You can even still disable user authentication. That’s a pretty sweet deal for a game owned by Microsoft. There’s legit support in the game for pirated copies.

For a while I hosted a server for some friends that used TLauncher, turning off the "online mode" was indeed super simple! Then they also got the proper copies from Microsoft and I could just change the configuration setting, and we could all play with the proper accounts, although if I recall correctly they lost their old items and such, because those were considered different player IDs and whatnot.

Not condoning it per se, but the game could be way more draconian in its implementation of auth.

The auth changes locked me out of my minecraft alpha account. Apparently I had a period of time to link my minecraft account with my microsoft account and that is gone now. I just use a pirated launcher now since they made it so I can't play the game I bought anymore otherwise. I miss playing on servers though.