha) They know what there market is. If anything, Microsoft will probably just beef up the current Minecraft community on Xbox and simply just leave the pc community to its own. Although, I don’t work there so I don’t have any grounding answers. I just know Microsoft and I somewhat trust them.

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I don’t think Notch will sell Minecraft…

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I thought Notch isn’t in charge anymore? On top of that, it is probably a group decision for Mojang, not an individual one.

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As far as I know(and thats not much so forgive me if I’m wrong), Notch is still a part of Mojang. Just not a dev of Minecraft anymore. Also Epicballzy, it’s not just selling Minecraft iirc. If the rumor is true it would be a buyout of Mojang as a whole not just handing one of their games over to another company.

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I believe that Notch actually initiated the deal as he was happy with the Xbox one version and mojangs relationship with Microsoft. Also, he is planning to leave when the deal goes through.

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Isn’t that just a rumor? Correct me if I’m wrong but I thought that was only mentioned in one of the news articles and hasn’t been confirmed by anyone yet.

Edit: I’m not saying it’s not true, just that it hasn’t been officially said yet.

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If I just got a couple billion dollars I would leave and retire.

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Don’t forget that all this money doesn’t all go to Notch, or whoever is in charge now. They will most likely split the money, which wouldn’t even be close to a billion dollars (but still, would be a very, very large amount of money).

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So would I. But still, without any official statement nobody knows who would leave the company. Even if anyone leaves. Plus what Maulss said is true, Notch’s share only counts for around 40 % of the company if my memory is correct. It’s still a ton of money and your point still stands but people seem to forget that (including myself)

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Sorry, I meant after I get my 300 million dollars I would leave.

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My greatest hope is that Microsoft wouldn’t care about the community of modders, plugin devs and open source programs used to run servers and just let us be. We work fine alone, anyways.

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As long as this is true, and linux support isn’t stunted horribly, I wouldn’t mind it if this rumor is true.

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haha, yea. To clarify, by “care” I mean getting their grubby hands on it. They can care as much as a nod and a wave, and then let us be on our way. :smile:

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What really needs to happen is to get a definitive license from Mojang to use the derivative code. The fact they didn’t sue the balls off Bukkit was because it was mutually beneficial at the time since the kiddies needed to buy clients to connect to their friends servers. Fast forward to today where Mojang is pushing Realms, which is most likely reason for the enforcement of the EULA “money” clause. Mojang knows the only way Realms will take off is if the private servers don’t exist. Now there is the possibility of having the money and lawyers Microsoft has to shut it all down, and its not a good spot for the project to be in relying on something known to be “tainted”.

The best case scenario I see: Mojang grants a usage license exception to the use of the decompiled binary interface as a condition of selling out.

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Not sure, just read it somewhere.

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There are a few issues that Microsoft could bring to the table, but hopefully will not.

  • Remove Linux support and only allow servers to be run on Windows Server. This could hurt hosters and raise prices for the consumer.
  • Shut down hosting companies by not allowing the distribution of the server jar at all. This would give them a monopoly on hosting and could earn them a great deal of money if they were willing to host the servers. This would also kill the Sponge project as you would not be able to host your servers or hook into the server jar.
  • Allow use of the server jar for community use for a fee.

There are many other things that could happen, but I imagine that they will allow the modding community to remain alive as it could greatly hurt their purchase of Mojang. But only time can tell!