Minecraft post-purchase ownership rights changes

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Minecraft Alpha 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 that can be terminated at 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.

Background

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 100 million times before the Microsoft purchase.

Microsoft

In 2014, Mojang and the Minecraft intellectual property were purchased by Microsoft for US$2.5 billion. 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)

Source clarification:

• Minecraft’s TOU/EULA was published as a page on the publisher’s game store site and as a .txt file in the game directory.
• The latest TOU/EULA is the only available version on Minecraft’s website.
• Earlier verifiable versions of the TOU/ EULA are only available on archived versions of Minecraft’s website, but there were time when multiple terms were aviable simultaneously. Exact dates of changes may vary, and the sources should respectively be the earliest or the latest found versions. These changes were mainly announced to the customer upon downloading and installing an update.
• The .txt file changes containing the TOU/EULA, that were downloaded and agreed to by the users with software updates, mostly exist in non-verifiable user directories.
• Minecraft has many versions, editions, websites, shops, on multiple platforms with corresponding terms. All changing throughout the years, as in content, in place of publication, and in the usage of dating or version history

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