Minecraft players outraged as Microsoft deletes accounts that weren't transitioned

nanoUFO@sh.itjust.worksmod to Games@sh.itjust.works – 339 points –
Minecraft players outraged as Microsoft deletes accounts that weren't transitioned
tomshardware.com
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These people had years to migrate their accounts, were told to migrate their accounts, and warned to migrate their accounts because the old mojang auth system is insecure and needs to be sunsetted, and when it does, they will lose access.

They sat there and played the "no, I won't move" game, and now they're upset because the thing they were told for years would happen happened.

And they would have had to have no social interaction with any minecraft player on any online platform and in real life in all those years, as well as ignore every email from mojang, never look at the minecraft website, and so on, to not be notified.

I basically agree with all of that, but it was totally possible to upgrade the auth system and keep it separate from Microsoft. Obviously Microsoft wouldn't do that, but that's kind of the point, isn't it?

I don't think any company would want to keep a separate auth system if they can help it, though. No one wants to spend resources maintaining redundant account systems and interfaces between them when they have the option to consolidate.

But I suppose I just don't see why there had to be a deadline at all. They know the email addresses associated to the original accounts, so there should just be a database they can reference to check if that email address has an unmigrated account and prompt to convert when next they log in. This is beyond "I don't want to maintain two account systems," it's "Let's just throw away this old table of email addresses so we can make more room on our servers for telemetry data."

I bought Minecraft when it was first purchaseable. Only converted my account last month as my new-school-entrant kid has asked what it is.

And honestly, I wish I didn’t. The MS launcher is an absolute shit show in usability for adults, let alone kids. Next time it forces me to log back in I’m just pirating it.

I bought two copies, I’ll fucking run them how I please.

I use the Modrinth App because it's the place where cool people get minecraft mods now, and as a Minecraft launcher it's a lot better - it uses an auth token system so you only sign in once with Microsoft's website to connect the app to the login.

I'm amazed at how much better the official launcher is on Linux than on windows.

Windows:

  • complains if your logged in account doesn't match your game account
  • Requires you to log out of one account to log into another in a not very clear or user friendly way

Linux

  • No logged in account to complain about
  • Lists all your accounts and lets you swap by clicking on the one you want in the accounts list

I bought the game at the of alpha with an email I lost access to at some point. I remember my Password and Username but forgot the email address I used. I think it also wasn't even possible to change the email address in the Mojang Account back then. So I definitely didn't sit around and ignored the migration, I even tried contacting the support.

Anyways what sucks is that I remembered my email address this winter, but already after the cut off point. Would have been nice to get to keep that very old account. But as others have mentioned, the experience is probably better with a pirated version anyway.

I also get the feeling that Linux Fans would jump on the opportunity as well.