The Minecraft Lawsuit: Why is it Happening?

Word of a lawsuit against Mojang has been spreading in recent weeks, leaving many fans wondering what exactly is going on. So, today, we dive into the Minecraft lawsuit and explain why it is happening in bite-sized form.

The Minecraft Lawsuit: An Overview

The Minecraft lawsuit is currently being crowdfunded by Kian Brose, a developer and longtime Minecraft fan. After developing a gun-based Minecraft server and spending thousands of dollars on marketing, Mojang suddenly stated that “guns and weapons are considered non-compliant features under [their] Adult Content requirement for commercial usage servers” while still seemingly allowing them on servers such as Hypixel and within the Minecraft Marketplace. This sudden and otherwise unannounced change to the End User Licence Agreement left Kian Brose and other smaller servers that use guns and weapons on the verge of shutting down, despite all the money they had put into development and marketing. Kian Brose and others continued to reach out to Mojang asking for clarification as weapons could very well apply to the game’s own crossbows and swords, only for Mojang to state it was now “guns and firearms” rather than weapons. Further communication with Mojang eventually resulted in the Minecraft Enforcement Team stating that while it was “NOT final,” guns would continue to be allowed on third-party servers for the time being. A temporary win but one that Mojang could revoke at any point later, making it hard for developers such as Kian Brose to justify further investment in their servers since they could seemingly be forced offline overnight. However, during all of this, Kian Brose had also begun investigating whether such sudden and unannounced changes were even legal under European law, only to discover they were not. This, in turn, began the Minecraft lawsuit, where many more illegal actions by Mojang would be uncovered.

Kian Brose’s Goal

Despite reaching out to the legal institutes meant to enforce European and Swedish law surrounding consumer protections and protect those seeking justice, Kian Brose’s complaints were repeatedly shrugged off, leaving the only path forward a lawsuit by which few could realistically afford. Mojang is owned by Microsoft, a multi-trillion-dollar company with many of the best lawyers available. No battle with them would be easy. To attempt to counter this, Kian Brose has shared his story, and many fans of Minecraft have come together to support him through crowdfunding, of which they have reached over $120,000. And, while the lawsuit itself has yet to actually begin, public eye on the subject continues to rise. Where it goes from here remains to be seen. For a full fifteen-minute explanation on the subject, we highly recommend Kian Brose’s own video, which is found embedded above and here.