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In this photo illustration, the Minecraft logo is seen on a smartphone screen.
Buffalo Jonchar | SOPA Pictures | Light Rocket | Getty Images
In the latest blow to Reddit after controversial billing changes, the makers of Minecraft — one of the best-selling video games of all time — have pulled out of the platform.
“Reddit management has recently introduced changes that have resulted in changes to rules and moderation across many subreddits,” a tech lead at Mojang Studios, the Microsoft-owned company behind Minecraft, said. to publish On the r/Minecraft Reddit community Tuesday. “Because of these changes, we no longer feel Reddit is the appropriate place to post or refer our players to official content.”
According to the post, Mojang’s Java technical team will no longer post changes, or details of changes to Minecraft game releases, on the subreddit. The post update made it clear that it is not an official policy for all Mojang Studios, Xbox, or Microsoft.
In response to a question about whether developers would go back to posting on Reddit if the company changes its API policy, user “sliced_lime,” whose bio says he’s a Minecraft developer at Mojang, wrote, “Decision depends on if the situation changes, we’ll have to discuss that after that.”
With over 230 million copies sold, Guinness World Records considers Minecraft to be The world’s best-selling video game, the official subreddit has over 7.4 million members. Although the subreddit will survive without official updates from Mojang Studios, day-to-day usage may look significantly different for members.
The Minecraft makers’ decision is the latest in a series of widespread protests in recent weeks against Reddit, one of the internet’s most-traded sites. Earlier this month, the company announced a change in business that will significantly increase the price for third-party developers to use the company’s Application Programming Interface, or API. Third-party Reddit apps are popular with users, who use them to browse the site and help with accessibility challenges, and with moderators, who use them to organize their subreddits, block spam accounts, flag unsafe posts, and find patterns of harassment and abuse.
Ahead of the changes, which are set to take effect on Saturday, more than 8,000 Reddit communities participated in a “blackout,” changing their subreddit settings to fully or partially private. The protests included the hugely popular r/Funny, with over 40 million members, along with r/Music and r/Science, each with over 30 million users.
“Not only does Reddit have all of its content created by users, but all moderation is done by volunteers,” Dac Croach, co-director of r/Gaming, which has more than 37 million members, told CNBC in a recent interview. . “We are talking about hundreds of thousands of volunteers who spend hours every day to keep the site safe, fun and interesting for community members. And it is hard to see these people, when their voices are as loud as this, being outwardly ignored.”
A Reddit spokesperson declined to comment.
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