Sanctions sometimes ban providing services to people in countries.
Apparently Minecraft requires you to login (a service) to use the game. If the game was completely offline this wouldn't be a problem.
Barely a week goes by without some variant of "Iranian Hackers" in the tech/security press - maybe, inshallah, they could release a version that lets you play on Iran-hosted servers without needing to connect to the US for a login?
No, they don't need a 'new' client for that. That already exists. Since minecraft is basically open source, it's not really a secret that how to make a client that simply don't require login. (Surely you don't want to say it loud or legal team of MS is going to chase you hard, but lots of client just slip that function in silently)
Besides that.
The minecraft login is basically a license check allow you to join 'legal purchase required' server. And whether you want to enable the enforcement is up to server owner.
Open source means the developers release the source code willingly and encourage other people to use it. Minecraft is not now and never has been open source.
They do release the source mapping of the java version alongside the binary. Which can be used to decompile the whole game back to compilable java file. (And you can fiddle it around starting from there). It's source available if you do own the game. So I say 'basically'.
The bedrock version on the other hand is completely proprietary. With very little extension api exposed. So there is very few mods of them.
That's decompiled source and while, for Java at least, it can be pretty usable, it's actually going to differ in many ways from the original source due to optimization and obfuscation. I'm fairly sure neither Mojang nor Microsoft were particularly pleased about this, indeed their use of obfuscation implies they want to make your life more difficult doing it.
I think your point is that the Java version at least is easy to modify, but that's because it's in Java, not because Microsoft wants you to. "Open source" and even "source available" are terms of art which don't apply here. "Very hackable" seems more appropriate.
This reply is probably a little late, but that check is just a line in the config file. You change something like verify-purchase=true to verify-purchase=false, and it's done.
Minecraft is not an online game, it has a multi-player option sure.. but it doesn't strictly need to be online. There is a single-player mode since basically forever..
I'm not arguing your point, but this is the general state of gaming today. A significant portion of "single player only" games require you to be online, contain "online" content, and access to the game can/will be effectively removed when servers/services go offline.
It's a sad state of affairs that you can buy an offline game, and then the developer/publisher can push out an update that turns it into an online game and then disables your access to it
Half the point of sanctions is making the life of average people difficult so the leaders fear them revolting over not being able to play a game or, you know, feeding their children.
The other half is to reduce their ability to wage war on their neighbors.
Either way, the leaders are still sipping wine and eating cheese.
Honest question; has that ever worked? Cause I could see it just as easily weaponised by a sanctioned state to cause one to dislike "the west" more. Would you be more likely to overthrow your government when other governments start making your life more difficult?
You can use the US embargo on Cuba as a case study -- see this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJETjgJM-Q4. The conclusion is roughly that the sanctions did not work, they only strengthened Cuba's relationship with the Soviet Union, as well as serving to unite the citizens of Cuba against a common enemy and thus consolidating support for Fidel Castro. Another comment makes the same point about Iran and China today
Sanctions may be a very weak measure when it comes to inciting revolutions. But in general, yes, sanctions against non-military goods do work to change the minds of greedy leaderships if they can be tailored to remove a sufficient part of their income. However, that is not always the case, e.g. in Iran it is rather a measure of the "we are doing as much as we can, more than sternly worded letters, less than violence or war".
> But in general, yes, sanctions against non-military goods do work to change the minds of greedy leaderships if they can be tailored to remove a sufficient part of their income.
Why are they not working to bring about regime changes in Russia and Iran, and why did they not work to bring about regime change in Cuba and Iraq?
Because Russia and Iran have leadership that has other sources of income outside of the sanctioning west. Cuba and Iraq had that historically (with the eastern bloc as trading partners), and the regimes began to change (at least a little) when those sources for income vanished. That they didn't immediately disappear comes from the fact that the respective leadership is caught between a rock and a hard place: uncomfortable in power at home, but no safe place for comfortable exile available.