I had bought Minecraft before Microsoft bought Mojang, and eventually I was forced to migrate my Minecraft license to a Microsoft account.
After I had successfully created the account, logged in, and transferred the license, and ONLY after I had transferred the license, I was suddenly locked out of my account until I provided a phone number.
I will never buy a Microsoft product again, and I think I've done a decent job reducing the amount of their stuff that other people have bought, as well.
I tried to simply purchase some Minecraft thinggy for my kid and Microsoft sent me through what seemed to be a 70 step process of logging in, captcha, authenticating, verifying, logging in again, trying to buy, getting blocked, captcha, authenticating again, E-mail verification, online verification, blocked again, contacting support, authenticating, talking to their fraud team, re-logging in, captcha, authenticating, E-mail verification... All the while, the browser is redirecting between Microsoft and Xbox websites (I don't even fucking own an Xbox--this is on the PC).
Anything that touches a Microsoft account is fraught with horror and pain. Which is why the idea of requiring one in order to turn on your PC is ludicrous.
this was my experience (described in this thread elsewhere) of getting minecraft dungeons to work between PC and Nintendo Switch. Log in, captcha, email 2fa, recovery email, repeat
I bought Minecraft in the alpha days when all you needed was a username and password. At some point they mandated an email in the years I wasn't playing and later found out I could no longer sign in.
I bought a new "copy" and lost it because I didn't migrate to a Microsoft account. I didn't migrate because I assumed it was just a scare tactic and I wasn't playing at the time anyway. When I later wanted to play they stopped allowing me to log in.
When I look at the top selling games[1] and see Minecraft in second place with 400 million, I wonder how many of those are the same people buying it again. I'm sure nobody bought Super Mario because it would stop letting them sign in to play offline.
If you bought during Alpha you're entitled to play it for free forever including all future editions (currently Bedrock) and you could go to small claims court to get your account back, maybe.
Happened to many people. The system claims it's because of some suspicious activity but everybody who gave in to this blackmail and submitted personal details said that after logging in there was no notice of anything suspicious.
since this is a game it's probably mostly kids whose identifying information Microsoft is hunting for. I can't believe it's legal and the company was not sued yet
me I just pirate it now, never played on servers anyway.
My friends and I play on a private server that I run in offline mode because some of us got locked out of our accounts. Didn't matter having to give (fake) personal info, but that didn't even get you into the account cause of the broken email verification.
Bought Minecraft on one of the first survival mode releases back when Notch was streaming himself making the game and Microsoft stole this from me. I'm not particularly sad about the digital access itself but this low-key meant something to me :|
I've had this happen with at least three accounts, the most recent one for the purpose of playing Grounded with a friend. IIRC, between registering and trying to log in, my account was flagged for suspicious activity and required a phone number.
Happened to me every time I ever made a Microsoft account. It works for one day, then some fraud process runs overnight and if I try to use it the next day I need a phone number. Good thing I first discovered this on a throwaway account.
