In 2020, Mojang made an announcement
that they were going to migrate all
Mojang/Legacy Java Edition
Minecraft accounts to Microsoft accounts
And you had to do it whether
you liked it or not
So, what did I do?
Well, I just didn't
That's right, for the sake of science
I intentionally didn't migrate
one of my Mojang accounts
with the goal to document
exactly what would happen to that account
and see if there was any possible way
I could recover it afterwards
This video is over 3 years in the making
and I'm finally ready to share my results
(Introduction Music)
You heard that right
I bought a new Mojang account
just to sacrifice it to the Microsoft
overlords
So, let's set the timeline here
On September 2014
when Microsoft bought Mojang
for $2.5 billion dollars
For the next six years,
Microsoft would pretty much mostly
keep their hands off Java edition
That was until October 21, 2020
Just as we thought we were in the clear
from Microsoft's wrath
the official announcement was made
about merging Mojang accounts
to Microsoft accounts
Now, after this announcement
there was a period where users
were still able to create
new Mojang accounts
So, three days later
That's exactly what I did
And with this email
of my receipts sent to me
on October 24th, 2020
my experiment officially began
For the first few months
really nothing happened at all
I occasionally logged in
and played Minecraft normally
with my Mojang account
But when December, 2020
rolled around
all new Minecraft account purchases
started to be Microsoft accounts
That's when I knew that they were serious
about this whole Microsoft account thing
But existing Mojang accounts
were not able to migrate yet
From the start,
Mojang said that Microsoft account
migration would begin in
early 2021
But March 31st, 2021
came and went
and still no migration
3 months later in early June,
still players were not able to migrate
I thought for a bit
that I was in the clear
As I had quite the hesitation
to migrating my Mojang accounts
to Microsoft
They're a big company that
collects a lot of user data
and had a terms of service
that was vastly different
from the Minecraft EULA
Essentially meaning,
we had to agree to both
I felt like this was kind of
a sneaky move on their part
to gain more legal control
over Minecraft accounts
without having to announce
a huge change
to the Minecraft EULA
And not surprisingly,
people didn't take much notice to this
But as June progressed,
Migration was finally opened
to select accounts
and would slowly keep expanding
to others over the next few months
Until, eventually, all Mojang accounts
were available to migrate
Many months later,
on February 18th, 2022
I received my first actual email
from Mojang about account migration
They said, starting on March 10
users would no longer be able
to log into Minecraft
with their Mojang accounts
but that day came and went
And because I was using
the old Minecraft launcher
that didn't have auto-updating
or have insane amounts of
bloats or eye candy
I was still able to log in
with my Mojang accounts
and play on Minecraft servers
all the way until August 2022
when Mojang stopped allowing
unmigrated accounts
to authenticate when
joining Minecraft servers
This was the turning point
when I was pretty much forced
to migrate all of my other
Minecraft accounts
except for this one
So, from here on out
this account was essentially unusable
Then starting on September 1st,
and continuing over the course
of 8 months
I got three more reminder emails
that were identical to the last one
Then on May 17th, 2023,
I received another email
announcing the last day to migrate
was on September 19, 2023
That marked the official deadline
to where I would not be able to
migrate my accounts after that date
Just 9 days before the final day
I got one final email reminder
saying it was time to migrate
Nope, not gonna happen
The day has come
migrations to Microsoft accounts
have officially ended
Except suprisingly,
Mojang very graciously
gave us hold outs
90 extra days
to give us new copies of Minecraft
Now, this was a turning point for me
Do I take the offer?
or be a complete idiot and keep
the experiment going
What do you think I chose?
Not only did I completely ignore
migrating my account
but I also missed the time period
to claim a new Minecraft account
but I'm not going to end this experiment
so soon
I wanted to see if it was
still possible after all of this
to somehow get my account back
or at least get a new copy of the game
So I decided to contact Minecraft support
making sure to include my order
and transaction ID
to see if they'd be able to restore my
account at this point
And, of course,
I instantly received an automated response
saying that any support tickets
after September 19, 2023
regarding migration
would go ignored
Crap
Now this has to be the end, right?
Not so fast
You see, in the Minecraft EULA
is a section covering
binding arbitration
Which only shows up
in the Nintendo Switch URL
for some reason
Basically, it's something
that lots of big companies
in the U.S. put in
their End Users Contracts
that forces users to
settle disputes out of court
with their arbitrators
instead of you suing them
But unfortunately, arbitration
usually costs money
Way more than the $26.95
I paid for this Minecraft account
So, that's where this paragraph
comes into play
I have the option to mail
a Notice of Dispute
to Microsoft
All I have to do
is tell them what the problem is
and what I want
Sounds simple enough
So I wrote a brief message
and gave them three options
Let me migrate my account,
give me a new Minecraft account
free of charge,
or refund my $26.95
I originally paid for it
I also included a copy
of my original receipt
for good measure
Now, it was off to the post office
I got an email response
from Microsoft
Did I do it?
Did I find the secret way
to get my account back?
Of course not
Just another cookie cutter
cooperate response
telling me that the migration period
had ended
and just to put the cherry on top,
they said, we invite you
to acquire Minecraft
through a Microsoft account
to continue enjoying the game
Acquire Minecraft
you say
Why don't you just say,
"Sorry, dummy
you have to buy the game again"
Even though I already completely
paid for this game
just over three years ago
I guess the term, "Buy",
literally doesn't mean anything
anymore if companies
can just get away with
taking your purchased items away
simply because of inactivity
I was obviously not happy
with this response
So, as a last ditch effort
I sent a Better Business Bureau
complaint
Which Microsoft also responded to
even referring to the notice
of dispute I sent earlier
and just copied and pasted
the original response
in this letter
So, I ended up writing
this response to that
You can pause if you want
to read my whole rant
But unfortunately,
after I sent that,
I never got any response back
from Microsoft
So what did I learn
from intentionally not migrating
my account?
Well, we now know
that Microsoft was pretty serious
and literally took my
paid copy of Minecraft away
Now, in my opinion
I feel that this whole forced
migration thing
was a pretty crappy move
Nobody deserves to have
something they paid for
and expected to keep
be taken away from them
like this
I'm pretty sure there are
thousands, possibly hundreds
of thousands
of Minecraft accounts
that just never got migrated
that are now lost forever
Just reading the most recent
comments of the original migration
announcement video
shows other users frustrations
with the exact same issue
Now I know some of you
might say in the comments
they had three years to migrate
Sucks for them
But let me just remind
you all that
life happens
maybe you just weren't
interested in Minecraft
for three years
But later decided to
get back into it
only to realize
that your account was deleted
Forcing old players to
re-buy the game
for no reason other
than, "Sorry, you have to"
is kind of an anti-consumer
move
In comparison,
look at Google
They're a big company
that everyone loves to
hate on
But let me tell you this
Google bought YouTube
in 2006
for $1.65 billion dollars
Shortly after,
old YouTube accounts were
migrated to Google accounts
Now seventeen years later,
if you for some reason
still have a legacy YouTube account,
Google, still to this day,
allows you to migrate it
to a Google account
and keep in mind,
YouTube is a free service
I feel that it's perfectly reasonable
to expect Microsoft
at minimum
to credit users with a
new Minecraft account
if they missed the migration period
Especially, if they have the original
receipt with the transaction ID
I hope Microsoft reconsiders
their decision to lock out
users like that
even when they have undeniable proof
of account ownership
Anyways, that's the end
of this crazy and admittedly
stupid experiment
Now that I have the rest
of my accounts migrated
maybe now I can safely
ghost this game for awhile