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

  • chunes@lemmy.worldEnglish
    63·
    15 hours ago

    They could distribute source ports of the game, but you’d still have to buy the game in order to make use of them. Textures, sound effects, animations, etc. are (usually) not source code.

    That’s why people still buy Doom 2 even though it was open-sourced in 1997.

    • Korhaka@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      11·
      13 hours ago

      Fork it and use your own texture and sound pack doesn’t sound like much work tbh. Any major modpack could just redistribute the game as a fork and it would be awesome. But Microsoft probably don’t want that.

    • sus@programming.devEnglish
      132·
      14 hours ago

      The small amount of sales of doom 2 today is not at all comparable to the massive amount of minecraft sales and minecraft-related microtransactions that microsoft is raking in. Doom has many modern sequels that are far more popular today than doom 2, while minecraft does not have any official sequel.

      • C8r9VwDUTeY3ZufQRYvq@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        1·
        2 hours ago

        What proportion of those sales are for Java edition? This sounds like an attempt to make mods and therefore java edition into a more popular/appealing product. They know that most users are not going to do anything with source code.

      • chunes@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        6 hours ago

        Open-sourcing Doom increased, rather than decreased sales.

        Doom also went open source long before there were any sequels, and while it was still the hottest shit in PC gaming.