Minecraft Bedrock Sabotage
I was reading some stuff on minecraft.net yesterday when I happened to come across this article. As I was reading, it became clear that Microsoft has taken a product that they purchased and made a big oopsie.
It is now possible for Microsoft moderators to unilaterally ban players from all online activities within Minecraft (in this case I am referring to the c++ codebase). This not only extends to public servers, but also to the ability to host and join worlds within Minecraft, as well as accessing the Minecraft marketplace and, for xbox console players, the ability to access your own singleplayer worlds. See this for the source of my information regarding xbox players being unable to access their singleplayer worlds.
"Additionally, Xbox players will not have access to their worlds."
What is interesting about this is that some of the rules found within the Minecraft Community Standards are very vague. Specifically the examples found in this excerpt from the Community Standards:
"Minecraft has a zero-tolerance policy towards hate speech, bullying, harassing, sexual solicitation, or threatening others."
Now while I agree that these things are bad and should not be allowed, There aren't any specific examples given of what type of behavior would be considered unacceptable other than the vague terms used to describe those categories of behavior.
While I have yet to find any specific instances of abuse against players, I will update this article once I find them. This ability for moderators to ban players from all online services within Minecraft is a recent thing, so I doubt there are many public stories yet.
Personally, I find it rather terrifying that my ability to play Minecraft with my friends could potentially be taken away because of a moderators misunderstanding of something I might have said on a server. This turn of events has made me really consider switching back to Minetest, despite that community being a bit of a mess.
I have spent a fair bit of money on different versions of Minecraft and now it feels that it is all going to go to waste. Especially now that I will be forced to migrate my Minecraft: Java Edition account to a Microsoft account or risk losing access to a game I payed somewhere around $30 USD for (see "WHAT IF I DON’T WANT TO MIGRATE MY MOJANG ACCOUNT TO A MICROSOFT ACCOUNT?" on this page for the source of that information).
Another interesting thing to note is that Minecraft community members are the ones hosting the servers. This means that when you get banned from Minecraft because of something you said or did on one server (weather it be a partnered server or not), you are unable to join any multiplayer servers at all. In my opinion, this is a bit of an extreme move from Microsoft. I don't think that getting banned from one server should constitute being banned from all online multiplayer activity, but that is just my opinion.
I would like to hear what any who should stumble across this article think about this issue. If you would like to send me a comment or correct me on an issue that I bring up in this article, then please see my contact page for my contact information.