“If buying a game doesn’t mean being owned, then picking up is not theft,” says Minecraft creator

In recent years, the discussion about the preservation of games has gained strength, especially in the face of cases where companies end the support of their titles, making them injustable. This scenario gave rise to the campaign “Stop Killing Games“. One of the main companies criticized is Ubisoft, which disabled access to the first The Crew and stated that players need to get used to the idea of Do not be owned by the games they buy.

Now Markus Persson – known as Notch, creator of Minecraft – He spoke about the controversy. In a comment on social networks, the developer said: “If buying a game is not an acquisition, so pirating it is not theft.”

When asked how companies could bear the costs of keeping active servers indefinitely, even with few players, Notch defended an old model: that of servers hosted by the community itself.

“No, we want them to stop using the servers. Let them host their own servers. That’s how all games used to work before.”

The controversy returned to heat up this week, when players discovered an excerpt from the Ubisoft user license contract stating that when the license of a game expires, the user would have the legal obligation to “Destroy all copies of the product in your possession”.

In response, Ubisoft stated that this clause has not been new, having been present for over ten years. The company also acknowledged that the text may be excessively rigid and said it was reviewing the contract to ensure that it “Reflect the expectations of players”.

Just verifying that yes, that is what I was talking about.

If buying a game is not a purchase, then pirating them is not theft.

— notch (@notch) July 7, 2025