Java Edition is moving house (opens in new tab)

"Now just to be clear, migrating from Mojang to Microsoft accounts is mandatory. If you don’t make the move, in several months you won’t be able to log in anymore – which means you won’t be able to play either. But no need to worry, because we’ll give you detailed and clear instructions on how to do so. " Do as we say, or we'll slap you right in the face. It has been super annoying to need a microsoft account to install windows, you can get around it, but they don't make it clear/easy to do or that you can. Now they'll take away something people have spent hours on because it suits their need to increase msft account counts for shareholders.

The dark of it clears when looking at the licensing of the open source launcher MultiMC: https://github.com/MultiMC/Launcher

<quote>

We keep MultiMC open source because we think it's important to be able to see the source code for a project like this, and we do so using the Microsoft Permissive License (MS-PL).

The license gives you access to the source MultiMC is built from, but:

- Not the name, logo and other branding.

- Not the API tokens required to talk to services the launcher depends on.

- You may not change the license.

Because of the nature of the agreements required to interact with the Microsoft identity platform, it's impossible for us to continue allowing everyone to build the code as 'MultiMC'. The source code has been debranded and now builds as DevLauncher by default.

You must provide your own branding if you want to distribute your own builds.

You will also have to register your own app on Azure to be able to handle Microsoft account logins.

</quote>