Minecraft: Java Edition has been obfuscated since its release. This obfuscation meant that people couldn’t see our source code. Instead, everything was scrambled – and those who wanted to mod Java Edition had to try and piece together what every class and function in the code did.

Modding is at the heart of Java Edition – and obfuscation makes modding harder. We’re excited about this change to remove obfuscation, as it should make it quicker and easier for modders to create and improve mods. Now you won’t have to untangle tricky code or deal with unclear names. What’s more, de-bugging will become more straightforward, and crash logs will actually be readable!

surprisingly fantastic and consumer friendly move from mojang, good on them

  • ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zipEnglish
    1072·
    21 hours ago

    So, what’s the catch? Surely Microsoft and Mojang didn’t just suddenly become good?

    • atopi@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      13·
      13 hours ago

      Havent they been making changes to help mod/datapack development for a while?

      Modding is such a big part of the game, helping it would get more people playing the game

      • SuperDuperKitten@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        10·
        12 hours ago

        They made “datapack” which is a way of playing with mods without having to use third-party mod loaders like Forge and Fabric but (don’t quote me on this as I’m not a mod developer) it’s not as powerful compare to the mod loaders.

    • Prove_your_argument@piefed.socialEnglish
      98·
      21 hours ago

      The monkeypaw says they will stop updates for the java edition or release a new version that doesn’t work on the java edition.

      They probably see how many sales are generated from the free work done by modders though. If someone wants to come along and do for free the thing you might have to actually pay designers, developers, artists and all the support staff for and they still need to pay you to play it, you’d be foolish not to encourage the exploitation of free labor.

      • ChapulinColorado@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 hour ago

        I was thinking the same thing. If the de-obfuscation tools are already out there, it might cost them more money to keep that layer. Their developers also have to use it to read the crash logs and the like from the sounds of it. Less layers = less maintenance = less cost. More mods = keeps the game relevant.

      • lepinkainen@lemmy.worldEnglish
        18·
        17 hours ago

        Young generations and mobile players are on bedrock

        Everyone else plays Java where you can easily self-host a server

      • LiveLM@lemmy.zipEnglish
        45·
        19 hours ago

        Call me ignorant, if this happened and it brought a new golden era of modding (1.7.10 style) where everyone’s playing the same version I’d be maybe the happiest player ever.
        Modders backporting content is nothing new, hell, they even brought the mobs that didn’t make the cut from those stupid mob votes to life.
        Let modding become the new updates, fuck it. At this point they’d likely be better realised than Microsoft’s efforts.

    • wabafee@lemmy.worldEnglish
      39·
      10 hours ago

      I guess it just doesn’t make sense to obfuscate it when mods in general runs the Minecraft community in turn making more profit to Mojang/Microsoft. My other suspicion is potential competition. There is this game called Vintage Story which kinda directly competes with Minecraft seems gaining ground and was built to be moddable from the start.

    • Serinus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      152·
      21 hours ago

      I wonder how good AI is at deobfuscating code. It seems like the kind of thing it might be good at.

      • Cethin@lemmy.zipEnglish
        61·
        10 hours ago

        With how bad it is at writing it, I’m guessing similarly bad. It’ll do something, but odds are it introduces a ton of errors that you then have to track down. That’s the best case. Worst case, it just creates something totally different that looks similar to the input but doesn’t do the same thing.

    • ayyy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      311·
      18 hours ago

      It’s a 20 year old game going into abandonware mode. This is the nicest way for them to do that.

      • IngeniousRocks (They/She) @lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        24·
        17 hours ago

        1. Its 16, not 20, the earliest version “Cave Game Tech Test” was in May 2009.

        2. They’re still actively pushing updates, a really big one is scheduled for the holiday season. Additional biomes and mini-bosses were added last year with structures hinting at development plans for a 4th dimension. The lighting engine is being actively redone.

        Minecraft is absolutely not gearing down into abandonware mode.