Minecraft players outraged as Microsoft deletes accounts that weren't transitioned

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Cutoff date had been extended to September 2023.

Minecraft screenshot from upcoming new content
(Image credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft has fueled outrage among many gamers by deleting their old Mojang Minecraft accounts. The deletions came because the gamers neglected to migrate their accounts from old Mojang accounts to Microsoft accounts.

After Microsoft purchased Mojang (and, naturally, Minecraft), it announced that legacy Minecraft and Minecraft: Java Edition owners would need to migrate their accounts to Microsoft accounts. The migration process began in October 2020 and was originally scheduled to be finished by March 2022. Microsoft extended that cutoff date to Sept. 19, 2023.

Email advising Minecraft owners of upcoming account deletion

Email advising Minecraft owners of upcoming account deletion (Image credit: r/PiratedGames on Reddit)

What happened to accounts that weren’t migrated in time? According to Microsoft’s web page and emails to Mojang account. holders, they would not be able to sign in to Minecraft.net or the Minecraft launcher. Eventually, the accounts would be deleted.

Even before deletion, though, Microsoft advised gamers it would be unable to continue account migration after Sept. 19, 2023. That date was declared as the final cutoff date, but many players claim they were not notified. Microsoft wanted to get all Minecraft players onto its own servers for better security and access to new features.

This means if you didn’t migrate your account and want to start playing Minecraft again, you have to purchase a new license. This has many gamers understandably upset. Thousands have turned to Reddit to express their outrage, including one who insists they’ll just pirate every Minefield game from now on, along with the upcoming Starfield expansion and Elder Scrolls VI.

The angry Redditor wrote, “The fact they can just take away your license to the game like that is [expletive] insane. This is why I’ll never support DRMs, if a game has a DRM you do NOT own it. Only a license to temporarily play it.”

The post drew 1,100 comments before moderators locked the post.

"Comments locked because it's just a battle of the 'this was an easy thing to do and you had plenty of warning' crowd VS 'you should be able to keep the game no matter what if you paid for it' crowd," the moderator wrote.

Many of the commenters commiserated with the original poster, but seemingly just as many offered no sympathy. They pointed out the migration had been ongoing for years and that Microsoft gave more than 12 months’ notice of the looming deadline.

Jeff Butts
Jeff Butts
Contributing Writer

Jeff Butts has been covering tech news for more than a decade, and his IT experience predates the internet. Yes, he remembers when 9600 baud was “fast.” He especially enjoys covering DIY and Maker topics, along with anything on the bleeding edge of technology.

12 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Sounds silly and immature to brood now, when you were already given advanced warning and notice about this issue. I don't blame MS here.

    But venting out anger like a bunch of kids isn't going to solve this matter, nor get MS's attention either.

    That date was declared as the final cutoff date, but many players claim they were not notified.

    Okay, let's assume some users were indeed not notified, but unless they have been living under a rock, this notification was already being made public on both MS and Minecraft forums.

    The migration was ongoing for years and Microsoft gave more than 12 months’ notice of the looming deadline. So getting no notification, sounds like an excuse to me, IMO.

    Microsoft also gave them the offer to keep their games as well, assuming they are willing to migrate their account. What a cluster F drama show !
    Reply
  • parkerthon
    It became a live service game a long time ago. Everyone freaked out about having to switch to a Microsoft login a long time ago. Whoever claims to not be notified was living under a rock or was using an invalid email/account. Most mojang account users were hackers and pirates so I understand why Microsoft cut it off. I don’t have much sympathy for the consumer. We got almost two decades of play before things changed. At the end of the day, nobody truly owns a creative work to protect intellectual property creation. You can’t reproduce it for instance and there is a EULA. If you’re truly desperate to play Minecraft in its original offline form, there’s ways same as emulation existing for old console games.

    I agree it sucks that every game now has online dependencies when it’s often completely unnecessary. But big IPs use this to protect and monetize their work which is ultimately how people get paid whether its a massive corpo or a small indie dev that does it. Throw other “necessary” evils in too… anti-cheat and DRM, and you have a trifecta of things created for partially removing all the turds in the punch bowl at the expense of everyone else.
    Reply
  • Notton
    Microsoft only gave a warning like once a month on the run-up.... :rolleyes:
    Reply
  • panotjk
    A few terrabytes of SSD or HDD should be enough to keep a list of all player account emails and their password hashes and their sets of licenced game. The storage cost is very small. It would not cost much to keep migration available as long as a person's lifespan.
    Reply
  • salgado18
    It was all legal, there were notifications (I received it), and all that, but...

    "You will own nothing" in your face.
    Reply
  • stonecarver
    I have to say yes it was announced and I try to stay up on things but that being said I personally missed the notice.

    My son plays it and does have from original to the different spins all the way up to the Microsoft version.

    It was a friend that filled in my son about the cut off. So we missed the bullet on that one.

    Nintendo did the same thing with there hand held platforms that again my son got a call from his friend on the day of the cutoff and was able to download everything before the servers went down.

    I can see both sides :confused:
    Reply
  • TechyIT223
    Good old Minecraft still has a strong userbase for sure though.
    Reply
  • hotaru251
    Metal Messiah. said:
    I don't blame MS here.
    do you know how much it costs & the space required to keep a list of accts w/ an eneabled key on a server?

    not much.
    there was no actual reason MS couldnt of kept the files in a server and have a way for ppl to migrate them at a later date it would effectively cost them nothing.
    Reply
  • Dementoss
    hotaru251 said:
    do you know how much it costs & the space required to keep a list of accts w/ an eneabled key on a server?

    not much.
    there was no actual reason MS couldnt of kept the files in a server and have a way for ppl to migrate them at a later date it would effectively cost them nothing.
    People had more than plenty of notice and, repeated reminders of the need to migrate...

    People need to take responsibility for themselves, not expect others to do it for them.
    Reply
  • hotaru251
    Dementoss said:
    People need to take responsibility for themselves, not expect others to do it for them.
    two way street.

    and again it takes nil space/cost to host a verification service that just checks for a valid key connected to a valid email.

    A person can easily go 5yrs w/o play a game. I can give you a example of this: I recently went back and played Kingdom of Amalur for the 1st time in 7 yrs.

    If they paid for a game many yrs ago, life happened or just wanted a break and got into other games, then say a friend or child started playing and asked em to...they wouldnt be able to & they'd of had zero warning as again if ur not playing something for so long you never even knew of the change to begin with.

    they could temporarily disable an acct and provide link to start the account transition if someone tries to use it again w/o issue.


    Yes, a person should take responsibility for actions, however a business also has to take responsibility to ensure customer satisfaction.


    again in the end it would of cost MS nothing to implement a system to host a email w/ license and if used send link to transition.
    Even a newb coder could code & automate that within an hr or so. (and if you have experience likely be a 20min thing tops)

    People need to stop accepting that they no longer own what they paid for ESPECIALLY if the change is retroactive to the purchase.
    Reply