There's no reason for them not to. Open source launchers using the "honor system" for account verification are already established and normalized. It's trivial to just comment out that verification. The jars and assets are free to download from Microsoft's servers without needing an account. It's a trivial game to get without paying, so I don't see any downside for them to open source the engine.
Honestly, I would almost settle for Microsoft open sourcing the Minecraft Java back-end server at a minimum. This alone is long overdue. The massive fanbase could have started to maintain it in ways Microsoft could only fathom.
I don't even think open sourcing Minecraft would hurt them financially. People don't buy Minecraft because that's the only way to play the game; it's not, it's easy to find ways to run Minecraft for free. The reason people buy it is to join servers.
Most serious servers only allow players with valid paid Minecraft accounts to join, because it allows the server owner to ban people or otherwise keep track of people. I don't see any reason why this would change just because the game client was made open source.
You can already do that and some do. Mojang, for some incomprehensible reason, even lets you disable auth in the official server's settings (`online-mode=false`).
Notch has said a lot of things over the years. Many after the sale to Microsoft were not so great. Suddenly without purpose and more money than he would ever need in a life time, he found a new purpose that wasn't so great.
A lot of Qanon rants and other conspiracy things. Just goes to show you that some times it is best you don't get what you wish for.
I have been following him, and I think a lot of the claims about him have been exaggerated. He stopped being so edgy on twitter after watching the "this is phil fish" video. It is an interesting watch and applicable to notch.
The music is definitely considered classic, you can find tons of people online talking about how it means a lot to them - and personally, I really loved the music.
I remember the early Minecraft musics from C418 to be relatively unconventional, especially some of the jukebox discs.
I started playing Minecraft again recently and while it sounds like it’s the same artist, and it’s still somewhat contemplative, it’s not dissonant anymore.
It's not the same artist. C418 had a very good deal with Notch's Mojang, letting him keep rights. Microsoft demanded that he sign over the rights to further music as work for hire. He refused, as a result the newer music in Minecraft is made by other composers who signed on to that deal and try to make music fitting with C418's style.
It's not hard to get into the library of congress? It's purposely extremely easy. I forgot who it was, but there was one big right-wing talk show host that would end all of his segments by saying it's being added to the Library of Congress as if it's an exclusive accolade, and people rightfully called him out on his shit for how easy it is to do that
The classic Minecraft music was great. Some of the new music Mojang has added in recent years is unlistenable noise. Like "glitchcore" crap. I tried playing with music on recently and after a few hours had to give up.
Interesting, I love Minecraft's music. I do listen to it intentionally outside of the game, but it's not quite the same as having it suddenly start up during gameplay. The first I heard of someone "obviously turning off the music" was, I kid you not, yesterday, and now I'm hearing it for a second time today. Would woulda thunk!
There are soundtracks I listen to outside of their games: Castlevania Symphony of the Night, Chrono Trigger, Shadowgate,... but Minecraft would be way near the end of the list. The music is too generic to be worth the attention, yet too present to work as ambiance. It kinda reminds me of Silent Hill's soundtrack.
I turn off the in-game music while playing. I prefer to listen to my own stuff, including video essays etc, but I do still enjoy a lot of the music, and I've listened to it standalone a decent amount. I would tend to the same in most sandbox games, like factorio
> If there's one game whose music I always turn off instantly it's Minecraft.
I turn it off but only because I have great difficulty with multiple sound sources at the same time. I will happily listen to C418's output for hours whilst doing something else.
(And also Touhou because who doesn't love an electric trumpet?)
no, I think they're looking for the official game to be open sourced... that's much more appealing than a knockoff since it's the version everyone actually plays.
less appealing to who? Lots of 13 year olds learned to code by writing minecraft mods so it can't be that hard. You also get the benefit & satisfaction of it actually being in Minecraft—yes, they are both very similar games where you explore and place blocks in a procedurally generated world, but it really does matter. I can't really explain why if you don't get it but it's evident people do care even when they know about Minetest.
My kids are younger than that and play Minetest/Luanti all the time. They are well aware of Minecraft but are completely engrossed by the modding first approach of Luanti.
At this point, they could open source it, and just charge for Minecraft accounts being able to authenticate with their login servers to join authenticated Minecraft servers, and it wouldn't change sales much.
