There's no denying Minecraft's influence. More so than any other game in the past 10 years, Minecraft has changed the direction of the industry: more people are playing video games than ever before, and a lot of that is thanks to Mojang's blocky building simulator.
Of course, with a product as popular as Minecraft, you're bound to have someone try and bank off that success. For years now, advertisers have created servers and world seeds designed to sell their products, including everything from restaurants to TV shows to other video games. To be fair, these servers are harmless enough, usually consisting of a few buildings and some blocky advertising — but the developer isn't putting up with it any longer.
Earlier today, Mojang posted an update to the game's Commercial Usage Guidelines. Essentially, Mojang has put an end to all commercialized use of Minecraft servers, effective immediately. The new rules are as follows:
• [Companies can no longer] Build a Minecraft mod or server that promotes unrelated products in playable form; e.g., if you are a restaurant chain, you can't market your restaurant by releasing a mod that includes your restaurant built out of Minecraft blocks.
• [Companies can no longer] Build a Minecraft map or mod that markets a movie or TV show; e.g., if you're a movie studio, you can't make a map that uses Minecraft blocks to build out the fictional world of the movie or its characters, and you can't make an official movie trailer out of gameplay footage from that map or mod.
It should be noted that these changes only affect advertising campaigns — Mojang doesn't want to stop its fans from creating or monetizing their videos:
"... it's worth mentioning that these changes won't affect the usual server and video monetization. This is a completely unrelated thing."
So, if you've built a YouTube channel on Minecraft videos, you've got nothing to worry about — but if you went ahead and started advertising for a corporation using the game as a tool, then you'd be in trouble.
It may sound like Mojang is cracking down on content, but in all reality, the developer is just preventing other companies from taking advantage of its product. Not only that, but there won't be so many commercial-based servers any more ... and is anyone really going to complain about less spam?
For more on Mojang's updated policies, check out the full blog post.
