Minecraft post-purchase ownership rights changes

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Minecraft Alfa was published and sold by a small developer, advocating for consumer ownership, promising Digital Rights Management(DRM)-free software, free optional updates, and a free copy of the fully released version for every earlier buyer.

After years of changes in the title and content of the terms of use, all the previous buyers who failed to stop accepting updates in time, had to choose between forfeiting the ownership or losing the option to use the software offline. The product became a license with DRM terminatable anytime by a tech-giant.

The user side of legal contract to use minecraft at the 2011 full release is called “Terms of use” (TOU) ,later “End-user license agreement” (EULA), and the changes it went through since 2011, can imply most of the existing anti-consumer practices, not just consumer ownership rights erosion.

This article is focusing on the oldest running version: Java edition, and the changes in consumer ownership rights in the TOU/EULA from 2011 - 2025.

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Mojang Studios

Minecraft is a sandbox game developed and published by Mojang Studios. Formally released on 18 November 2011 for PCs, following its initial public alpha release on 17 May 2009. The first sold version is later designated as Java edition.

The game was downloaded more than 100million times before the microsoft purchase. -guardian

Microsoft

“In 2014, Mojang and the Minecraft intellectual property were purchased by Microsoft for US$2.5 billion”.-wikipedia

“Minecraft as a multi-platform game is the best-selling video game of all time, with over 350 million copies sold (as of 2025) and 140 million monthly active players (as of 2021)”.-wikipedia

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