Minecraft has banned advertisers from building attractions inside the game
Sanakan_SoryuAdvertisers need an audience. And Minecraft, the world's best-selling computer game, certainly has one.
But the virtual world of Minecraft is now officially off-limits to advertisers.
To rein in advertisers and corporations looking to capitalize on its large playerbase, Minecraft-maker Mojang announced in a blog post on Tuesday that it will no longer allow the promotion of unrelated products or causes within the confines of its virtual world.
Out of a concern for control and user enjoyment, the updated policy bans ad agencies, corporations, non-profits and politicians from building marketing material in Minecraft. The blog post offered examples of the limitations: restaurants are restricted from releasing mods, or game modifications, that include their "restaurant built out of Minecraft blocks" and movie studios are restricted from building "the fictional world of the movie or its characters" or creating "an official movie trailer out of gameplay footage."
Regular players are still free to recreate their favorite restaurants or movie characters, as long as their intention isn't to monetize or promote products or ideas through virtual representation.
"We want to empower our community to make money from their creativity, but we're not happy when the selling of an unrelated product becomes the purpose of a Minecraft mod or server," the blog post said. "That doesn't feel right, or more importantly, fun."