This seems entirely tangential to the thread. At least from what I’m reading, they’re discussing whether Britain and Germany allow freedom of speech. Nobody in the thread seems to be talking about MS’s stance.
I think the statement that Microsoft is not your friend is noncontroversial, a given, and applies to every large corporation on the planet.
I recommend you look into Minecraft specifically because the model has its quirks.
I’m familiar. The first server I hosted was an alpha hmod server for some friends, and I’ve played a lot since then.
What MS is doing doesn’t prevent anyone from connecting to a server. It only puts a wall in the way, saying essentially to both the host and the players that this server violates MS’s terms for hosting, but not preventing them from doing so. Server owners can bypass this restriction in a few minutes with a single restart (assuming they aren’t using a modded server that can apply the change at runtime).
This isn’t unique to Minecraft. Games have supported custom servers for as long as I’ve been alive, and more recently as software became more and more internet-connected, restrictions on those servers have also been enforced. Being self-hosted or a custom lobby on a game doesn’t change this - the server software is still owned by MS and licensed to the users.
If anything, that it is so easy to bypass this shows that it’s nothing more than signaling. I would be much more concerned if the solution weren’t simply to change online mode to false. Sure moderation is another story, but there are alternative solutions, like IP banning.
Also, Mojang/Microsoft should be seen as an enemy of the common people for many reasons - including their Copilot AI. If the Chat Reports feature (where purchased accounts are neutered because of automated chat reports) isn’t reason enough to dislike Microsoft, consider the following: The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
There are many, many reasons to dislike Microsoft. They have made many terrible decisions in the past, ethically speaking. This does not implicitly mean that every decision they make is bad or harmful. It only raises the question of intent behind decisions, and here the intent seems clear to me: they do not want their brand associated with the kind of speech allowed on that server.
The issue is whether they can limit speech on their platform. Their own hypocracy means absolutely nothing. They are free to be as inconsistent as they want so long as their rules stick to their own software and platforms.
Edit: I should add that “they should allow racism here because they do somewhere else” has to be the most wild argument I’ve ever read.
That aside, the fuck does Halo have to do with Mojang? Unless you’re saying it’s the Xbox people as a whole I guess, which makes a lot more sense to me. I saw a bunch of people talking about Palestine and assumed you were just talking about that somehow.
Anyway, none of this really explains to me why they should not be allowed to limit speech on their own platform, regardless of what speech is limited. People can always pack up and go somewhere else. This isn’t the government coming in and arresting some people for having an opinion they don’t like. This is a company coming in and saying they want that speech somewhere else.
Edit: found the Halo reference, had no idea this was a thing honestly with the dumpster fire that is the US government going on.
I’ve seen a few Deity pacifist runs before, and a lot of my runs end up being pacifist as well when I want to focus more on city building and less on combat. Managing the diplomacy with AI civs is surprisingly not that hard in Civ 6, and surprise wars can be uncommon if you’re comfortable with building military units as a deterrent even if you never actually use them.
My favorite run that I’ve seen of this was actually with Khmer, using them to rush a culture victory as quickly as possible. It’s an interesting play pattern of managing relations to avoid wars and keep trade routes open (for bonus to tourism), city planning from the start for good natural park spots, etc.
Regardless, I definitely recommend a mod for map ticks. For the early game city planning, it makes such a huge difference and makes pacifist runs much more viable. You usually have more resources (naturally) for city building, so planning it from the start makes the turns go by much faster.
Edit: I should also add that there’s the barbarian clans game mode that makes it possible for them to turn into city-states. If you allow defensive combat, then that’s an option, and you can let the camps naturally turn into city-states or get pillaged by another player later on.
While I would normally agree with this argument, this also comes right after they announced that they will stop obfuscating the code to make the game easier to mod. Most other software? Sure, changing the terms after the sale and all is shit. This? Write a mod. It doesn’t take that long if you know some Java. Or play on an earlier version I guess, or put the server in offline mode, etc.
Mojang as well? Because MS employs hundreds of thousands of employees making their own decisions and owning their own work. I don’t see how Minecraft has anything to do with the poor decisions made on Azure.
If you want to say what you want, go ahead. Nobody is required to host that speech or allow that speech to be hosted on their platform or software.
MS is attacking free speech here in the same way that a moderator attacks free speech blocking a Lemmy server. Nobody’s saying you can’t use a modded client to connect to their server if they self-host it, but they’re defederating on the main client because they want no association with it.
While freedom of speech means you can yell whatever racial slurs you want, it doesn’t mean you are free from consequences.
This seems to be the MS stance as well, and they seem unwilling to associate with that kind of speech, so they want to cut that connection off as a consequence.
MS isn’t telling them not to speak. MS is telling them to take their speech somewhere else.
I wouldn’t put it past Blizzard to suddenly decide to axe Hearthstone. As sad as that would be, it already has a pretty dwindling playerbase from my understanding.
Although, to be fair, WOTC has been the best advertising recently for any card game that isn’t MTG, so maybe they’re seeing a surge now.
I think anything that increases friction is bound to cause adoption issues.
If you’re fine with that, then I’d recommend making the price for individual licenses public so people know what they’re getting into, maybe with an asterisk that the price is negotiable (if it is).