Minecraft‘s expansive community thrives on creativity, but a brewing conflict has thrown the relationship between small but dedicated modders and Mojang into the spotlight. Kian Brose, a prominent modder, alleged the studio broke consumer protection laws and enforced hidden changes to its End User License Agreement (EULA). Because of that, the Minecraft modder planned to launch a lawsuit against Mojang and successfully crowdfunded the initial fund for it.
Basically, the whole story started with Brose’s attempt to revive a popular Minecraft modded server called McWar. The server was developed way back in 2013 and focused on firearms and gun-based gameplay. However, just one day after the project announced its launch on May 2023, suddenly Mojang shut it down.
Initially, no one knows why, but according to Brose, this happens because of Mojang’s sudden hard stance on guns, considering them as ‘adult content.’ His worry is reinforced by the Grand Theft Minecart team and other developers sharing an email it received from the studio stating the same concern.
Brose argues this leaves smaller developers vulnerable while allowing top servers to continue hosting similar content without repercussions. He chose the Hypixel as an example, which he claimed has 40,000 daily players and has always offered firearms on the server. Not to mention that players can still easily find gun-related content on Minecraft‘s official marketplace— although they’re often labeled as ‘fantasy blasters.’
This sudden change, enacted without prior notice, contravenes EU consumer protection laws according to the Minecraft modder. He also asked Mojang for more clarification on what constitutes a firearm. But he and his team were ‘completely ignored,’ and Brose asserted that Mojang even responded by saying its ‘key decision makers were on holidays.’
In the end, Brose and the McWar revival team wasted time ‘$11,000’ in marketing spending on X checkmark just for Mojang to shut their project down.
Frustrated by Mojang’s actions and lack of accountability, Brose turned to Swedish legal agencies. After all, the Minecraft studio is based in Sweden and it should obey the regional laws, he thought. Unfortunately, even there he found little support for his Minecraft lawsuit against Mojang. He described the response from regulatory bodies as dismissive, suggesting his case was too small to pursue. “We don’t care, it’s not important enough,” paraphrase Brose.
Undeterred, Brose launched a ‘Hold Mojang Accountable For Their Unlawful Behaviour‘ GoFundMe campaign to finance his legal battle. “Minecraft, a block game created in 2011 by Mojang, which I’m suing because it broke the law and pissed me off,” opened his campaign video summarizing the whole McWar debacle.
It quickly gained traction among players and successfully passed the target, collecting $109,080 from 936 sympathizers by early December. However, McWar and Brose’s followers voiced their concerns on Reddit and other channels about the lawsuit fund they’ve pulled. Especially the developer’s goal of getting Mojang to ‘pay out a massive settlement to every one of its users bound by its digital contracts.’
Still, Brose is confident that this Minecraft lawsuit against Mojang can be ‘relatively short,’ running for around one year. On the GoFundMe page, he already made some calculations on the spending according to Swedish and EU rules.
Brose’s campaign video above explains more details on this ongoing effort. Whether this becomes a victory for modders or a costly, fruitless effort that quietly fades away though, remains to be seen.
