What to do about the Microsoft buyout?

[acomputerdog]

People have been asking me what I plan to do about the Microsoft buyout. I gave myself a day to think about it, and this is what I came up with. For those that somehow don't know, Notch has sold Mojang to Microsoft. You can read more and .

As you may or may not know, Microsoft has strict . These would completely destroy the modding community, as it currently works using decompiled code which MS makes quite clear is not allowed. However, it is entirely possible that MS would create an actual modding API or make an exception for minecraft. This would make more sense, as driving away a large chunk of what made MC popular would not be good for making a return on a $2.5 Billion investment.

I am currently facing two options. One is to wait and see what Microsoft does about modding. Searge has until MC has an API that makes it obsolete. Of course, MS is very lawyer-friendly and trying to actually maintain and publish a mod against their TOS would be quite difficult.

The other option is to abandon BL and actually make (or switch to) a MC clone. We could use experience gained with BL to build modding support into the game. This would be far more work, of course, and I don't want to quit on BL right when it is actually becoming useful. I would really only do this if I left MC altogether. But I really don't play MC for MC specifically, I play because I enjoy the concept of sandbox games and Voxels work great for that. Minecraft happens to be the best platform for this, and I have lots of friends here. But if needed, I would switch to another game and many of my friends would, too.

Irregardless of which way this goes, I will not leave the BL project if it is still supported/wanted, although if MS ends up being bad for MC I am definitely starting on a different game. I have stickied this post until a decision is made, but in the meantime I am attaching a poll to see how everyone else feels about this. The poll is written under the assumption that MS has clarified all their plans for MC and modding.

[SeamusFD]

I think you should stick with BL and MC for now... However we should be prepared to create a MC clone
and the modding experience we get can help with that. I myself like the idea of our own modding based
MC clone and I already have a video game company I am building with my bro ExplodingCookie that we could use to publish it under... I wouldn't say that I am giving up on MC just yet, but I have a slight feeling that things are going to change with modding, and I can't necessarily say to the better or worse

Conclusion: In short I think you should stay with BL for as long as you can, I think it is an amazing project, however we should be prepared to branch of into either different games (Imagine how cool it would be a BL modding api for TUG!) or make our own one... But I do think we should wait for a while and see what Microsoft does with modding...

ExplodingCookie and SeamusFD's Company :

[acomputerdog]

[captmnky]

I think the biggest problem is indeed legality. until you know what exactly they will allow its really hard to say. I would love to see more from blazloader. if microsoft basically bans all modding then it will be quite hard to do anything. if they let this type of injectiong modding continue then great, I would love to start developing for blaze loader only.
if MS is super lame I would also not mind supporting a mc1.8 and never update higher to any MS versions. that would probably help the modding community more than anything. a solid stable version that all mods are made for would naturally cause compatibility over time. but again legality, i would hope for some sort of grey area of the old mojang versions mantaining the old eula instead of whatever MS comes up with for new versions.
also I would support 1.8 and BL illegally on torrent sites if need be. cause screw MS, thats why.

haha. but anyway I really like what you've accmplished here and hope you continue to polish the 1.8 version in the mean time.