They have other issues as well. I went to buy my son Minecraft: Dungeons as a gift, and after the purchase, it was associated with my Microsoft account. I was unable to gift the game to him, so had to purchase the game again while logged in under his Microsoft account. Nowhere did it state that the game would be associated with my account, and I wasn't even aware I was logged into my Microsoft account.

I'm so sorry to hear that. That's ridiculous.

I appreciate it. My gaming PC died at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, but I have new parts to build another PC. I just have to take the time to switch my work PC (at home) with my home PC, and all the software development programs I use, and then I'll end up using my purchase to play with my son. I've setup Minecraft Java servers in the past, and have enjoyed Minecraft Java edition, so I'm hoping I like Minecraft: Dungeons and can make use of my extra purchase.

I had to buy the game as a gift, then type the product key in manually on the kids account, because for some reason it wouldn't send it as email...

I also tried to buy the game as the kid, parental control blabla, I got a request that the kid wants the game, and when I went to pay for it as myself, on behalf of the kid, it wouldn't let me change the country from United States, so I couldn't enter a valid billing address...

All this took hours, while the kid impatiently nags "can we play, can we play, can we play"...!! And then it's the /insane/ launch times to start playing... At the very least, once you're in the game (java edition) it all works very well with LAN multiplayer.

> All this took hours, while the kid impatiently nags "can we play, can we play, can we play"...!!

As a fellow minecraft Dad (who hasn't yet purchased Dungeons...looks cool but Create mod is the current addiction), pro tip - don't give a small child a gift you haven't confirmed is ready to go yet.

There are times when it's good to teach a kid patience, how to assemble and adjust the derailleur on a bicycle, or how to install software updates, or how to configure port forwarding for a server, or how to safely charge and maintain lipo batteries, or whatever...but the start of limited screen time on the weekend, or Christmas morning unwrapping presents, or their birthday party with everyone watching....that is not the time. It's definitely not the time to find out that the new gadget is dead-on-arrival and teach them about the RMA process.

Kids don't care if the shrink wrap is not intact or if it doesn't have that "new car" plasticizer smell, they just want to play with it. And if you can keep them from getting addicted to peeling off the clear membrane from a glossy new gadget, later they'll be more open to the possibility of more frugal used goods.

If the gift needs to be on the kid's account, how would you ensure it was 'ready to go' before christmas day, without the kid being able to see it on their account, getting a bunch of notifications etc?

The is a reason that Santa only comes when the kids are quite and in bed in my house, and it also explains why my dad was always tired in the morning growing up

In some countries, gifts are exchanged on christmas eve

Most of the countries actually

I don't get the correlation between Santa coming and your dad being tired, did they have dinner together?

As a dad, I'm assuming it was because mom and dad were up late building the treehouse, assembling the bike, etc.

i still don't get why they would have to do that, if Santa brought the presents already

The presents don't always come assembled.

I got into Minecraft a bit later, and when I purchased it, I got the Windows 10 Edition. I had to have a Microsoft account to play, so I was already set. Minecraft: Dungeons is a completely separate game, more of an isometric perspective. It looks fun, was just hoping that I didn't have to buy it myself until I had a PC to start playing on.

> All this took hours, while the kid impatiently nags "can we play, can we play, can we play"...!! And then it's the /insane/ launch times to start playing... At the very least, once you're in the game (java edition) it all works very well with LAN multiplayer.

I wish this was true for me. My experience was after Microsoft extorted my phone number out of me (for 'verification' of my 10 year old account that I converted) that it now demands a text message 2FA authentication any time I haven't played for awhile. Which since my kids are usually the ones playing means they're usually blocked from starting up again unless I'm home. Which means they kind of just don't play it anymore.

I never wanted a Microsoft account in the first place and I want one even less now.

Yeah, this is insane. I also bought the game twice due to that buggy sh*t and that MS/Mojang poor integration, but fortunately they reimbursed one of the purchases after I opened a ticket to the support. But yeah, that UX is so bad...

If 10% don't ask for the refund, the workflow stays.

Of course! You are right! It will always worth to maintain dark patterns :/

I setup a new Microsoft account and tried to buy minecraft. Maybe I mistyped a digit, maybe I just got flagged for being an unusual user agent, but I got the account stuck in purgatory indefinitely, along with my credit card number (no starting a new account).

Having gotten flagged that way, there’s no way to buy it anymore; other payment methods also fail due to the flag.

Support took weeks and multiple escalations to figure it out, by which point I had migrated the family server to minetest (which has so many qol improvements that the kids were thrilled to change).

> How do you screw up account migration?

I've always assumed this is just a dark pattern. There's no excuse.

The excuse is simple: Microsoft is completely disinterested in maintaining two disjoint account management services (complete with all the security, auditing, and attack-surface headaches that entails).

Same reason one's YouTube login is their Google login is their Blogger login.

Google's login situation is because they tried to turn everyone into a Google+ user whether they wanted to be or not. Very different histories.

Not exactly. G+ was contemporary with / the spearhead for that initiative, but the desire to reify login was something Google was planning to do for awhile; they just used G+ as the focus project around which to pin the initiative. Nobody at Google was really thrilled with having three (four? five?) credential stacks, all with their own bespoke tooling, concept of what an "account" was, security stories, and administrative needs.

(... the one thing that came out of G+ that has stuck around is infrastructure improvements. A lot of the stuff the G+ team wrote to support Google+ behind-the-scenes is still used at Google for other projects now).

And yet it is ridiculous that I have to respond to a 2fa on my phone just to watch youtube on my laptop, every. time.

I have a paid yt account fine, but watching trivial videos is not in the same class with accessing my gmail, or managing my gmail, or even managing my own videos if I were a youtuber. I'm fine with being one identity (well no I'm not but pretend I am) but those are not all the same activity or class of activity.

Hm. I don't, and now I'm curious why. My login never asks me to 2FA on my regular devices.

I've had that problem on websites when I turned on the strictest privacy settings.

Maybe they are subtly discouraging you from using those settings.

This.

I held on to my youtube-only YouTube account for a long time, until I realized they'd shadow banned me and my comments to creators weren't getting through, for no reason that I can think of.

They also make it really, really hard to purchase the goddamn game for your kid and set it so they can play on your local server. I've done it three times, and just budget a full damn hour for it at this point, though I think the first time took more like three hours.

I mean, they did get my money so I guess why should they care, but I have no idea how people without an actual computer science degree and mumble years of experience un-fucking broken computer horse-shit manage to get through the process.

[EDIT] Oh, advice to any parents considering embarking on this: just lie about your kid's age. Don't try to use their child accounts. It makes the whole thing a much bigger pain in the ass.

And while I'm at it, may as well ask: anyone got a good list of allowlist addresses for Minecraft? I lock down my kids' laptops (you know, like a responsible parent is supposed to) but modern Minecraft is so full of friggin' spyware that it can't even launch without connecting to a bunch of never-seen-before IP addresses every time it starts, which means I have to go put in a pin multiple times to allow those new addresses every single time.

They make money by renting servers, self hosting is a relic from the olden days and Microsoft would prefer you just signed up for Realms

Sure, but even the purchase itself is painful. Having to navigate to an account management screen (which one? There are wrong ones that will be of no help) and change some XBox setting (LOL WTF?) to get local-network multiplayer working is just adding insult to injury, the core problem is that doing anything with Microsoft accounts including trying to give them money is bizarrely complicated in a way that zero other services I've ever used has been.

Aah, I can't speak to the Xbox experience at all, I've only used the Java edition on PC where they give you a jar for the server and you run it somewhere

Oh no, this is for the Java PC version, hence the "WTF?" at the option being buried in XBox settings (in the MS account management settings screens in a web browser, not while trying to do this on an XBox, which device we don't even own, all this was taking place on desktop and laptop computers)

Can’t say we had that problem but maybe GDLauncher is taking care of it

I believe it only happens when the age on an account is under 18. Also requires a Microsoft family account with parental controls to enable chat for <13. Some restrictions of this type can be modded out of the game, though IIRC the restriction on multiplayer is not possible to bypass due to servers checking each login with Mojang servers.

leetcode doesnt actually test for those competencies

I think you can use a different launcher.

Yeah, lie about the age indeed.

At this point it's just really a pain to make a server and have some of my sons friends join it. The parents need an MS account, then need to associate with the kid, they need to approve things that seems like you want to show their kids a gory horror film. It's like MS is the parent, or MS thinks I'm a bad parent. Come on, I'm the parent, I'm perfectly capable of guiding my kid online.

I don't do it anymore.

Very coincidentally convenient that their incompetence leads to MORE sales. Funny, that.

Network effects/vendor lock-in are shockingly powerful, so much so that you can actively work to subvert your product when they are in your favor.

Multibillion/trillion dollar companies and broken websites seems all too common nowadays.

>rebuying these stupid copies for their kids because of Microsoft's incompetence.

I'm going with "because of Microsoft's purposeful design".

Well, Sydney isn’t always the best coder but she tries.

Sydney was the best of us.

Don't say bad things about her. It's not her fault she was owned by, and lobotomized by, a heartless corporation.

>How do you screw up account migration?

Not the first rodeo; the MSN Messenger + Skype merge was concentrated janksimus maximus that played no small part in me ultimately dropping Skype all together. (I still use my Microsoft account, originally my Hotmail account, though.)

I never migrated my account, but it got migrated automatically. Worked fine for me.

Just tried to migrate actually, and ended up on a

> There's a temporary problem > There's a temporary problem with the service. Please try again. If you continue to get this message, try again later.

page. My account wasn't created in Microsoft BUT I also no longer have the migrate button on the Mojang side and I'm prompted to buy it again.

To be honest, Microsoft is in general really clunky when it comes to auth. Azure is a forest of browser redirects, re-logins, wrong tenants. Teams doesn't do multi-tenancy ala Slack and Discord. School/work or personal account? You really shouldn't have to choose, just log the user in. If you can't do that, you've failed.

I think their oauth service is really decent and easy too use (comparatively, since oauth is its own hell in my opinion, I want to join the "basic auth isn't unsafe-club").

For a company that large, it really does login you to many websites if you authenticated at your own third party app of questionable origin. Not every site, but I think office and azure are covered (with corporate accounts at least, which are treated differently I belive).

That said, I really, really dislike using such large auth providers because there are repercussion for anonymity and behavior spying. Microsoft doesn't need to know which services I use. I don't use my private MS account for anything, especially not for Windows.

I wouldn't want to save user info for my webservices anymore, but if I have to I would recommend specialized auth providers like auth0. Don't give that to big tech too.

> Those poor parents who aren't technical are going to end up rebuying these stupid copies for their kids because of Microsoft's incompetence.

Sounds like a feature, from Microsoft’s point of view. Hanlon’s Razor¹ is a good rule of thumb but Microsoft is no stranger to dark patterns².

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_pattern

> Hanlon’s Razor is a good rule of thumb

No it never is when you are dealing with corporations. Even for individuals it only makes sense for people you have a pre-existing relationship with.

So when Google locks someone’s account, it’s never because their automated systems are being overzealous or misinterpreted data, but because Google is choosing to be deliberately evil towards that person?

If the cashier at the supermarket rings up something wrong, do they have something against you specifically?

More importantly, do you never make a mistake when interacting with a stranger? If we meet and you make an error during our interaction should I assume you did it on purpose to screw me over?

A straw man fallacy (sometimes written as strawman) is the informal fallacy of refuting an argument different from the one actually under discussion, while not recognizing or acknowledging the distinction. One who engages in this fallacy is said to be "attacking a straw man".

The typical straw man argument creates the illusion of having refuted or defeated an opponent's proposition through the covert replacement of it with a different proposition (i.e., "stand up a straw man") and the subsequent refutation of that false argument ("knock down a straw man") instead of the opponent's proposition.

Copy-pasting a fallacy definition doesn’t make it true, nor does it advance a conversation.

If you believe my comment was unconnected, consider you might not have understood what I meant (then ask for clarification) or that I might not have understood your original point (then clarify it).

Don’t start by assuming malice from the other person, or a productive discussion becomes impossible.

>When you're logged in, the Get Minecraft button... also encourages you to buy the game again, instead of taking you to the download page

Did a fresh install on Windows 10 this weekend since, you know, I had to upgrade to Win 10 since Microsoft dropped support for Win 8 earlier this year and hadn't installed MC on it yet. I spent probably about 10 minutes trying to find the download page through the site before finally clicking log in to find it.

Then I ran the installer and after the installation finished I logged in but gave me an error something about that I wasn't logged into Windows Store or something. I've never run or logged into Windows Store and intend to never do that. I don't even think I have it installed right now. I tried finding a workaround for another 10 minutes before copying over an old installer from 2017 I had saved somewhere and that installer just worked flawlessly. I've now made a backup of that installer for long term use and just plan on using that one from now on...

I think it would be prudent to download and archive older versions of the game, especially ones that let you run it offline, for long term use before they take those down, as well as older installers and install them in a container/image/VM as a backup. Just be careful running old versions of the server with vulnerabilities like log4j etc. Of course you can also run cracked versions but there's no real need when you already have access to these if you don't care about having the latest updates to MC and you already own those older versions if you had the Mojang account.

>so many of you are already enjoying benefits

Not enjoying it at all. I just want to use the Mojang account. Haven't used a single 'feature' of the Microsoft account that wasn't on the Mojang account.

Beware when migrating, Microsoft will lock you out of your migrated account on first or second use and the only way to get it to unlock it is to receive an SMS... except it rejects a large proportion of SMS numbers. When I first migrated it worked the first day and the next time I logged in they locked me out of the account for no reason (I also only logged in from the same computer both times from the same IP address so not like there was any suspicious activity...). This has also been reported by many users. I spent about half a day trying to find an SMS service that I could use to unlock the account and none of them worked. As a security engineer, I find this to be a poor design pattern -- don't require or assume the user has access to SMS, or even a cell phone, or even any phone (even though I did, wanted to avoid using my personal SIM for it), although allowing the option of 2FA through a phone is still a good practice. Also allow users to use older insecure options if they really want to as long as the risks are made really clear (but don't make it the default either).

edit: Looked at the original email when buying it from Mojang a decade ago and amazingly the links to download the launcher still work:

    https://s3.amazonaws.com/MinecraftDownload/launcher/Minecraft.exe (Windows)
    https://s3.amazonaws.com/MinecraftDownload/launcher/Minecraft.zip (Mac OS X)
    https://s3.amazonaws.com/MinecraftDownload/launcher/minecraft.jar (Linux)