Mojang to Require a Microsoft Account to Play Minecraft

Discussed recently:<p><i>Last call to voluntarily migrate Java accounts</i> - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=30278313" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=30278313</a> - Feb 2022 (105 comments)

Through terrible process and QA on their end, MS essentially stole a copy of the game back from me with this change.<p>My son got an email saying he needed to migrate our Mojang account to an MS account and he clicked through like the email said. Problem was the Microsoft account he migrated to already had a Minecraft purchase. Now I essentially lost a copy of the game because we technically have two Minecraft accounts with the same email. We can only log into one of them.<p>I contact MS with the best link I could find but it was not actually linking me up to a MS employee, but cycled me through four different &quot;experts&quot;, each of which I had to re-explain the issue, and each said they didn&#x27;t know how to help me before bouncing me to another expert. It was a terrible experience and still unresolved.

The whole Mojang&#x2F;Microsoft account migration thing has been a nightmare. I got two kids, and purchased different versions of Minecraft (don&#x27;t get me started on that fiasco) over the years. I also work in tech, and have Microsoft accounts. Lastly I&#x27;ve dabbled with Xbox Game Pass etc. Determining which account to use and login with is a nightmare. I don&#x27;t play Minecraft enough to stay current with all the ins-and-outs which means I ultimately don&#x27;t play as much.<p>Edit: Another commenter reminded me that I also &quot;lost&quot; a license when merging accounts. Or at least I have no idea how to get back into an account that had a purchased license. Oh well, they (MS) lose out in the end as it&#x27;s 3 less Minecraft gamers with disposable income.

Jeez. Microsoft account management is absolutely trash. They try to do clever things, but they don&#x27;t really think things through.<p>As an example: while trying to get excel installed on a Windows VM, running on a Linux host, I found that if your user agent shows you&#x27;re running Linux, their admin panel will show you a completely different set of already-purchased applications available to install. Took somewhere between 5-10 calls to their support before I figured that out on my own.

Minecraft was a better game under the original developer. Just recently saw that I can buy Minecraft coins at a tank stop. A really sad development of an awesome game which had an insurmountable amount of free content. Don&#x27;t know what I expected with the acquisition though.<p>I don&#x27;t think I will migrate my account, currently in the process of migrating away from Windows for good.

Created a new account, got locked almost immediately. Requires a telephone number to unlock it. Thanks Microsoft! Thanks Mojang!

I went through their account creation process, was no longer able to start Minecraft. It wanted me to buy a new copy.<p>After contacting MS, they recommended I downgrade to the old version of the launcher, and that worked. I assume upgrading will be forced at some point, and I&#x27;ll probably lose access again.<p>This transition doesn&#x27;t seem to be well handled, although I was glad that I was able to actually get hold of a human support rep.

If you&#x27;re on Windows, Microsoft is edging (read &#x27;diving headfirst into&#x27;) towards requiring a Microsoft account just to log in.<p>The kicker is that they are extremely bad at mixed account scenarios, you know like needing a certain account for work and another account for private stuff. Enjoy the entropy!

MS screwed up my 2 Skype account migrations. For single player probably a cracked launcher should work but if your kids play multiplayer you might have no choice and maybe create a Minecraft-only MS account and hope MS is not link it behind your back with your other accounts and skype.<p>F.U. MS, you could let us use the stuff we paid without forcing us into your shit again, some business person really wanted to simplify his spreadsheets or get some bonus because he pushed for new MS accoutns to be created then phase 2 link a credit card and phase 3 add dack patherns so kids buy skins?

That post looks like Orwellian satire.<p>Starting with the header image literally telling the viewer what to do. APPLAUSE<p>Two authoritative figures standing on stage, delivering the good message to the crowd. APPLAUSE<p>Followed by a dose of gaslighting; `So if you find yourself feeling like this transition is a hassle (but let’s be honest, it really isn’t...`<p>Written by: Staff

I have 5 java MC accounts, OMG the amount of work I need to do to migrate them. Microsoft your authentication regime sucks. It is a total pain. Can I get a refund?

Key Takeaway:<p>&gt; <i>Now just to be clear, migrating from Mojang to Microsoft accounts is mandatory. If you don’t make the move, in several months you won’t be able to log in anymore – which means you won’t be able to play either.</i><p>Link to their announcement video: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=i9cqIwrgz7w" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=i9cqIwrgz7w</a>

I bought Minecraft when it was just about to go to beta and I changed over to a Microsoft account a few days ago. I can&#x27;t say it went smoothly or that I am happy about it.<p>Lately when I have time to game I&#x27;ve been messing around with Veloren instead: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;veloren.net" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;veloren.net</a>

With the in-game currency and mandatory Microsoft accounts, unfortunately one can see self-hosted Minecraft Java server development halted as well in foreseeable future. I would not be totally surprised if they have been strategically placing bugs (to ruin the experience for those who bought the game but don’t want to be locked in) already.

Anyone old enough to remember how many times we&#x27;ve been here? Every five or so years, Microsoft re-invents its own idea to force players to make MS accounts to log in to games. Later, when they inevitably drop the initiative, the players are left wondering if their game will be inaccessible when the account service goes offline.

Reports of people being locked out and other troubles. Microsoft soils everything they touch. They have the money to get things right, they just somehow don&#x27;t. I just don&#x27;t get it.

I have an ancient minecraft account (so old I paypal&#x27;ed 9 euro to Mojang) that doesn&#x27;t have an email associated with it. Does anybody have experience with MS helping recover an older MC account?

A quirk that I experienced: My email is d@&lt;my domain&gt;.io, and thanks to Microsoft&#x27;s weird password policies, I cannot use any passwords with the letter d in them.

&quot;Now just to be clear, migrating from Mojang to Microsoft accounts is &#x27;mandatory&#x27;.&quot;<p>Whoever made the poor word choice of &quot;mandatory&quot;, rather than &quot;required&quot;, ought to leave marketing altogether and instead teach in a middle school.

In rare good news this actually restored a purchase I thought I had lost!<p>I purchased minecraft back in the alpha days, when the contract said you get it forever including all updates.<p>Over the years I lost that account.<p>Well, when Microsoft sent out this email I discovered I had been using the wrong email address - it was forwarded from an ancient email address I stopped using ages ago. I was able to go sign in (using the forgot password process), link it to my current microsoft account and now have my ancient purchase working again on a modern account!<p>Yah, this is very specific to me, and troubling to require it, but I did get something good out of it.

Another Microsoft forcing strategy. I think Microsoft just might be capable enough to ruin this incredible game.

I&#x27;ve said it before and I will say it again. Their account system is a joke. Some time ago someone compromised my account (and I am 99.8% sure it was not because of a weak password). I only noticed because I got an email saying &quot;password got changed, confirm? (etc)&quot;. I manually navigated to minecraft.net, reset my password, logged in only to find out my legacy account name got changed. Apparently &quot;Schinken&quot; is offensive, who would&#x27;ve thought. Support was more than unhelpful. I later found out that for every &quot;minecraft.net&quot; account there is also a &quot;mojang.com&quot; account. I never ever used this one and I am very sure the &quot;attacker&quot; got in through that somewhere. This one actually lets you setup 2FA.... Would&#x27;ve been nice. I am actually quite annoyed at the loss of my account, the mandatory microsoft account is the final nail in the coffin for me.<p>Let&#x27;s hope minetest gets a big boost from this. Maybe I&#x27;ll contribute too.

Microsoft forced me to add a phone nunber for &quot;security reasons&quot; because of &quot;supspicious login activity&quot;. It was the first time I logged into the Microsoft account after I created it one day ago. There was nothing listed in the login activity section.

I&#x27;m doing this process now and it is a total pain due to how long their emails take to arrive.<p>So far I needed to:<p>- Reset my password<p>- Answer security questions I created as a kid, had no idea to the answers, had to reset them<p>- Finally, need a code to begin the migration<p>Each step requires an email confirmation or code, which takes 5-10 minutes to arrive, and for the last step, the session seems to timeout around 10 minutes. This is pretty frustrating as it has taken 30+ minutes to do, I can&#x27;t imagine kids will have much patience or even understand what the purpose of this is.

Guess I won&#x27;t be playing Minecraft anymore. At least not in online mode.<p>Pretty gross how they gave a cape to everyone to shut them up. (historically capes were a rare privilege to own)

Wow, this has to be some of the most weaselly writing I&#x27;ve seen in a long time. I think my business english professor would be proud. Or maybe the markeing prof?

When I finally migrated my account on a computer I hadn’t used minecraft on before, I had to log in to my Microsoft account on the MS store to activate the app before I could launch the downloaded installer. If I tried to launch the installer without having done that, I’d get an esoteric error. This whole migration has been janky and unnecessary. Yet another reminder as to Microsoft’s incompetence

Top 10 Best Selling Video Games of All Time:<p>10) Red Dead Redemption II (43M)<p>09) Wii Fit (43.8M)<p>08) Pokémon Red &amp; Blue (47.5M)<p>07) Mario Kart 8 (51.8M)<p>06) Super Mario Bros. (58M)<p>05) PUBG: Battlegrounds (75M)<p>04) Wii Sports (82.9M)<p>03) Tetris (100M)<p>02) Grand Theft Auto V (160M)<p>01) Minecraft (238M)<p>My theory on Minecraft is that because it&#x27;s java-based and ultra portable, most people have bought it lots of different platforms. I know that I have personally bought it on <i>7</i> different systems for myself and for my kids over the years.

I&#x27;ve owned Minecraft on PC for over 10 years now, but this change really makes me just want to use the cracked version and switch over my Minecraft server to offline mode, just to avoid Microsoft&#x27;s bullshit. Unfortunately, that would come with too many security risks, as far as my hobby server admin knowledge takes me...

Since I see many people asking questions about the migration process, here is a link to their FAQ:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;help.minecraft.net&#x2F;hc&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;articles&#x2F;360050865492" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;help.minecraft.net&#x2F;hc&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;articles&#x2F;360050865492</a>

Not migrating. I put the servers I’m hosting into offline mode so everyone can play with unauthenticated clients. Using MultiMC instead of the original launcher, but still need to find a reliable way to download the latest clients when we want to update. Minecraft without Microsoft

Ugh I recently tried to recover a MS account to use Teams (only begrudgingly), was a nightmare.<p>As for Minecraft, I got an account ages ago (long before Notch sold) and at this point I&#x27;ll consider it lost and simply play Minetest whenever I feel like Minecraft...

written by: staff.<p>this should tell you everything you need to know. if i had to pen an ultimatum to a dedicated fanbase that they either join or i steal their copy of a paid game, I would choose staff as my pen name as well.

I can&#x27;t make it work.<p>I login, it demands I answer security questions ... I don&#x27;t know those.<p>The link to reset security questions demands I LOGIN.<p>I opened a support ticket days ago... nothing.<p>And this all when I KNOW my username and password.

Take a look at and support development of optional products like Veloren, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;veloren.net&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;veloren.net&#x2F;</a>

I can’t play Flight Simulator anymore because the app launcher is so buggy. I guess I’m done with Minecraft. Hopefully someone will come up with a suitable clone soon enough.

Try Minetest with the Dreambuilder mod.<p>If you want a MC clone, get Mineclone 5.

well THIS was a total surprise...<p>I&#x27;ve effectively been locked out of minecraft now. Have had nothing but problems with Microsoft accounts.

At least Microsoft didn’t buy Wordle. Dont need no account or Wordle Service Pack or a TPM there yet<p>Edit: s&#x2F;tpu&#x2F;tpm&#x2F;

from what i can tell, mojang is not requiring anybody to do anything. microsoft, however, is making people migrate from mojang accounts to microsoft accounts.

Wellp, time to get into MineTest.

Well, never playing I guess.

I personally have given up playing Minecraft the official way (this coming from someone who paid for the game 10 years ago and has hosted multiple private servers.)<p>First they destroyed the launcher, replacing with some Chrome based garbage that had more dependencies than the game itself and now this. Microsoft just eats things and their brand smells like death.