[bolt7469]

It's a big deal because Minecraft's server system is traditionally very decentralized. However, this change suggests that Microsoft now wants to increasingly centralize the game. Microsoft seems to be going against the game's original ethos.

[jimbob45]

There’s no going back though, is there? Once Minecraft is playable over LAN without internet connection, there’s very little to nothing that MS can do to police speech, right?

I don’t mean to be dismissive but the censorship is virtually opt-in at this point, no?

[bolt7469]

The MS controversy is that they implemented a centralized chat signing feature that is not opt-out. Most of the fun Minecraft servers are using a kind of server-side modding, but their users are playing with "vanilla" clients. So if you get banned by MS, you can't join those servers. MS is now the gatekeeper of offensive chat, not the individual servers.

[jimbob45]

You’re saying the servers are fun and that’s fine. However, I’m of the opinion that it’s the players who make the game fun and if the players choose to play on virtual LAN servers, then they, in essence, opt-out of the censorship.

[kuschku]

Even the LAN servers are still part of this censorship model. The only way to avoid this censorship is to crack the game and run the server in cracked mode.