Why Mojang WON'T Respond To The Lawsuit

Chapters:
0:00 - Intro
1:26 - The Beginning
5:23 - but actually...
12:37 - Conclusion
14:53 - Outro

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This Video Was Edited By:
@HarrisonGray

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[KianBrose]

Hello ibx!

I thought I should drop in to answer the points you brought up since there seems to have been some information you may have missed.
Certain arguments provided in the video appear to stem from the idea that I am holding the community accountable for funding a lawsuit for my own personal benefit, this is based off of the statement "he is looking for the public to crowdfund HIS lawsuit" where the goal is for me to recover what I "lost", whether it be time or money, in my own personal project.
Based on the gofundme's description (which I believe you may have read as it is shown in your video and cited near the end), it says that "To clarify any possible misconception, this is no longer about me or my personal losses due to the project I showed in the video which started all of this. This has become about holding Mojang accountable for its illegal actions on behalf of the entire Minecraft community.", a statement which is again present in the video's 10 000 word document that comes attached to it in the Q&A section under "What exactly is the lawsuit about?" where it states that "I'm currently seeing lots of misinformation online stating that I'm suing to reclaim my personal losses. As outlined above this is not the case, I accept that anything related to my project is considered lost financially and cannot be recovered". To complete this point, as it was stated both in the accompanying document, gofundme page and the second video where I go visit Mojang HQ, this is a COLLECTIVE CLASS ACTION lawsuit, not just a lawsuit, in that this is a lawsuit by a large group of individuals affected by the same issue; and thus again is not a lawsuit by one person to reclaim damages. I believe it may have been a mistake to hide the text that appeared on the second short video that was released at 14:07 where the text that popped up on screen was specifically "collective class action lawsuit", referring to the fact that this is a collective class action lawsuit and not a lawsuit funded by the community for my own personal benefit.
One of the points you mention is that I launched the server anyways. This is a good point that was discussed on the 5th of December during a 7 hour long stage where I answered all questions from the community. From my perspective as a gun server owner, I had just seen a server receive a notice that essentially meant they have to completely remove their guns from the game. Given that what I was creating was a game about guns, it essentially means everything is scrapped. Under reasonable expectations, an enforcement whose new rules directly affect my project's ability to exist should be reasonably considered to also be an "attack" on me, which is subsequently how gun server owners united in the gun server group as they were all equally affected by it. As I was in a state of denial where I thought that "it may just go away and they change there minds as they see that banning pixelated weapons is detrimental to the community", I proceeded to launch anyways with that hope that it was going to get resolved by itself and I wouldn't need to worry about anything. I believe that this choice to launch a project that had months of work put into it even though I knew that this enforcement existed was a reasonable human reaction as I don't think anyone that has put months into a project only to be told "ye nah, scrap it all" 1 day before launch would just be like "okay, my bad" and move on with life. However, even though I continued with the launch, the thought of the enforcement not going away, leading to the scrapping of the project, lingered in my mind constantly and made me unable to properly commit any resources to its growth as them not changing their minds would only mean I'd invested more time into it only for all of it to be scrapped. In economic terms, this is called "sunk cost fallacy" (the idea that you already put so much into something that you may as well continue, like how for example League of Legends players keep playing the game even though they hate it just because they already have years into it (which goes back to the notion of every single League of Legends player telling anyone wanting to start the game to NOT ever play it)). You also go into the point of the project being "dead" in terms of players, that is correct & is attributed to me being unwilling to put more financial resources into it due to said lingering thought it would all be scrapped. Regardless of how much money I lost though or my personal feelings, the underlying laws still apply.
A point that you bring up is that I was attempting to make a business out of it; this project was a re creation of a server I loved back in 2013 and its re creation was not due to wanting to make something for economic benefit (unlike the majority of servers nowadays that are basically casino simulators with a side of gameplay), but rather by the nostalgia I once had having fun in this server as it was simply fun to play; a thought which thankfully united lots of the original community that was part of the server back in 2013 to find its way to the new project. There was never a plan for a store, marketplace etc in the conception of the project even to this day; there is no way to make any purchases at all, it doesn't have a website (even though I have experience in website making, have experience making commercial websites with custom payment systems and have the full ability to monetize it) as it simply has never been a priority, the main objective has always been to recreate a server I used to have fun in so that others can have fun in it as well.
On the topic of brand guidelines, the eula / mug do have some vague explanations that could be considered to be brand guidelines but are rather vague clauses which are a short section of the usage guidelines. There are multiple things to note here. In their email communications, they refer to the brand guidelines AND usage guidelines (where said clauses that could be interpreted to be brand guidelines are located) as if they were separate entities and not one (which under what was described in the video appears to indicate that the brand guidelines are a part of the usage guidelines). There I ask, why do they name them specifically as their own separate document? A while ago there used to be a dedicated page to brand guidelines that was publicly available by itself (this can be seen in the video as Google at the time still cached its existence, and there were in fact public documents before that specifically name brand guidelines, link is archive DOT is SLASH gHa40). Nowadays though, as I have later been informed after posting this video, the brand guidelines DO actually exist as its own separate document locked behind an NDA that needs to be signed by becoming an official Minecraft partner.
Another point you bring up is that the partner signups have been closed for years/months. This is correct on the surface! The official way to apply through the website has been closed, but getting in if you know the right people is trivial based on information I have received by talking to several sources in the bedrock world.
The new eula update is cited in a way that makes it seem that it becomes better for players. One intersting thing of note is that the gun guidelines were not added to the new eula, on top of this kind of update having to be vetted by the key figures which at that point had been ignoring us for months.
Another point that is mentioned is the enforcement of guns and crates. There is one major difference in what was said. Guns themselves were being prohibited based on a reinterpretation of a clause that was written in the eula; however, the gambling issue just straight up goes against what they wrote verbatim (aka a lie, not even arguable to be a reinterpretation).
It is mentioned that the settlement amount will be very low, as in few dollars per person at most due to the amount of people that would be part of it, and this is perfectly true and aligns with what was answered during the 7 hour long stage. When divided between participants, any resulting settlement will be big on Mojang's end but individually small on a per user scale; but again we're not trying to get rich here, we're trying to fix the rules.
As a final note, I am fully aware and agree with the notion that Minecraft as intellectual property is owned by Mojang and it is within their full right to modify the game's rules to be whatever they want. Where the laws come in is HOW they write & modify them which is where they've been doing it wrong. At the end of the day, if they decide to ban guns that's perfectly fine as it's their game and their decision, but the aim of the class action is to end the days of having to always "guess" whether they will interpret something ambiguous against you or have to fear the existence of rules that are not written in the contract.

[MasterElements]

Out of everything I just want Mojang to enforce the no gambling rule. I've been against loot boxes since their inception because I immediately recognized them as gambling-lite for children and how much damage that will do.

[anthonyjohnson]

they broke swedish law as a swedish company breaking consumer protection rights in their country several times. they also changed their EULA without telling people under said EULA that it changed which is illegal under consumer protection law.

[dugoose]

I really wish people would be less aggressively biased on this, considering this IS a big deal. Mojang DOES deserve to lose this, but this doesnt justify hatred towards developers and artists just doing their job.
Lawsuits are RARELY addressed publicly, you dont see nintendo posting about their lawsuits on their main social medias so why would mojang?

[yeetergriffin]

The term fake or pretend gun is horrible. Unless the screen infront of me hands me an AR15 and frag grenades, it's all fake and pretend. No video game shoots bullets

[Skybr]

I kind of get his reasons the EULA is always super confusing

[bobbic]

I thin toycat got confused. The law suit isn't about the damages to his server/business, it's about mojangs misuse of the EULA. the way the handle things was illegal and so the goal is to make them pay for it so that they don't do it again.

I did watch the whole video and I don't think he mentioned the case being about damages once, he just mentioned the issues it cased him once or twice as a clear example. I may have missed it or forgot. Some of toycat's point as still valid tho.

[_adansonii]

This doesnt seem to be a lawsuit for payback of the server but against minecrafts frequent use of "Its only okay when we can make money off of it" rules. The amount of people that are seeing this as a "oh this guys just mad his server sucks!" are completely missing the point of the lawsuit. His server is the START to this journey, not the REASON he is doing it. It's also imperative to point out, this is no PERSONS fault. Its not the team making the rules, its not the writer of the article, its not the people who gave the go ahead for nerf guns. It is the COLLECTIVE company of minecraft that has been okay with things that would be unacceptable fall through the cracks because there is nobody holding minecraft as a collective accountable, especially being the most popular game with numbers continuing to grow. Everyone complains "oooh the minecraft community never happy" but lets be brutally honest here, people arent going to stop playing minecraft over a bad update, a broken rule, or promises not being kept up. A class action lawsuit is something that can ACTUALLY keep minecraft in check and give them some level of accountability.

[reversal]

biggest red flag for me is when they have "...if we don't like what you're doing" in their terms. Like how can you be that ambiguous and not transparent as a professional entity??

[Boldcheesecake]

Many things are absolutely illegal in Mojang's actions, and what appears to be stomping towards Kian can easily be waved away by "The man is not a lawyer, he spent maybe a couple dozen hours doing research in a field he does not know"
There appears to be a clear bias in how things are regulated to allow guns in some servers and not in others, and contracts are not done nor enforced by "felt like it", so therefor illegal
The gambling issue is kind of muddy, if one comment I saw is true about lootcrates not counting as gambling in Sweden. It's almost certain some servers have ways to convert game items gambled for into real money at statistic gains, just like a casino. Also Minecraft is global, so every country's laws need to be accounted for if loot crates are allowed
The "repay everyone who agreed to ___" thing will likely not survive a lawyer, and I never heard it in the video (to my memory) so it's (less) likely that it's a scam
There are absolutely grounds for Mojang and maybe Mircrosoft to be sued, but the details on who can start the lawsuit are what lawyers would know
It's said in this video that Kian "suffered no losses" and therefore has little grounds to stand on, however it was explicitly stated in Kian's video that he had spent money on the project, and then such project is being taken down for no truly discernible reason
The whole point of the fundraiser was for Kian to get a lawyer and get a professional take on this, and continue as needed. If the lawyer has doubts about the case then we should trust the person who actually went to law school. If the lawyer thinks there is a serious chance at doing legal damage against Mojang then we should trust them. But we need to hear them first, so fundraiser. Minecraft Youtubers and commenters are not lawyers, so we give the information and needed money to someone who is and see what they think. Kian felt that a company was doing something illegal, and needs help to get help to stop the possibly illegal things. Nothing is inherently wrong with that, and almost everything else is just semantics.

[tant_necromant]

Ok, I'd like to point put something people seem to forget about.

It doesn't matter why Kian talks about Mojang's bad actions. For attention to his server? Ok. To create a drama? Ok. To make Mojang have rules that are user-friendly and won't change whenever they feel like it? Ok and respectable.

What matters is Mojang's actions and what we do about them. Even if he was a r*pist, a pdf file and a serial k*ller, we shouldn't dismiss his claims because "he is a bad person". Thats attacking a person instead of challenging the argument (it's called "ad hominem" btw, and it's a logical fallacy)

And it seems to me that you kinda didnt understand some points. Like, at 9:20. No, them saying "this decision isn't final" doesn't mean they allowed him to have gundls and backed down. It means "you can have fun for now, but you effectively cant invest in a server as we leave ourselves the right to prohibit gun mods and servers at will"

I don't understand how you don't see why this is damaging and problematic

[ReinoW-Ind-ST--]

Imagine servers with gambling systems that cost real money is legal, but a harmless server with guns, no gambling or any other bad stuff is illegal

[COKTilYouDrop]

3:56 loot boxes like that were made illegal in cod back in the day based on a lawsuit if I am correct (because it IS gambling being promoted to children)

[Astertious-]

Ibxtoycat looks like he's dressed as a lawyer

[frogmouth]

If mojang is going to crack down violence and toxicity, maybe they should crack down on servers that are glorified slot machines and P2W.

[theender]

Why it haven't responded... Because maybe the lawsuit isn't out yet?

Looking for a lawyer is quite time consuming, then you've gotta make your lawsuit

Regardless of all that
Even if mojang already received it
It would take some time to write back
They would also think about what to etc etc

I don't know why people think it would just be one day later after said person said he has enough for a lawyer

Jesus Christ that's not how world works

[dragonslayer]

Are people just expecting from mojang to make a whole post in game like "we are getting sued time to get the lawyer kids" or make the "laws and flaws" update... No of course not lawsuits are never addressed publicly and shouldn't be addressed publicly, would you want to be sued for something or get arrested for something and have someone announce it to the whole world ?

[kitsunekaze]

mojang has no say in what mods people add or use. or what people do on servers. they should NOT be able to demand a server be shut down

[Hadeks_Marow]

"Guidelines" are not a legal agreement. They are not covered under contract law nor are they enforceable under such. Only EULA, ToS and SLA have ANY legal binding to them. What is written in any "guideless" does not have any power what-so-ever.

Guidelines are more akin to "requests" or "advice" made by the publisher of said guidelines. There is nothing legally binding about them. If they do talk about stuff they intend to enforce, it is usually mentioned within the EULA or the ToS first where the guidelines are meant to make it easier to understand without the word-salad of a legal document. Guidelines are meant to express the publishers intent as a "curtesy" to the user and not a means of defining the rules that they can then enforce.

[SHDUStudios]

Oh look, this thing is more nuanced than it first appears… color me surprised.