On September 23, the founder of the Minecraft server Satlantis, David Dineno, announced in Discord that the play-to-earn functionality must be removed as it has been requested by the game studio Mojang, which owns Mincecraft. The move is in accordance with Mojang’s guidelines regarding cryptocurrencies and NFTs.
The official message in Discord from David Dineno is on the screenshot above. Salantis is actually not a very popular server. Its Discord includes only 2168 members, whereas an official X account has 552 followers. However, even such a small community managed to attract Mojang's attention.
Why to prohibit crypto in Minecraft
Satlantis, an independent, fan-operated Minecraft server, has introduced play-to-earn features that rewarded players with Sats (short for Satoshi, the smallest denomination of Bitcoin) for specific in-game activities. Players could withdraw these earned Sats to their Bitcoin wallets.
According to David Dineno, Mojang demanded that this feature be removed from the server. Otherwise, the server could experience a number of problems, including blocking.
Back in July 2022, Mojang updated its usage guidelines and banned the addition of mods related to NFTs and blockchain into servers.
In a statement, the company said that "the speculative pricing and investment mentality around NFTs takes the focus away from playing the game and encourages profiteering, which we believe is inconsistent with the long-term joy and success of our players".
What will happen to Satlantis
Play-to-earn features were removed from Satlantis server on September 25, 2023. Nevertheless, players still have the option to withdraw their accumulated Sats.
By the way, on September 20, the server announced that the total amount of funds paid out to the players of the server exceeded 1 Bitcoin. This is an impressive sum considering that the server was launched only in January of this year.
Moreover, David Dineno urged users not to despair and promised to "port the Satlantis community to a platform that encourages innovation instead of stifling it". He also added that the developers are currently exploring platform options. What "porting the community" means remains unclear at this point.
Minecraft creator's reaction
Markus Persson, also known as Notch, is the developer who created Minecraft and sold Mojang and the game to Microsoft in 2014. He has recently reacted on X (formerly Twitter) to the news.
Persson does not seem to be a supporter of blockchain technology either.
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