There Will Be An Appeals Process
Mojang's community manager stated that the company will not reverse its controversial player reporting feature and demanded an end to harassment of Mojang employees.
MojangMeesh posted on Reddit to clarify that while the company values player feedback it won't necessarily change the design principles Mojang Studios follows-this includes the upcoming report system. news for dummies They also asked the players who were upset to stop following Mojang employees in Reddit to harass them. Nearly 2000 people have downvoted the comment at the time of writing.
Minecraft players have been up in arms about the new player reporting system since it was announced a month ago, but it was finally implemented as part of yesterday's 1.19.1 update. It allows players on both private and Mojang-hosted multiplayer servers to flag inappropriate messages in chat for review by Mojang investigators, potentially resulting in suspensions and bans for players that violate Minecraft's community guidelines even on self-hosted servers. news for dummies Fans are worried that the system will result in player bans for messages taken out of context, and more broadly that it gives Microsoft too much power to dictate the content of discussions on its platform.
I don't think their argument is without merit, even if some players are behaving terribly about it. It is hard to imagine a world in which this system doesn’t ban someone for making a joke between friends. There will be an appeals process, though, and it's also true that there are plenty of misconceptions flying around about how the system actually works. If you look through any discussion on the topic, you'll quickly find someone complaining about the monitoring of their chat by Microsoft or fearing that they will be banned from cursing. According to Mojang’s FAQ on reporting system, neither of these are possible.
Mojang is caught in a tight spot on this one. A thread from Stuart Duncan-who runs a Minecraft server for children with autism-shows just how much awful stuff Minecraft plays host to on a regular basis. Duncan shares reports and studies from the BBC and the ADL that show how the game is used by racists and predators. It is important that tools are available to combat such behavior. While it's true that 'think of the children' scare stories get used to justify reactionary policies in real life, a tool that lets players report dodgy chat messages in Minecraft doesn't really seem like the thin end of a draconian wedge.
When you say "no one asked" for this, "the entire community hates this" or "no-one needs this", please stop trying to be a spokesperson for everyone. "If you are concerned about exploits, that is great. Me too. It's not perfect, but real people can be saved by it. July 27, 2022
In other Minecraft news, Mojang recently announced that the game won't be featuring NFTs, as they're at odds with its "values of creative inclusion". At least that move only seemed to garner enthusiastic support from the playerbase, although there's been no word yet on what that AI they trained to play Minecraft thinks about it.
