Minecraft account migration

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General

Minecraft's developer, Mojang, was bought by Microsoft in 2014. At the time of the acquisition, the computer based version of Minecraft edition was known as "Minecraft Java Edition". Before the acquisition and at least through the end of 2019, customers who wanted to purchase Minecraft Java Edition would do so by creating a Mojang account and buying the game under that account's name. Minecraft Java Edition owners would then play the game by signing into the game's launcher with their Mojang Account.

Mojang announced on October 21, 2020 that Minecraft Java Edition players will need to migrate their Mojang account to a Microsoft account. Those who migrated their Mojang accounts to Microsoft accounts would maintain access to their username, cosmetics, player worlds, and earn an exclusive cosmetic cape.

Mojang's staff wrote wrote the following about the account migration:

"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."

Account migration started in waves or "batches" sometime in early 2021. Initially, account migration was voluntary, and users with Mojang accounts could play Minecraft Java Edition without needing to migrate their accounts. On February 2, 2022, Mojang announced that on March 10, 2022 the voluntary migration period would end and that Mojang account users would be unable to play Minecraft Java Edition without migrating their account. On May 8, 2023, Mojang announced that Mojang account owners would have until September 19, 2023 to migrate to a Microsoft account or permanently lose the capacity to migrate their account. Following this September 19, 2023 deadline, Mojang gave Mojang account owners who missed the deadline a three month grace period through December 18, 2023 to migrate their account. Mojang account owners who exercised their option under this three-month grace period would not have access to the cosmetics associated with their Mojang account or the certainty that they would enjoy the username associated with their Mojang account under their Microsoft account. After December 18, 2023, Mojang account owners who had purchased Minecraft Java Edition from Mojang would need to purchase Minecraft under a Microsoft account in order to play the game. On a page titled "I Missed My Chance to Migrate. What Happens to My Account?" on the official Minecraft Help Center, Mojang explains:

"To continue playing Minecraft, you will have to buy Minecraft: Java & Bedrock Edition using a Microsoft account.

Even during the migration period, it was not made easy to ether contact the people behind Minecraft about this. support was not replying to questions about the migration process and issues with it.

Users who could not figure out how to migrate their accounts that they bought in the pre-release era had to re-purchase Minecraft with a different username for a post-release price (Alpha costing 9.95€, and Beta costing 14.95€ and the full release being 29.99€).

In https://web.archive.org/web/20210813083726/https://notch.tumblr.com/post/2175441966/minecraft-beta-december-20-2010 Notch promised in his blog that all purchasers of the Alpha version of the game would get all purchases of the game for free, even saying "a promise is a promise", as he removed it from purchases made after the release of Beta.