The last update to the EULA had previously been made on the 17th of April 2020, which caused massive issues within the community due to changes being purposefully loosely worded in a way that caused a ton of servers to shut down due to this non compliance.

Today, on the 2nd of August 2023, Mojang just released a blog post notifying users about changes to their eula updates (required by law).The changed eula has been rewritten with lots of portions from the old version, and has added sections which are likely to cause the game some serious damage, which this post will go over.

The specific citations that will be used can be found Mojang’s usage guidelines page, which is their own interpretation of their eula

This comes after the recent gun server eula drama where Mojang arbitrarily decided through loose wording that guns fell under the "adult content" guidelines, forcing servers such as GTM to degrade their experience due to the fear of being restricted.

As a gun server owner myself affected by this issue, I was waiting for Mojang to reply to several inquiries made by gun server owners in a joint discord group which only led to Mojang naming that the people capable of deciding were out of office and that we had to wait over a month to get a proper answer.

The answer we got? None, instead they updated the eula which essentially answered our questions meaning that we, and many more servers, all have to shut down as we are officially non compliant under the new eula.

The gist of how this affects Minecraft, from server owners to players, with quotes of how it relates to this new EULA:

Servers with "player queues" such as 2b2t are now non EULA compliant

• Access to your server can’t be limited to or controlled, directly or indirectly, by a player owning or having access to out-of-game content, products, or services

Any server, piece of online content such as video or other may be taken down due to any reason whatsoever if "we [Mojang] don't like what you are doing"

• All permissions and consents are given by us at our discretion and may be revoked at any time if we think that it is appropriate to do so, or we don’t like what you are doing

All server owners are obligated to add a disclaimer saying "NOT AN OFFICIAL MINECRAFT [PRODUCT/SERVICE/EVENT/etc.]. NOT APPROVED BY OR ASSOCIATED WITH MOJANG OR MICROSOFT"

• Prominently include the disclaimer similar to the following: “NOT AN OFFICIAL MINECRAFT [PRODUCT/SERVICE/EVENT/etc.]. NOT APPROVED BY OR ASSOCIATED WITH MOJANG OR MICROSOFT” on your product, listing, description, website/webpage, and all other related materials.

Using "Minecraft" as a significant part of a creative work, such as a youtube video, is no longer allowed

• “Minecraft - the ultimate Kotoba server for Redstone” - Not allowed
• "Minecraft – the ultimate help app" - Not allowed

Any server (or other things) is considered commercial under every circumstance, even if it does not make money or not

• This applies, for example, if you want to set up and run any non-commercial blogs, servers, community forums, fan sites, fan clubs, news groups, events, and gatherings.

In-person Minecraft events like lan parties are no longer allowed to engage in sponsorships if said event is to make money

• You may not accept sponsorships for purposes of profit

In-person Minecraft events cannot be marketed using Minecraft assets such as logos or fonts

• Do not use official Minecraft brand or assets on your marketing materials create. You may use the Minecraft name in a secondary name, secondary title, or description only.

Servers with ANY content not suitable for 10 year olds, whatever that may be, is no longer allowed

• All servers, entitlements, and advertising are suitable for audiences of all ages (for example, gambling, pornography, violence, terrorism, explicit lyrics, or other unsafe/mature content) and they don’t harm the Minecraft brand
  [Minecraft is rated 10+]

Servers are obligated to have a "terms of service" clause before even joining the server for the first time, in a way that describes the content of the server and pricing of ranks for example if aplicable

• You provide information to users on all the content and pricing applicable to your server before a person joins, signs up, or signs in

Fictional story writers are not allowed to include minecraft brands or assets (like fonts or images) for minecraft related works

• You don’t use the Minecraft brand and assets anywhere on the front or back covers of your publication

They then proceed to gaslight people into believing that they like creativity:

"We are very relaxed about things you create for yourself. Pretty much anything goes there - so go for it and have fun"

Furthermore, they also proceed to state that they are now allowed to change the guidelines and that it's your responsibility to check them, which legally they are required to do upon changing a contract under EU laws

• So don't count on these guidelines always being here or in the specific form they are in right now. It’s up to you to occasionally check back here to see if these guidelines have changed and ensure your use of Minecraft is in line with what we allow.

This update officially shows that Mojang no longer cares for the community, this update will now forever discourage existing server owners and upcoming server owners to ever want to be engaged with the game due to these guidelines giving Mojang full control over shutting down years of hard work for any reason whatsoever, they don't even try to hide it anymore through loose wording (which is still present everywhere and would be, under certain cases, considered misleading in court due to EU contract laws)

There is no good end to this post, because this is not good news, if it's not already clear this update is not only a terrible precedent to future updates, but shows Mojang is taking after totalitarian companies that wish to have total control over everything without leaving space for creativity.

I sincerely hope this is concerning enough to actually hopefully lead to some change

• Kian