Members of the Minecraft community are reporting that developer Mojang has begun to crack down on servers and mods featuring realistic guns and other adult content.
On May 28, the modders behind Grand Theft Minecart, a Minecraft server taking heavy inspiration from the open-world criminal shenanigans of GTA, posted a blog titled 'Mojang Strikes Again.' The devs say they received a letter from Mojang's enforcement team with a warning that any references to guns and firearms are not compliant with the game's usage guidelines and license agreements.
"A recent directive from Mojang Leadership has determined that guns and weapons are considered non-compliant features under our Adult Content requirement for commercial usage servers." The letter says that "all references to guns and firearms are not compliant. Such instances MUST be removed in order to reach compliance." The letter says that consequences "may include a ban on all IPs related to this server."
Plain, unmodded Minecraft features plenty of weapons itself, from swords and axes to crossbows and bombs. A follow-up letter says that weapons like "blasters" and "lasers" are also fair game for mods - just nothing that can be "directly linked with a real-life firearm."
The modders behind Grand Theft Minecart, of course, are not happy, saying that Mojang is "alienating an important demographic of teens and young adults that made Minecraft what it is." The team also expresses frustration that this directive came up so suddenly.
We've reached out to Mojang for further information, and will update this story if we learn more. Some community members have suspected that the letters GTM received are fakes, but the devs are confident they're real - and they fit in with what seems to be a broader crackdown on adult content mods.
While the developer website hosting the Jenny mod has been taken down, it remains available on other major Minecraft mod repositories. For their part, the devs behind the GTA server say this warning "is not the end of GTM," and are working on ways to comply with Mojang's request while keeping the spirit of the mod intact.
