MINECRAFT MODS SHOULD BE FREE

The marketplace in my opinion is overhated. I think all that needs to change is how much of the money the mod earns the creator gets and the prices but the concept is okay in my opinion.

It’s funny though because this conversation doesn’t have to be so nuanced. Microsoft is a corporation. Notch sold out. They are monetizing Minecraft in the worst ways possible via the marketplace. You say that Minecraft was made by people, devs, artists, and I agree with you. It’s just that that’s the case for only Java Edition lol. Bedrock is buggy, full of microtransactions, you can’t play older versions like in Java, and the people who develop it are based in the states, not Stockholm. Minecraft Java edition is to mojang (in Stockholm) as Minecraft bedrock edition is to Microsoft. That’s the thing. One game is coded with love and care, the other a buggy mess. They couldn’t even add hardcore mode to it because of all of the bugs that just straight up killed you. One is the og version, the other a C++ knockoff with a literal store in it to buy mods that are otherwise free if you’re using Java Edition. Antvenom said this and I will ask you too: why is it that we see most content creators playing Java edition, despite the fact that bedrock is 10 times more accessible? I can go on and on. Bedrock Edition is the problem. I can agree that people dedicated to their craft made this game, it’s just that… Java edition is that game. Never bedrock.

You're gonna be livid that artists are actually getting paid for their work in the sim racing space

I honestly think the Essentials mod is an interesting case study with this. It adds its own cosmetics into Java, but you need to pay for each of the cosmetics, just like bedrock. Bringing that kind of market place to java, especially in a closed ecosystem is really concerning. The mod also auto-updates without your consent, and auto-installs if you download another mod which has essentials as a dependency, but that's its own security nightmare. Mods like these which clearly exist for money really worry me about the future of java modding

Most paid mods are lazy and not worth the money the marketplace is a terrible idea. The moment that money is involved is the moment where passion goes out whiwle greed comes in.

in my opinion people should be able to sell their mods. 1. who tf cares its illegal, a lot of things people do are illegal. for example Piracy. basicly nobody cares about that but it is illegal and definetly more immoral then selling minecraft mods 2. you are not gonna die from not being able to play a random minecraft mod. it doesnt affect you, neither does it affect minecraft in any way so it also isnt immoral

I mean people can just get Java instead of an inferior version. Or the based way and pirate the game

Perhaps mod developers could add a link to their patreon for donations

I have no issue with people circumventing shitty corporate practices. Tons of massive Minecraft servers are able to monetize their servers and continue to operate. Tips your favorite modders, they deserve to be compensated for their work.

NO WAY he paid hundreds of dollars for that mod. One modder could probably cook that up in a week. Either he's lying or he got scammed.

I agree with everything you said. Keep cooking brother.

You should speak about the lack of quality control on the marketplace such as the stolen skins from planet Minecraft that end up on the marketplace (I personally feel sorry for skin creators because unlike pack makers or mod creators, skin makers are often overlooked, a user will always look at the skin rather than who made it, I know alot of people don't check the creators of the other content until after trying out what they have made but still! It's rather sad) or the many many submissions of lucky block or one block or even backrooms content & (this is subjective but..) some of the resource packs on there too! Not to mention that half of the maps on the marketplace are paid commissions from other builders & whoever posts the map on the marketplace would end up getting all of the recognition for it AND a cape?! I'm actually in the process of making a resource pack for the marketplace but I can't help the feeling that some of my work would also be stolen

in summary paid mod = bad

(edit: i had made a comment mentioning the hayze, and didnt realize he was mentioned here. qwq.)

There is a way to give everyone involved their cake and eating it, too: modded Realms. Now, think about it: Microsoft has the best infrastructure to host Minecraft servers massively, better and probably cheaper than any other company could provide, so why not give Java its own official mod repository, with mods free to download and install on your Realm? Use the CurseForge/Modrinth model, where modders are paid depending on their impact on the platform (if their mod is installed in many Realms, they get a cut). Of course, this would probably require Mojang to unfug their Java codebase and provide a proper modding API, but I think everyone could benefit from this.

Why is this not the case already? Minecraft Java is "dead". They keep updating it to make it seem like the game is being actively developed and to throw a wrench in mod devs' wheels from time to time to keep them on their toes and prevent any perceived "final" Java version from becoming too strong and influential as the de-facto modding platform, but it's clear Microsoft wants to make Bedrock THE Minecraft version, and the existence of Minecraft Java is an inconvenience. Everybody knows negligent parent credit card sacrifices are extremely profitable, which is why the microtx model is so profitable. Corporations do not want fairness or producing a good product: they only want to maximize growth so investors keep buying their shitcoin. Bedrock is designed to optimize growth, while Java is an artifact of an older time. Modded Java Realms could make every involved party happy, but that would involve supporting Minecraft Java, which is not as profitable as the Bedrock model, and therefore inferior to Bedrock in Microsoft's eyes. Remember: it is not about profit (this model would be profitable), it is about maximizing profit and growth, and a flat fee subscription service is not as optimal for that as microtx.

I honestly pray for the day Minecraft Java dies, if it ever does, and we are "stuck" with a final version that could get the GZDoom/OpenMW treatment.

Theres a bit more context on the aether map for bedrock that you missed i cant seem to find it rigth now but ill update this coment once ive found it

Edit: found it its a coment from kingbdogs on the ftb reddit from when it was rereleased as ether. "Hi there! To clarify first, I'm speaking in this thread only as a community member and an ex-lead for the Aether Mod team, as I now work as a designer at Mojang Studios. I am still in constant communication with the Aether Mod team and good friends with Oscar who is the current team lead and the person who continued the project after I left. It's true that when the original Aether Dimension map came out that I felt both surprised and concerned as it was using the same name as the mod we created all those years ago. However, since then a lot of communication has happened, and I can say that everyone within the original mod team is happy with how it's turned out.

So, I wanted to clear the air a little around the Ether Dimension II map specifically. A while ago I was in contact with Oscar to figure out how to proceed. We contacted the developers over at SNDBX about the Aether Dimension project (as it was originally named when the first map was released), and both of us explained to them that we would be more comfortable with them creating content inspired by the Aether mod if they used a different name. This concluded in the Aether Mod team requesting if SNDBX could change the name of the project. There is nothing wrong with creating maps or content that explores the skyland dimension concept - it's something that I encourage, if anything. However, the important thing was that players did not get confused thinking that the project was made by the same developers that created The Aether mod. We wanted to prevent that confusion as much as possible.

Thankfully, we can say that SNDBX was very understanding and accepted this request, rebranding the project to a name agreed upon by both parties. It is also good to see from the trailer that the map has branched out and explored new concepts beyond pure inspirations of the original mod, and the different name will at least allow players to understand that this is developed by a different team.

To focus on some positive news, I know that Oscar and the Aether Mod team has been accepted as a marketplace partner and are already planning to develop a map that brings The Aether experience to the Bedrock platform. This means it would be made by the same people and with the same vision that shaped the original mod. In the end, I think this is a win-win for everyone as both parties get to develop their own takes on the skyland dimension formula. Diversity in approaches on the formula is far from a bad thing, and even cooler if players get to explore niches of it that are better suited to their playstyle.

I hope this clarifies the situation better and gives everyone an understanding that the original team has no qualms with the project this thread is referencing."

Edit 2: further context from that same tread: "Oscar/Oz from the Aether Team here!

As kingbdogz said, I was also heavily involved in the controversy and discussions about SNDBX's original map, currently titled ETHER DIMENSION. So I think it'd be important to have my side of things heard before people jump to conclusions and start piling on the Mojang hate train.

From my perspective, as the current lead of the Aether project, this release is fine. You CAN think it is a rip-off or too derivative or whatever, but honestly you'd be hard-pressed to come up with anything concrete beyond quite generic concepts and the title similarity. My view on this issue is the two maps are both heavily inspired by the original Aether mod, as well as ChromeE's Ether dimension and GreyAcumen's Aether dimension suggestion threads, which our mod also took heavy inspiration from.

The original Ether Dimension map (which was originally titled AETHER DIMENSION) took this inspiration too far, including mob concepts and names, block names, texture designs, biome names and concepts, and even generation features from my team's mods. We had a closed discussion with SNDBX about our issues with the map, which unfortunately didn't lead to much compromise. We then, when we felt conversations and negotiations had reached a standstill, attempted to file a copyright request against the map. This is where things get a bit messy on my half and I think some of the issues here that caused a lot of controversy were partially my fault. My team's previous management had setup a custom email server for the development team, which we were still using during this controversy. When we filed a complaint, Microsoft's copyright team attempted to send appropriate documentation and responses, including SNDBX's counterclaim and instructions for next steps, but our custom email service either blocked these emails or just straight up failed to receive them. Leading us to believe Microsoft and Mojang had not communicated with us at all. The result of this error was that, due to us not filing a cease and desist or legal challenge from SNDBX's counterclaim, the map was reinstated after I believe 14 days.

Now SNDBX actually did decide to make changes to their map to accommodate requests we had made, including notes from our copyright complaint. Which I commend them for. But the main issue we had was still the name, and how it, in our view, misled users into believing the map was associated with our mods. We had a bit of back and forth with this until eventually a contact at Mojang reached out to help settle things and find a compromise both parties would be happy with. Seeing as they had already changed most of the things we felt were infringing, our only real issue remaining was the map title. So we agreed that a name change to something more generic/less associated with our projects would be satisfactory. ETHER DIMENSION was the agreed upon compromise. And the map was eventually republished with the new name and they were able to publish their sequel using the updated name.

Now I don't think this is likely to change many minds but Mojang has been genuinely wonderful through this whole process and has offered what I would call a staggering amount of support and resources for us once the communication issue was resolved. We've been allowed access to the marketplace partner program and plan to release our own "official" Aether Project content on the marketplace in the future, and they helped mediate and facilitate the resolution of this controversy while skirting around a lot of difficult legal questions and contract requirements. I feel they went above and beyond and I can specifically say the current marketplace leadership has a really strong vision for how to improve and enhance the Bedrock creator environment.

So yeah basically SNDBX is well within their right to make something loosely inspired by our work and prior works of the wider Minecraft community, the new map seems to be entirely original ideas built on the skeleton of the first map, which had already corrected and changed any infringing content a while back. I don't think you should buy these maps because I say our team is okay with them releasing, but you should also not base your purchasing decisions based on a misconception that my team is being ripped off and Mojang is unfairly profiting off our misery or something like that. Mojang has helped us tremendously, SNDBX so far seems to have learned their lesson and has cemented a better understanding of the line between copying and taking inspiration.

Overall, the controversy around these things was warranted, but Mojang took decisive action to resolve the issues between our team and SNDBX. And are, to the best of my knowledge, continuously improving and taking feedback on ways to enhance the experience for Bedrock users and marketplace creators. Which I think is commendable and not worth the vitriol and toxicity I've seen come up frequently on this topic. If the name change and the content changes from these maps isn't enough for you, that's fine. But it was enough to satisfy my team, so we consider the matter settled. "

How is it morally correct that a mod is free? You wouldn't say that about a game would you? It's an additional piece of content that you can live without and someone had to put some work into it. If they want to make money out of their work then let them. For me it feels like people saying that kind of stuff only care about themselves. A creator of sodium which for a lot of people is the only way they can enjoy the game is literally homeless and I'm pretty sure that physics mod didn't get any significant update since it was forced to become free as there was no incentive to put a lot of work into something you can't even monetize. These are just 2 examples of how a mod being paid would have been a better approach. I'm not a mod creator myself but demanding people's hard work to be free to use is laughable.

this video shares the same sentiment i have

like the whole reason why i dont really want to sell my skills is becsaue i want to be someone that can help make something and have it freely avalible

i wana be a programmer that people can come too without worrying about having to pay, specially for a project i have interest in

minecraft bedrock edition sucks because of the marketplace, i mean, there's other aspects like the 1.8 combat that just make it inferior, but the marketplace is a biiiig deal

minecraft is a paid game, you alredy paid for the experience, there should not be microtransactions within a paid product, imagine that you pay for windows, and oh wow, look, there's ads in the taskbar, ads in the desktop and ads on your AI assistant, OH WAIT, THERE'S ALREDY ADS IN THE START MENU, well you get my point

you should not have to pay for extra content in a alredy paid game, either make minecraft free and get only the microtransactions, or remove the microtransactions(marketplace) entirely, you cannot have both

ah fuck the eula, the eula is stupid! It just makes mojang look like nintendo, but less bad, still bad, just less

I could be ok with paid mods, so long as people are ok with me pirating them

I can't actually require from anybody to do something for free. There is nothing inherently bad in monetizing mod. But, you know, any living ecosystem of a free stuff is a small win for a humanity. So trying to shed some money from something that always was free is immorale.

i would pay for mods that i actually like but if you look at stuff like the bedrock market store there is just tons of stolen content and no quality controll, nor can you refund anything
if its like that then no i would never pay

Jesus Christ dude you run your argument off a cliff with the anti capitalism shit. It's a bit extreme

I think you this video fails at detailing what actually is the problem.
The problem is not that someone is paying for content. This model has existed since the beginning of gaming in form of DLC. The issue is that Mojang has confused mods, which traditionally were free but unsupervised, with paid DLCs, which are paid but obliged to deliver high quality.

Bro there is no way that selling a modifications to a game that you made put your work into is immoral to get the mode the game already has to be own so if the gamer is satisfied by the developer then the moder can fulfill it. WITHOUT hurting the big corporation as they don’t lose money from the moder

I can understand both sides. Capitalizing mods could make a lot of people try to scam or get into the "bear mininum". But its also true that some modders, even with those with passion can't afford developing or updating their mods over time because they need to focus in other things too.

The marketplace is a good way to reward creators, and also, the competence can push modders to get quality mods. I know currently there's a lot of people who just want to make easy money.
But why those who create things for passion and needs some money to continue should pay too?.


We would be punishing everyone equally even though not all modders are like that.

If the problem isn't the marketplace itself. We can just ignore and not support those creators who just want easy money while we support those who really create quality content directly from the marketplace.

Why are do so many minecraft creators have this idiotic liberal "JK Rowling is evil" mineset?

Since when is protecting women's rights evil? Since when is protecting children evil? You disagree with that, you're the evil one.

I'd like to point out, another java mod that's been locked behind a paywall since 1.12.2 is JurassiCraft. I'm starting to hate these locked mods.

only problem i have as customer and player who enjoys modded exp

if i had to payed every mod in modpack it would be 100 euro easily and it every one cost only 5 - 3 euro price so you get idea on how many mods i do play with

mods should be free because like video says modded exp of any game is just extra thing made by people who like game and learn to code to do so and we should keep it that way forever if mods are left by dev team and it will then be pickup by other person down road with permission because of moral thing / official update per say would be and people would be safe

unlike payed one because once developer of said mod drops update's but keeps selling mod well then he won't give any one and it will be stuck always in payed state of things ( locking down many people works per say and be old mod per say )

if free mod developers want some crash like in vidoe mention open up any support website but if you don't get support from playerbase well then remeber mods are just stuff made by fans who do mods on they time and money for sake of creating exp for yourself and you just simply sharing per say

Selling mods may be illegal, but I don't think it's immoral by any means. =/ like, let 'em get their coins lol

If bugrock is allowed to sell mod than java should too be allowed to sell mod

Wether Jet's intention was making the video as an ad or not, the way he phrases the mod in the video undeniably makes it feel like he is selling you something, and it completely changes your look at it.

That, and that a lot of the issues he explains end up feeling extremely personal and not objective

I agree with you, also with jet's mod, from what i can see this mod isn't particullary advanced, it could be done with big datapack but modding is easier than it, still if he hired someone decent then this mod should take him 1 week to code, hundreds are too much, probabbly 100-150$ and rest is simply to maintain development or something else

Great vid, paid mods suck ass, would rather donate some money for the hard work for a free mod. Also what mods you using?

I dont think removing modding will stop the community, since a similar thing happened with shaders and they found a workaround for them not long after they were removed.

Though it would not be available for console and ios players as easily as it would for andoird and pc.

You're giving Jet a LOT of slack here by saying that he got 'lucky' that the video got a million views. Just one look at his channel can tell you that he can consistently garner thousands of views, and already has a few videos in the millions, with only 1 of his videos having less than 100k views. The way I see it, the guy knows what he's doing, he knows the audience he's garnered and how to consistently reach and appeal to it.

honestly I really appreciate this video, when watching the Hayze video I felt this real venom against devs from them (I study games design and their language really made me feel unwelcome, as has alot of the minecraft community with how they talk about the mojang devs) obviously I'm studying from a pseudo business perspective so the pay to play with mods made enough sense to me and I want people who dedicate time to mods to be able to make money from them as I saw them similar to indie games. The explanation of it you gave here was really eloquent and you made me realise that I was being a little dumb about my thinking, dunno how I never realised that a mod is basically fan fiction!

Tbh plugins and mods (mostly plugins and other resources, textures, custom mobs etc) designed to be used for more commercial massive servers are fine to be monetised but that's just my opinion. Servers still have to somehow survive and selling of non p2w ranks etc isn't bad thing too. Otherwise servers wouldn't last very long now would they. But yeah imo it stands only when projects like these need to be funded.

Mods should always be free, big fans with disposable income can support it via donations.

It reminds me kind of of fanfiction. You can write it an put it on the internet because you don't profit on it so it isn't copywrite infringing. But you aren't allowed to sell it, because then it does infringe on copyright

so if you're not allowed to make money from mods, then what about the people who upload mods to curseforge? the app has ads and is claimed to give some of the ad revenue to the mod creators, so does that count as making money from the mods or is this a loop hole?

Minecrafts original license agreement supported selling mods and user accounts. It was only after the games developer started hiring people that he was pressured to create a restrictive EULA and sell to Microsoft. The original roadmap included releasing Minecraft as opensource.
In order for good mods to be developed, devs need to spend allot of time working on them. It may seem to cost them nothing, but they have bills to pay witch can rack up to over 50K USD a year. The reason why all the good mods quickly stop getting updated and are never finished is that its just not affordable to work on them.

Same thing happend when Skyrim briefly had paid mods in steam workshop. Same stealing mods, low effort, bare minimum stuff was uploaded. Just like Minecraft Marketplace

Amen brother. Java mods have always been free. Microsoft can continue to make profit off of Minecraft merch, movies, TV series, & game sales, but stay away from microtransactions.

I wouldn't be overly pissed at the marketplace, because it does allow modders to get paid, but it's done in a way that is so insanely close to scummy mobile game tactics. Mainly with the Minecoins. The whole point of having this type of currency is for scummy mobile game makers to make it seem like their prices aren't as high as they look. For instance, 10 dollars vs 200 razzlebucks (I just made that up.) the razzlebucks make it seem cheaper because their isn't a direct translation. except the only way get the exact amount you need, is to pay for more than you need. Whether they know it or not, that is what they are mimicking.