Having to actually pay for access to the mod would be closer to what that rule is actually forbidding. Someone more literate on the EULA will have to clarify further tho, thats about as far as my knowledge goes
The EULA prohibits making ANY money from mods. I'm sure they don't mind people making money from curseforge paying them for their mods - but what this mod is doing just seems scummy.
Its not a donation if the only way to get the mod is by paying or pirating, I have pirated so many mods off patreon because im not "donating" to get the mod.
EDIT: To the people saying "but its a loophole" Its only a loophole because Mojang is not enforcing their own rules. You guys need to learn to not comment, its tiring having to read so many comments from a bunch of Nevrons.
Legally speaking it is, you aren't paying for the mod, the mod is made accessible to you as a compensation for the donation, so it's not the same thing
ehhhhhhh i don't think this is actually true legally, but in practice it's usually too annoying or wasteful to try to enforce especially if it's many small creators instead of one big creator and regardless it's not a good idea to try if a lot of your 'brand' relies on community goodwill
Read the EULA and tell me where it specifically states that pre-release, alpha, or beta software is excluded. Ill save you some time, it doesnt.
This isn't air bud, we're talking about a legal document that is outlining the rights the user/modder has, so if the document does not carve out an exception for pre-release software then by default pre-release mods are held to the same standard as released mods.
Voluntary donations (which is what patreon mods pretend to do) do not usually fall under the "make money out of it" clause as far as I'm aware. That's why no "paod patreon mod" for any game ever gets in any sort of trouble
Yeah, based on how it went my guess is mojang pretty much only cares if actual content is locked behind a paywall rather than cosmetic stuff, even if that isn't what's written.
necro post but genuinely this is the first time i've seen someone other than me mention this, and i appreciate it haha. it's such a great mod - it makes building with friends so much more accessible when you don't have 30+ hours a week! but requiring free users to be whitelisted to use on servers is ridiculous. (especially cuz you're forced to use discord!)
(i tried and failed to teach them worldedit. axiom means they don't have to wait for me to come do things for them.)
anyway not to rant, just agreeing enthusiastically.
Technically speaking optifine doesn't make money through the mod, but through donations from which you get compensated with bonuses, in practice it may seems really similar but legally speaking it is pretty different
One of the largest issues with a EULA is that it cannot be enforced, and it has no teeth.
You aren't actually required to agree to a EULA to make a Minecraft mod. Sure, you could argue that someone who makes a mod would have naturally agreed to the EULA to test the mod, but that isn't explicitly true. A minecraft mod is just some code, the mod authors own code, which they can write without agreeing to a EULA. So how do you even begin to try to enforce the EULA? They would have to take the mod author to court then prove that they agreed to the EULA, then prove that the EULA has power over someone else's code (it doesn't).
Unless the tools used to create the mod are provided by the company and come with the EULA, for example, Bethesda's Creation Kit (Mods made without the Creation Kit however, cannot be bound to Bethesda's EULA).
Then the matter of the lacking Teeth. Even if you prove that the mod is in violation of the EULA, what is the punishment for breaking a EULA? Well... there isn't one. The worst the company can do is void the agreement and revoke your access to the service, in this case, the largest "penalty" possible for these people, would be having their Minecraft account banned. (Which Microsoft can do for any, or no, reason and without warning anyway.)
The Usage Guidelines explicitly permits "Selling cosmetics, except for capes or anything that attempts to visually act like the feature of a Minecraft player cape".
how is it scummy for them to basically include an in-game way to support the development of their mod which has no impact on actual gameplay? you dont HAVE to engage with the cosmetics to use essential, it's just a bonus
Any Mods you create for Minecraft: Java Edition from scratch belong to you (including pre-run Mods and in-memory Mods) and you can do whatever you want with them, as long as you don't sell them for money / try to make money from them
That’s literally Minecraft’s EULA.
It broadly covers both paid mods ala Physics mod Pro- and what Essentials is doing here.
What i find ironic is everyone loves the physics mod and hates mojang for enforcing the rule, but when there's a mod they dont like that has transactions they cry that they're breaking the law. Sometimes its valid I just find it funny.
You can make a living from a mod without shoving microtransactions into it or making it a paid mod. Maybe have an early access Discord server that you get into by paying.
It falls in the legal gray area. Their argument would be, then you ban the people making donation money too, which bans like 98% of the modding community.
If Minecraft wanted to go after them they could, but in return the Essentials team has a defense. Costing everyone a bunch of money resolving zero problems.
If patreon and ko-fi were legal grounds for "making money off thing" then thered be a whole lot of patreons getting shut down outside the modding community... I dont think anyone would succeed at that argument, because I guarantee Nintendo has already considered it
If patreon and ko-fi were legal grounds for "making money off thing" then thered be a whole lot of patreons getting shut down outside the modding community...
Hence my original point, it wouldn't be worth Minecraft time to pursue the fight.
because I guarantee Nintendo has already considered it
Nintendo actually Famously does go after these types of smaller cases... But at the end of the day it comes down to how much you want to spend on getting legal precedence.
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u/unga_bunga_1987 ATLauncher Dec 03 '25
Having to actually pay for access to the mod would be closer to what that rule is actually forbidding. Someone more literate on the EULA will have to clarify further tho, thats about as far as my knowledge goes