In this photo illustration, the Minecraft logo is seen on a smartphone screen.
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In the latest blow to Reddit’s controversial billing changes, the creator of one of the best-selling video games of all time, Minecraft, has quit the platform.
“Reddit management recently made some changes that resulted in changes to the rules and moderation of many Reddit subreddits,” said the tech lead at Mojang Studios, the Microsoft-owned Minecraft development company. release Tuesdays on the r/Minecraft Reddit community. “As a result of these changes, we no longer feel that Reddit is an appropriate place to post official content or recommend to our players.”
According to the post, Mojang’s Java technology team will no longer post changelogs or details of Minecraft game version changes on the Reddit subreddit. An update to the post clarified that this is not an official policy at all of Mojang Studios, Xbox, or Microsoft.
In response to a question about whether the developer would repost on Reddit if the company changed its API policy, user “sliced_lime” wrote, “The decision is based on the current situation. If the situation changes, we will have to discuss this issue.”
“Minecraft” sold more than 230 million copies and was recognized by Guinness World Records as the best selling video game in the world, its official subreddit has more than 7.4 million members. While this Reddit subreddit will continue to exist without an official update from Mojang Studios, day-to-day use for members may be very different.
The Minecraft maker’s decision is the latest in a series of massive protests against Reddit, one of the most visited sites on the internet, in recent weeks. Earlier this month, the company announced a business change that will significantly increase the price for third-party developers to use the company’s application programming interface (API). Reddit’s third-party apps are popular with users, who use them to navigate the site and help with accessibility challenges, and moderators, who use them to organize their Reddit subreddits, block spam accounts, flag Unsafe posts and finding patterns of harassment and abuse.
Before the changes were set to take effect on Saturday, more than 8,000 Reddit communities participated in a “blockade,” changing their Reddit subreddits to fully or partially private. Protests include the hugely popular r/Funny, which has more than 40 million members, and r/Music and r/Science, which have more than 30 million users.
“Not only is all the content on Reddit user-generated, but all moderation is done by volunteers,” Dac Croach, one of the moderators of r/Gaming, which has more than 37 million members, told CNBC in a recent interview. “We’re talking about thousands of volunteers putting in hours every day to keep the site safe and provide entertainment and enjoyment for community members. It’s hard to see these people, when their voices are so loud, to be ostensibly ignored.”
A Reddit spokesperson declined to comment.
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