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In 2020, Mojang made an announcement

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that they were going to migrate all

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Mojang/Legacy Java Edition

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Minecraft accounts to Microsoft accounts

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And you had to do it whether

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you liked it or not

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So, what did I do?

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Well, I just didn't

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That's right, for the sake of science

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I intentionally didn't migrate

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one of my Mojang accounts

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with the goal to document

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exactly what would happen to that account

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and see if there was any possible way

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I could recover it afterwards

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This video is over 3 years in the making

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and I'm finally ready to share my results

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(Introduction Music)

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You heard that right

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I bought a new Mojang account

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just to sacrifice it to the Microsoft

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overlords

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So, let's set the timeline here

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On September 2014

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when Microsoft bought Mojang

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for $2.5 billion dollars

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For the next six years,

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Microsoft would pretty much mostly

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keep their hands off Java edition

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That was until October 21, 2020

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Just as we thought we were in the clear

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from Microsoft's wrath

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the official announcement was made

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about merging Mojang accounts

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to Microsoft accounts

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Now, after this announcement

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there was a period where users

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were still able to create

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new Mojang accounts

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So, three days later

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That's exactly what I did

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And with this email

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of my receipts sent to me

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on October 24th, 2020

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my experiment officially began

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For the first few months

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really nothing happened at all

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I occasionally logged in

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and played Minecraft normally

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with my Mojang account

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But when December, 2020

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rolled around

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all new Minecraft account purchases

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started to be Microsoft accounts

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That's when I knew that they were serious

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about this whole Microsoft account thing

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But existing Mojang accounts

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were not able to migrate yet

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From the start,

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Mojang said that Microsoft account

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migration would begin in

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early 2021

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But March 31st, 2021

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came and went

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and still no migration

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3 months later in early June,

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still players were not able to migrate

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I thought for a bit

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that I was in the clear

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As I had quite the hesitation

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to migrating my Mojang accounts

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to Microsoft

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They're a big company that

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collects a lot of user data

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and had a terms of service

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that was vastly different

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from the Minecraft EULA

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Essentially meaning,

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we had to agree to both

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I felt like this was kind of

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a sneaky move on their part

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to gain more legal control

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over Minecraft accounts

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without having to announce

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a huge change

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to the Minecraft EULA

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And not surprisingly,

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people didn't take much notice to this

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But as June progressed,

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Migration was finally opened

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to select accounts

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and would slowly keep expanding

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to others over the next few months

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Until, eventually, all Mojang accounts

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were available to migrate

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Many months later,

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on February 18th, 2022

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I received my first actual email

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from Mojang about account migration

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They said, starting on March 10

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users would no longer be able

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to log into Minecraft

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with their Mojang accounts

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but that day came and went

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And because I was using

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the old Minecraft launcher

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that didn't have auto-updating

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or have insane amounts of

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bloats or eye candy

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I was still able to log in

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with my Mojang accounts

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and play on Minecraft servers

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all the way until August 2022

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when Mojang stopped allowing

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unmigrated accounts

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to authenticate when

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joining Minecraft servers

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This was the turning point

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when I was pretty much forced

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to migrate all of my other

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Minecraft accounts

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except for this one

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So, from here on out

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this account was essentially unusable

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Then starting on September 1st,

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and continuing over the course

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of 8 months

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I got three more reminder emails

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that were identical to the last one

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Then on May 17th, 2023,

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I received another email

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announcing the last day to migrate

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was on September 19, 2023

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That marked the official deadline

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to where I would not be able to

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migrate my accounts after that date

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Just 9 days before the final day

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I got one final email reminder

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saying it was time to migrate

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Nope, not gonna happen

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The day has come

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migrations to Microsoft accounts

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have officially ended

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Except suprisingly,

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Mojang very graciously

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gave us hold outs

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90 extra days

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to give us new copies of Minecraft

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Now, this was a turning point for me