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Post news Report RSS Minecraft's Plan for mods and api

After some internal discussion and general anxiety, we've arrived at a plan for supporting mods. Mod api access will be free.

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Here is the official Minecraft mod plan via notch's blog:

  • Let players sign up as “mod developers”. This will cost money (edit: no longer costs money! - see below), and
  • will require you agreeing to a license deal (you only need one per mod team).
  • Mod developers can download the source code from our SVN repository.
  • As soon as we commit a change, it will be available to all mod developers, unobfuscated and uncensored.
  • Mod developers get a unique certificate for signing their mods. This means players can see who made what mod and choose to trust individual developers. The cost of signing up makes sure only serious developers have access to this certificate.

The rules of the license deal will contain:

  • Mods must only be playable by people who have bought Minecraft
  • You can’t sell your mods or make money off them unless you’ve got a separate license deal with us
  • The mods must not be malicious (obviously)
  • We retain the right to use your mod idea and implement it ourselves in Minecraft. This is to prevent the situation where we have to avoid adding a feature just because there’s a mod out there that does something similar. It’s also great for dealing with bug fixes provided by the community.

In the long term, we hope this means people will do awesome new things with the Minecraft engine and play around with it. We want to buy and/or license good mods and/or total conversions and sell them ourselves. It’s possible we might have a mod marketplace for selling and buying mods that fans have written, or we might purchase and integrate nice mods that fit the main theme of Minecraft.

UPDATE: Cost of the mod api via notch's blog

Because of overwhelming feedback, the cost of the mod api access will be 0 dollars.Our intention wasn’t to make money off selling the access, only to ensure some level of quality. Obviously that wasn’t the most popular idea in the world.

ModDB's Thoughts

Great to see a commerical game really really think through it's modding strategy and realize the immense benefit robust modding tools and API can bring. We are going to see how closely we can work with Minecraft to provide mods with profiles containing image galleries / videos like they have on ModDB.

Post comment Comments  (0 - 50 of 84)
Bluedrake42
Bluedrake42

YESYESYESYES I love you so much notch, this will make me very very happy. Now... on another note, please don't sell too many mods. Cause if that happens then it'll be painful just having to "BUY" different mods all the time to play on different servers. I mean obviously this is up to the mod developers =P but I guess yeah if its a different license. idk xD

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Heaney
Heaney

Mods aren't being sold...

They're going to be free.

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Bluedrake42
Bluedrake42

oh I know, the "separate deal" thing was just making me a little nervous

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MrCow
MrCow

If you bought minecraft in alpha, then you already have access to all addons to minecraft.

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Theon
Theon

"It’s possible we might have a mod marketplace for selling and buying mods that fans have written(...)"

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TheOneandOnly
TheOneandOnly

Or we might just ignore that and do whatever we want regardless =P

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Guest
Guest

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newbie2356
newbie2356

WHERES HIS ARM?!?

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sgtteris
sgtteris

Ha, well you can only use your right arm in-game. So it makes sense. lol.

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Lord_of_Sausage
Lord_of_Sausage

Hurr... Only use right arm! :3

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ForMiSoft
ForMiSoft

Looking for an API documentation.

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Matt_Bak3r
Matt_Bak3r

I want super meat boy mod!

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OnlySolus
OnlySolus

That sounds like fun xD

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InvertedVantage
InvertedVantage

Kick *** man. :) It'd be great to have a skin download/switching API to begin with.

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macacos2
macacos2

(buried)

How about a mod to turn Minecraft into a good game?

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Relifed
Relifed

there is one already it's called: "Vanilla minecraft" :O, (idiot...)

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macacos2
macacos2

(buried)

I thought it was called "Lego".

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{SOTW}LoneWolf
{SOTW}LoneWolf

(buried)

**** off, weaboo. Go back to Neotokyo and jerk off to Lucky Star like the rest of your lonely sad ****** friends. I am in no way a fan of minecraft but you have no room to talk ****. Weaboos never are.

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Arxae
Arxae

now now, people have opinions, let them have them :p its not like you are doing something wrong if you have a opinion about something that is not in line with the popular things :P

That goes for all 3 of you btw :)

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macacos2
macacos2

(buried)

Sorry, I kind of snapped as I watched a pointless game like this sell so much and still want more by selling the work of other people, destroying the ideology of mods I know them.

Just to let you guys know, I bought this game to play with a couple of friends and I completely regret doing so.

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Bluedrake42
Bluedrake42

I mean... its better then buying a game and not getting any updates for it. its not like these modders are getting stolen from, they ARE submitting it willingly I should say. AND they're getting compensated for it... seriously what's not to like? I mean I'm only worried about server compatibility

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[Q]uik
[Q]uik

now i do agree, mods should be free, and the whole "pay for making mods thing" shows of into his greed
however, the game is good and he definitly deserves the money, its not the graphics that makes it good, its the concept.

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jjawinte
jjawinte

There's the voice of reason...well said Sigma.

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bogie
bogie

(buried)

Call of Duty : Minecraft !!!

MineCall of DutyCraft !!!

CallMine of CraftDuty !!!

etc.....

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Kizzycocoa
Kizzycocoa

gave me a heart attack for a minute there. like, how anyone could post news onto the mainspace with no authorisation. I gotta stop taking internetz so seriously. X3

great news. I sorta got confused at it, but I think I understand where money comes into it I think.

back to minecraftin' with no issues about the page being venerable X3

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Theon
Theon

Paying to be able to mod? (Glad you had the common courtesy to retract that!)
Retain the right to steal any mod and incorporate it in Minecraft??
Selling and buying mods???

WTF am I reading!?
Mojang has become the Activision of indies.

I'm glad there is still the Wolfire Team, or I would've lost faith in humanity.

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aerozol
aerozol

Honestly.. They HAVE to put that in. Get some common sense, and read the WHOLE sentence.

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Drakel101
Drakel101

Selling total conversions sounds rather fair, selling minor mods is milking it rather too much.

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ZomBo
ZomBo

Mad.

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BananaClip
BananaClip

Wicked.

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Ark_
Ark_

When I read the part about buying a linsence to mod, alarm bells started ringing. Glad thats not gonna be the case anymore, I can see the idea behind it, but no it would have just been a bad idea.

I guess i'll wait and see how it pans out.

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tickettaker97
tickettaker97

dude finally some more mods for minecraft this is gonna be a lot of fun

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Radar11m
Radar11m

Nice, awesome mods to come

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jjawinte
jjawinte

Judging by the sheer amount of both pos. and neg. comments to this news, " Minecraft " is clearly much more successful than many of us might like to admit.

I don't play myself, but let's see if " Minecraft " modders can change my mind !

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macacos2
macacos2

(buried)

So is tobacco, Call of Duty and Justin bieber.

Doesn't mean any of that is any good. They're just addictive to some people.

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Otner
Otner

Why do you HAVE to go to a post about a game that people obviously like, then just respond to comments and bitch about how much you hate it? Why do you ************* play games you don't like? That's like eating a whole bunch of food you hate, then bitch about how much you hate it the whole ******* time.

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bad@chaos
bad@chaos

there are already mods for minecraft. whats this about?

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RandomusIdiotus
RandomusIdiotus

Now mods will be official. ^_^

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Moss
Moss

No, new mods will have access to a lot more of the games code, allowing them to do more things. Some mods may be incorporated into the game and made "official", but that's not anything new for minecraft.

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mjl8
mjl8

There are already free mods on the minecraft forums. And some mods have had things before vanilla did(Example: Better light, Cookies from Humans+ mod), i just hope that if they're going to incorporate mods into the game, that they give appreciation to the modder who made it. It rips my soul in two when any game takes a mod and claims it as their own original idea.

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RandomusIdiotus
RandomusIdiotus

As fantastic as this sounds, I'm a little worried about, "...a mod marketplace for selling and buying mods...", though. I'm sure it's nothing, though! ^_^

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xXMaNiAcXx
xXMaNiAcXx

Well mods gives games a better use but still I think that Minecraft doesn't need mods so much.

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s87
s87

Screw CryEngine 3 - let's mod Minecraft! xD

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Exoddus
Exoddus

I bought the alpha. And i recal something about never having to pay for anything that has to do with minecraft after purches being written somewhere... That including mods? Cause i sure will NEVER pay for anything that should be free.

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Renay
Renay

you're right, I remember that too now...

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BRKNnode
BRKNnode

I really think I have found one of the best games ever with this, its a real gem and now with mod support that going to be epic

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jag648
jag648

If you have to buy a mod its no longer a mod its a DLC, addon, or whatever you want to call it, like the Diplomacy DLC for Sins of a solar empire or Fallout 3 DLCs but this is still going to be awsome.

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sniper77shot
sniper77shot

Isn't there that zombiecraft mod that is selling a map for money?

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Slevo
Slevo

(buried)

so pretty much this is to try get more money for a unfinished product? Mine craft isent that good anyway, What are u going to mod for starters maybe make the game more decent i guess considering it looks like its been made by a 2 year old.. or a German kid

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nazfalas
nazfalas

"a German kid"? WTF?
Where did that come from?

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