You can also make a 3d game of large scale, and just let it have hiccups occasionally and still make a billion dollars.

Of course those of us hosting servers for that particular game would have saved a ton of money and pain if they had not used Java, or used Java more cleverly.

The point is that they should have used Java more cleverly.

One can make a game in C++ and make it just as bad.

The lack of value types makes the code quite unwieldy to control memory layout vs C++, or C#, or Go, or Rust or anything

Again, not every game needs to be the next Crysis.

Allocating every 3d coordinate on the heap probably wasn't a good idea.

Wasn't Minecraft originally written in Java? Might still be.

Minecraft also has generally awful performance (although this is generally attributed to its being coded poorly, not java).

Yes, but Microsoft ported it to C++ as means to have a common code base across mobile devices, game consoles and desktop computers.

Yes. But I believe that Microsoft made an improved version written in C++ after the acquisition.

"improved" is a matter of opinion. The Java version has mod support and the editions are kept at feature parity.

I remember when they promised a modding api... Not even the C++ has resulted in one... The fact that Notch went with Java might have been a blessing in disguise because it made the reverse engineering process semi automated.

That is known AAA game development.