Minecraft’s devs exit its 7 million-strong subreddit after Reddit’s ham-fisted crackdown on protest
On: June 28, 2023
If you’d like official updates from the Minecraft dev crew, you higher not look on Reddit. A put up from a Reddit person bearing the title sliced_lime and a aptitude indicating they’re the Minecraft Java Tech Lead (virtually definitely Mojang’s Mikael Hedberg) introduced yesterday that Mojang would now not be posting official content material to Reddit, within the wake of that platform’s response to protests over modifications to its API.
“As you haven’t any doubt heard by now, Reddit administration launched modifications lately which have led to rule and moderation modifications throughout many subreddits,” learn the put up, earlier than asserting that these modifications have led Mojang to “now not really feel that Reddit is an applicable place to put up official content material or refer [its] gamers to”.
So Lengthy, and Thanks for All of the Suggestions from r/Minecraft
The occasions are solely obliquely referred to within the put up, but it surely appears the move has been sparked by Reddit’s crackdown on protests towards current modifications to its API that may, in essence, kill off third-party apps that allow customers entry the positioning.
Subreddit mods have spent the previous couple of weeks mounting numerous campaigns towards Reddit’s company management, both “going darkish” by turning the subreddits they oversee into non-public, invite-only communities or else marking them as NSFW, which means Reddit cannot promote adverts on these pages. Reddit responded by pressuring disgruntled mods, and in some instances ousting and attempting to exchange them.
In follow, the most important impression of this departure would be the finish of the subreddit’s official changelog threads, where the subreddit’s 7.4 million Minecraft followers and gamers can pore over official updates in granular element and provide their suggestions on to the devs who cling on the market. Sliced_lime emphasises that gamers are, naturally, “welcome to put up unofficial update threads going ahead,” and may at all times “go to [Mojang’s] suggestions site at suggestions.minecraft.internet” or else contact it through social media.
Consumer response has been fairly understanding, which in all probability solely highlights simply how offended everyone seems to be with Reddit’s management right away. The highest-voted touch upon sliced_lime’s put up, from DamageBooster, simply says “Comprehensible” earlier than asking where else customers can entry official changelogs.
Nonetheless, even when there are different avenues to achieve Mojang, it appears pretty dramatic for a game as incomprehensibly large and important as Minecraft to chop off Reddit as one among its official ports of name. It is harking back to advertisers fleeing Twitter within the wake of Elon Musk’s messy assumption of management at that firm. Time will inform if Reddit’s management will take any discover, although (I am unable to say I am optimistic).
I’ve reached out to Microsoft to ask if any extra of its studios are going to observe Mojang’s swimsuit and lower off Reddit as a source of official communication, and I am going to update this piece if I hear again.
For now, I feel it is a one-off. There is no signal of every other Microsoft studio doing something related to this point, so this appears extra like a state of affairs that has personally aggravated sliced_lime (and presumably their fellow Mojang devs) than a Microsoft-wide initiative. However who is aware of? Maybe one of many largest corporations on the planet will take a while off preventing a number of nationwide market regulators directly to direct its ire at Reddit executives. If that does not get their consideration, nothing will.
