I DIDN’T Migrate my Minecraft Account - Here’s What Happened

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