Cracked modpack distribution

[madaffacca]

I'm not sure if this is the correct section, I'm sorry if it's not.
Before getting straight to the problem, let me tell you a very short story. I'm italian, and the modded Minecraft community here is "led" by a youtuber called Luke4316; he's now playing FTB, and that's really good, finally he brought this modpack all over my country and I can't be happier about this. Unfortunately (and this is the main deal), there are tons of video on youtube of a friend of his distributing cracked version of the FTB modpack, to allow people who have cracked version of Minecraft to play FTB. I flagged some of his vids, but on youtube you can only flag infringement of your own copyright, not of something that belongs to someone else. Maybe that's a trivial problem, maybe nobody cares, but from what I've get, waiting for the modpack to be released, this was a serious worry for several modders. So here's my answer: how are we supposed to react to people who illegaly develop our beloved modpack? Shall we just ignore them since there's nothing the staff could do about these guys?

P.S.: Don't get me wrong, I really love sharing and open source, but only when the developers themself distribute an open source program. As far as I know, neither Mojang nor Slowpoke wanted Minecraft or FTB to be freely distributed all over the world, or cracked version wouldn't exist.

 

[Zmaster27]

You may want to contact slowpoke with this

 

[madaffacca]

I didn't want to bother him with something stupid or trivial...

 

[raiju]

This sounds like it'd be worth it I imagine telling any admin it'd get to him regardless.

 

[Zmaster27]

believe me this isnt stupid or trivial, this is actually quite a big deal

 

[Zjarek_S]

If he doesn't distribute cracked minecraft, but only the modified launcher, then this case isn't so easy from legal point of view. FTB launcher has its source available under the Apache licence so if you remove FTB brand from it, I don't think there is anything that FTB team could legally do. Mojang probably could do something about it, but they seem not to care that much about piracy (that's why they sold only 9 mln copies).

 

[shanebassist]

Very big deal dude, let slow know immediately. This is the same reason tekkit is so hated, (pretty much)

 

[Honza8D]

As Zjarek_S said, it should probably be reported to mojang, not slow, as they did nothing wrong from the FTB launcher perspective, they are allowed to modify it. Whats illegal is that they use it to launch minecraft without bought account, so its Mojangs problem. But i didn't really study the license well so i may be wrong.

 

[Zmaster27]

be safe, report it to both

 

[Evil Hamster]

Not to trivialize it or anything..

Remember before minecraft came out for xbox, somebody was selling an exact copy (blocks, tools, crafting recipes) on xbox live. Notch said basically he didn't care.

 

[Zmaster27]

i think notch is the only developer on the planet that doesnt care about his ideas being pirated...

 

[littled00]

i dont know if this is still the same but a year or 2 back notch had said that he dont really mind that people are getting minecraft for free because the way he put it was that they will talk about the game witch would get the word about the game out there more and could get more people to buy the game

so i dont think mojang will do much about it but you could still try to tell them about it i still would

 

[Freakscar]

Well, it's not as if sales are stagnating or anything, so Noth or Mojang can see it from a rather relaxed position if a few hundret or thousand copies are stolen. Not saying that this makes pirating a game as cheap as MC any better, just putting it out there. Oh and if he does not mind the vanilla game being pirated, he probably does not really care for a modpack launcher at all. Not that Slowpoke and the team see things in the same light.

 

[Dafuq?]

Yeah it's kind of funny that this seems to be the only gaming community where the modders care more about copyright than the software developer...

From Mojang's point of view it makes totally sense to me though. I downloaded a lot of games when I was in school and had no money. Now I work, and I buy games from the exact same companies that I learned to love over those years.
I'm not saying that piracy is a good thing in itself, but assuming that people who play a hacked version of Minecraft grow to love it and eventually buy it to be able to play online without hassle isn't exactly a stupid move from mojang imo. I see this as a totally valid (and working) marketing strategy.

 

[Zmaster27]

its certainly different... could prove to be quite a market changer too

 

[Dravarden]

minecraft is all upside down:

The guy who invented the game, it's his job and gets paid for it, doesn't care about piracy... meanwhile a random person does a plugin for that game, as a hobby, releases it for free in the internet and expects to get credit from it/nobody to violate their copyright.

 

[kolikooo1]

I'm not sure if this is the correct section, I'm sorry if it's not.
Before getting straight to the problem, let me tell you a very short story. I'm italian, and the modded Minecraft community here is "led" by a youtuber called Luke4316; he's now playing FTB, and that's really good, finally he brought this modpack all over my country and I can't be happier about this. Unfortunately (and this is the main deal), there are tons of video on youtube of a friend of his distributing cracked version of the FTB modpack, to allow people who have cracked version of Minecraft to play FTB. I flagged some of his vids, but on youtube you can only flag infringement of your own copyright, not of something that belongs to someone else. Maybe that's a trivial problem, maybe nobody cares, but from what I've get, waiting for the modpack to be released, this was a serious worry for several modders. So here's my answer: how are we supposed to react to people who illegaly develop our beloved modpack? Shall we just ignore them since there's nothing the staff could do about these guys?

P.S.: Don't get me wrong, I really love sharing and open source, but only when the developers themself distribute an open source program. As far as I know, neither Mojang nor Slowpoke wanted Minecraft or FTB to be freely distributed all over the world, or cracked version wouldn't exist.

I was expecting "why cant i play whit cracked" but this... is impressive but this is an job for mojang they may not care but its thair minecraft(+ some mods) that they are pirating

 

[Dravarden]

Another two things to notice:
The minecraft installer after the terms and conditions said:
I do not accept the terms and conditions.
I have not read the terms and conditions, but I accept.

And once a guy in twitter asked Jeb:
You know that if your friend sets up a lan server in demo and you connect, and set the time to 0, the time of the demo resets?
Jeb answered:
Seems like your paid minecraft account gives infinite demo time to your friend