tl;drLegal is brought to you by FOSSA, the most complete Open Source Management Platform
MINECRAFT END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT
In order to protect Minecraft (our “Game”) and the members of our community, we need these end user licence terms to set out some rules for downloading and using our Game. We don‘t like rules any more than you do, so we have tried to keep this as short as possible. If you break these rules we may stop you from using our Game. If we think it is necessary, we might even have to ask our lawyers to get in touch.
If you buy, download, use or play our Game, you are agreeing to stick to the rules of these end user licence terms ("EULA”). If you don‘t want to or can‘t agree to these rules, then you must not buy, download, use or play our Game. This EULA incorporates the terms of use for the mojang.com website (“Account Terms”), our brand and asset usage guidelines and our privacy policy. By agreeing to this EULA you also agree to all parts of these three documents, so please read through them carefully.
The one major rule is that you must not distribute anything we‘ve made. By “distribute anything we‘ve made” what we mean is “give copies of the game away, make commercial use of, try to make money from, or let other people get access to our game and its parts in a way that is unfair or unreasonable”. So the one major rule is that (unless we specifically agree it – such as in brand and asset usage guidelines) you must not:
…and so that we are crystal clear, what we have made includes, but is not limited to, the client or the server software for our Game. It also includes modified versions of a Game, part of it or anything else we‘ve made.
Otherwise we are quite relaxed about what you do - in fact we really encourage you to do cool stuff - but just don‘t do those things that we say you can‘t.
You have bought the game so you can use it, yourself, on your computer.
Below we also give you limited rights to do other things but we have to draw a line somewhere or else people will go too far. If you wish to make something pertaining to anything we‘ve made we‘re humbled, but please make sure that it can‘t be interpreted as being official and that it complies with this EULA and the brand and asset usage guidelines and above all do not make commercial use of anything we‘ve made.
The permission we give you to use and play our Game can be revoked if you break the terms of this EULA.
When you buy our Game, we give you permission to install the Game on your own personal computer and use and play it on that computer as set out in this EULA. This permission is personal to you, so you are not allowed to distribute the Game (or any part of it) to anyone else. This also means you cannot sell or rent the Game, or make it available for access to other people and you cannot pass on or resell any licence keys. You may however give gift codes that have been bought through our official gift code system. This is important to help us stop piracy and fraud and to protect our Game. It is also important to prevent members of our community from buying pirated versions of our Game or fraudulent licence keys – which we may cancel, such as in the case of fraud.
If you've bought the Game, you may play around with it and modify it. We'd appreciate it if you didn't use this for griefing, though, and remember not to distribute the changed versions of our software. Basically, mods (or plugins, or tools) are cool (you can distribute those), hacked versions of the Game client or server are not (you can't distribute those).
Within reason you‘re free to do whatever you want with screenshots and videos of the Game. By “within reason” we mean that you can‘t make any commercial use of them or do things that are unfair or adversely affect our rights. If you upload videos of the game to video sharing and streaming sites you are however allowed to put ads on them. Also, don‘t just rip art resources and pass them around, that‘s no fun.
Essentially the simple rule is do not make commercial use of anything we‘ve made unless specifically agreed by us, either in our brand and asset usage guidelines or under this EULA. Oh and if the law expressly allows it, such as under a “fair use” or fair dealing” doctrine then that‘s ok too – but only to the extent that the law says so.
In order to ensure the integrity of the Game, we need all Game downloads to come from a single central source: us. It‘s also important for us that 3rd party tools/services don‘t seem “too official” as we can‘t guarantee their quality. Make sure that you read through our brand and asset usage guidelines too.
Although we give you permission to play our Game, we are still the owners of it. We are also the owners of our brands and any content contained in the Game. Therefore, when you pay for our Game, you are buying a permission to play / use our Game in accordance with this EULA - you are not buying the Game itself. The only permissions you have in connection with the Game are the permissions set out in this EULA.
Any tools you write for the Game from scratch belong to you. . Modifications to the Game ("Mods") (including pre-run Mods and in-memory Mods) and plugins for the Game also belong to you and you can do whatever you want with them, as long as you don‘t sell them for money / try to make money from them. We have the final say on what constitutes a tool/mod/plugin and what doesn‘t.
If you make any content available on or through our Game, you must give us permission to use, copy, modify and adapt that content. This permission must be irrevocable, and you must also let us permit other people to use, copy, modify and adapt your content. If you don‘t want to give us this permission, do not make content available on or through our Game. Please think carefully before you make any content available, because it will be made public and might even be used by other people in a way you don‘t like.
If you are going to make something available on or through our Game, it must not be offensive to people or illegal, it must be honest, and it must be your own creation. The types of things you must not make available using our Game include: posts that include racist or homophobic language; posts that are bullying or trolling; posts that might damage our or another person‘s reputation; posts that include porn, advertising or someone else‘s creation or image; or posts that impersonate a moderator or try to trick or exploit people.
Any content you make available on our Game must also be your creation. You must not make any content available, using the Game, that infringes the rights of anyone else. If you post content on our Game, and we get challenged, threatened or sued by someone because the content infringes that persons rights, we may hold you responsible and that means you may have to pay us back for any damage we suffer as a result. Therefore it is really important that you only make content available that you have created and you don‘t do so with any content created by anyone else.
Please watch out if you are talking to people in our Game. It is hard for either you or us to know for sure that what people say is true, or even if people are really who they say they are. You should think twice about giving out information about yourself.
We might make upgrades and updates available from time to time, but we don‘t have to. We are also not obliged to provide ongoing support or maintenance of any Game. Of course, we hope to continue to release new updates for our Game, we just can‘t guarantee that we will do so.
When you get a copy of our Game, we provide it ‘as is‘. Updates and upgrades are also provided ‘as is‘. This means that we are not making any promises to you about the standard or quality of our Game or that our Game will be uninterrupted or error free or for any loss or damage that they cause. We only promise to provide the Game and any services with reasonable skill and care and even then you have to accept that we may release games well before they are complete and so they may (and often will) have bugs – but that‘s a price you pay for getting them so early. The law in most countries says that we can‘t disclaim liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence so if your computer gets up and stabs you because of something we‘ve done wrong then we‘ll take the hit on that.
If we want we can terminate this EULA if you breach the terms. You can terminate it too, at any time, all you have to do is uninstall the Game from your computer and the EULA will be terminated. If the EULA is terminated, you will no longer be allowed to play our Game. The paragraphs about "Ownership of Our Game”, “Our Liability” and “General Stuff” will continue to apply even after the EULA is terminated.
The EULA is subject to any legal rights you might have. Nothing in these terms and conditions will limit any of your rights that may not be excluded under law nor shall it exclude or limit our liability for death or personal injury resulting from our negligence nor any fraudulent representation.
We may also change this EULA from time to time but those changes will only be effective to the extent that they can legally apply. For example if you only use the Game in single player mode and don‘t use the updates we make available then the old EULA applies but if you do use the updates or use parts of the game that rely on our providing ongoing online services then the new EULA will apply. In that case we may not be able to / don‘t need to tell you about the changes for them to have effect so you should check back here from time to time so you are aware of any changes to the EULA. We‘re not going to be unfair about this though - but sometimes the law changes or someone does something that affects other users of the Game and we therefore need to put a lid on it.
If you come to us with a suggestion for any one of our Games, that suggestion is made for free. This means we can use your suggestion in any way we want and we don‘t have to pay you for it. If you think you have a suggestion that we would be willing to pay you for, you must tell us you expect to be paid before you tell us the suggestion.
