Account Sales Removal & Branding Changes

[Mick]

Hey everyone,

Though unscheduled, today we will be making some major changes to our platform. We have recently received communications from Mojang’s legal representatives and have been working with them in order to ensure that MC-Market can continue to operate lawfully and with the best interests of our shared community in focus.

MC-Market Branding
The first thing you may have noticed is that our previous tagline “#1 Minecraft Trades & Sales Forum” has been removed. We have also removed all mention of the Minecraft game from our footer, our Twitter bio, and other areas of our site where the mention of the Minecraft game may have contributed to confusion regarding our relationship to Mojang or Minecraft.

In addition, we have also created notices on all pages of our website disclaiming any official or approved relationship with Mojang. We would like to clarify once again for everyone, that we are not affiliated with Mojang in any way nor do we have any rights over their Minecraft game.

We would like to remind everyone to abide by Mojang’s branding guidelines, which prohibit any implied official association with Minecraft or Mojang. Anyone found to be advertising or branding themselves in a way which could lead to confusion over the product or service’s ties with Minecraft or Mojang, or otherwise violates their branding guidelines will be immediately removed from our platform. If you observe any branding or advertising which you believe may violate these requirements, please utilize the report button to ensure it is seen by our staff team.

Minecraft Accounts
As it has been pointed out in the past, the resale of Minecraft accounts is not allowed by Mojang. From this point on, we fully intend to ensure our users are abiding by Mojang’s EULA. What this means is the Minecraft accounts section has been removed as well as the accounts prefix being removed from the appraisals sub-forum as well as any threads there that were found to be promoting account selling.

From this point on, Minecraft accounts are not to be sold and any posts found to be promoting the transaction of Minecraft accounts will be removed and the user warned for breaking rule:
5.4 Do not offer or sell anything you do not own or have the right to redistribute.

While this change may not be popular among many, this is something that must happen so we can both continue to protect the rights of all sellers as well as move MCM forward in a direction where we promote ethical business practices by our community.

Other Content
In order to protect the policies and rights of all sellers and buyers on MCM, going forward we intend to continue making changes to the platform to make sure there is no content that is in violation. However, this will take place over time as we continue to investigate the user agreements of potential companies of interest and develop appropriate tools and policies to accommodate them.

To start this transition, we have removed the Social Media Accounts section and all of its sub-forums. Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and certain email services like Gmail all do not allow their accounts to be resold. With that said, YouTube accounts, as per YouTube’s policy, are allowed to be sold, and threads offering YouTube channels can be posted in the Other Products section here: https://www.mc-market.org/forums/other-products/

Like Minecraft accounts, users found to be transacting the disallowed social media accounts or promoting their transaction will be warned for rule 5.4 and their content removed. With so many recent changes to what is being tolerated on this platform, it has become necessary for us to provide the community with a reliable source of information on what products and services they are forbidden from attempting to purchase or sell. We have written a wiki enumerating such products and services for your convenience: https://www.mc-market.org/wiki/forbidden-products-and-services

If you are a representative of any brand or business and you believe that your rights are being infringed on by content posted or promoted by MCM, please start a line of communication by opening a ticket here https://www.mc-market.org/tickets/new and we will work with you to make sure any violations of your rights are dealt with.

Thank you all for understanding and joining us as we continue to improve MCM and its policies.

Mick

 

[Choo]

The end of an era.

 

[Dread]

Yeah this is actually the only forum site I know or have been using Are OptiFine Capes allowed to be sold?

Have a look on https://www.mc-market.org/wiki/forbidden-products-and-services/

It is still not finished, and on future, there will be tons of updates I think.

 

[puzeh]

oof

 

[kiruv]

mc-market without the -market

 

[Tofty]

I really don't see how any rational person can look at this thread and think it's MCM, or Mick's fault that these changes have had to occur - they have been coming for a long time. As MCM grows, it becomes more susceptible to legal eyes.

MC-Market is a business, which sustains livelihoods - the livelihoods of many community members. It reports profit, it pays tax, and it, and its owner, are not above the law - even if it is convenient for some community members to forget about this. MC-Market also could not stand a chance against the likes of Microsoft.

If you owned the business; if you and your professional reputation were on the line, you'd take these actions too after being contacted by a Mojang representative. Without Minecraft, this market probably wouldn't exist, so it's good business practice to respect the TOS of the company that your forum relie(s/d) on.

 

[thebaum64]

F in Chat

 

[Metisse]

No sub forum to sell Instagram followers? That's it. Bye.

 

[Scroll32]

I really don't see how any rational person can look at this thread and think it's MCM, or Mick's fault that these changes have had to occur - they have been coming for a long time. As MCM grows, it becomes more susceptible to legal eyes.

MC-Market is a business, which sustains livelihoods - the livelihoods of many community members. It reports profit, it pays tax, and it, and its owner, are not above the law - even if it is convenient for some community members to forget about this. MC-Market also could not stand a chance against the likes of Microsoft.

If you owned the business; if you and your professional reputation were on the line, you'd take these actions too after being contacted by a Mojang representative. Without Minecraft, this market probably wouldn't exist, so it's good business practice to respect the TOS of the company that your forum relie(s/d) on.

Fair enough, but you don't have to play the moral high ground. If he's doing it for legal reasons, thats fine. Just don't go around saying your the moral police. Also, if they had the resources I really think MCM could win in court, as breaking a TOS has been proved to not be against the law. Even if it was, they don't directly break their TOS, they just allow people to post things which are against the TOS.

 

[Sloth]

I really don't see how any rational person can look at this thread and think it's MCM, or Mick's fault that these changes have had to occur - they have been coming for a long time. As MCM grows, it becomes more susceptible to legal eyes.

MC-Market is a business, which sustains livelihoods - the livelihoods of many community members. It reports profit, it pays tax, and it, and its owner, are not above the law - even if it is convenient for some community members to forget about this. MC-Market also could not stand a chance against the likes of Microsoft.

If you owned the business; if you and your professional reputation were on the line, you'd take these actions too after being contacted by a Mojang representative. Without Minecraft, this market probably wouldn't exist, so it's good business practice to respect the TOS of the company that your forum relie(s/d) on.

That’s under the assumption that Mc-Market is actually breaking a law or a TOS which is skeptical at best. Also, Mc-Market is still breaking Mojang’s EULA with items in certain sections.

Simply giving up because Microsoft is too powerful to go against doesn’t put us on a moral high ground or make us better.

 

[Doge]

That’s under the assumption that Mc-Market is actually breaking a law or a TOS which is skeptical at best. Also, Mc-Market is still breaking Mojang’s EULA with items in certain sections.

Simply giving up because Microsoft is too powerful to go against doesn’t put us on a moral high ground or make us better.

EXACTLY!

All they can do is stop the term "Minecraft" (and other terms they trademarked) from being used in any official part of the site as well as images of the logo, as they are both trademarked/copyrighted. And I am not speaking out of my ass when I say this, but rather I know of actual cases where this has happened. In one of them, Fortnite went after the said website in a similar fashion for selling Fortnite accounts with skins. The website's response was to remove any Fortnite images and to misspell "Fortnite" to "Fortntie" or something like that. That way, users still knew what the product was, and Fortnite couldn't make any claims of trademark infringement because their name isn't used.

Many users seem to not understand that breaking a company's ToS is not enforceable by any government, unless of course an actual law is also being broken. This is the classic "difference between a rule and a law". Mojang's ToS is rules they set for their own platform and it is solely their job to enforce those rules. The only legal action they can pursue is for infringing their copyright/trademark.

Before the announcement was made, I called it that this was because of a legal threat because I noticed that the MCM logo was changed to remove "#1 Minecraft Trades & Sales Forum" from it. The only reason this would be done is because "Minecraft" is trademarked. So that solidified in my mind that accounts would be removed.

So while they could take the steps to still allow accounts to be sold and be fine, they already wanted to remove accounts anyway, and this was the perfect opportunity to do so, while taking minimal blame, because "Mojang came after us, we had to!!".

This isn't a jab at anyone in particular, but personally, I cringe whenever I see people trying to act all "holier than thou" when talking about banning Minecraft accounts. If I buy a game at gamestop and later on I want to sell it, I can do so. But game companies who only offer their games via the internet can exert way too much control over game-access to the point where they try to tell you that you don't even own a copy of the game, which is absolutely ridiculous.

If you don't like Minecraft account selling, fine, but don't act as if you're better than people who do sell accounts. It's only a bit sad to see this happening because I started all my online business stuff on this website and now what got me started isn't there anymore. Obviously I kinda stopped using this site for selling accounts a few years ago, only posting a few things since, so this won't affect me really, but it's disappointing for those who were actively selling accounts and getting started by doing so. But ultimately the same opportunity will still be there, just not on this website in particular.

 

[Luz1fer]

EXACTLY!

All they can do is stop the term "Minecraft" (and other terms they trademarked) from being used in any official part of the site as well as images of the logo, as they are both trademarked/copyrighted. And I am not speaking out of my ass when I say this, but rather I know of actual cases where this has happened. In one of them, Fortnite went after the said website in a similar fashion for selling Fortnite accounts with skins. The website's response was to remove any Fortnite images and to misspell "Fortnite" to "Fortntie" or something like that. That way, users still knew what the product was, and Fortnite couldn't make any claims of trademark infringement because their name isn't used.

Many users seem to not understand that breaking a company's ToS is not enforceable by any government, unless of course an actual law is also being broken. This is the classic "difference between a rule and a law". Mojang's ToS is rules they set for their own platform and it is solely their job to enforce those rules. The only legal action they can pursue is for infringing their copyright/trademark.

Before the announcement was made, I called it that this was because of a legal threat because I noticed that the MCM logo was changed to remove "#1 Minecraft Trades & Sales Forum" from it. The only reason this would be done is because "Minecraft" is trademarked. So that solidified in my mind that accounts would be removed.

So while they could take the steps to still allow accounts to be sold and be fine, they already wanted to remove accounts anyway, and this was the perfect opportunity to do so, while taking minimal blame, because "Mojang came after us, we had to!!".

This isn't a jab at anyone in particular, but personally, I cringe whenever I see people trying to act all "holier than thou" when talking about banning Minecraft accounts. If I buy a game at gamestop and later on I want to sell it, I can do so. But game companies who only offer their games via the internet can exert way too much control over game-access to the point where they try to tell you that you don't even own a copy of the game, which is absolutely ridiculous.

If you don't like Minecraft account selling, fine, but don't act as if you're better than people who do sell accounts. It's only a bit sad to see this happening because I started all my online business stuff on this website and now what got me started isn't there anymore. Obviously I kinda stopped using this site for selling accounts a few years ago, only posting a few things since, so this won't affect me really, but it's disappointing for those who were actively selling accounts and getting started by doing so. But ultimately the same opportunity will still be there, just not on this website in particular.

You just gotta put “ Minecraft is copyright of Mojang AB and is not affiliated with this site.” in the footer and poof you can use Minecraft now for basic stuff not for selling of course

 

[Zodiac]

FBI Open up!

 

[Sloth]

EXACTLY!

All they can do is stop the term "Minecraft" (and other terms they trademarked) from being used in any official part of the site as well as images of the logo, as they are both trademarked/copyrighted. And I am not speaking out of my ass when I say this, but rather I know of actual cases where this has happened. In one of them, Fortnite went after the said website in a similar fashion for selling Fortnite accounts with skins. The website's response was to remove any Fortnite images and to misspell "Fortnite" to "Fortntie" or something like that. That way, users still knew what the product was, and Fortnite couldn't make any claims of trademark infringement because their name isn't used.

Many users seem to not understand that breaking a company's ToS is not enforceable by any government, unless of course an actual law is also being broken. This is the classic "difference between a rule and a law". Mojang's ToS is rules they set for their own platform and it is solely their job to enforce those rules. The only legal action they can pursue is for infringing their copyright/trademark.

Before the announcement was made, I called it that this was because of a legal threat because I noticed that the MCM logo was changed to remove "#1 Minecraft Trades & Sales Forum" from it. The only reason this would be done is because "Minecraft" is trademarked. So that solidified in my mind that accounts would be removed.

So while they could take the steps to still allow accounts to be sold and be fine, they already wanted to remove accounts anyway, and this was the perfect opportunity to do so, while taking minimal blame, because "Mojang came after us, we had to!!".

This isn't a jab at anyone in particular, but personally, I cringe whenever I see people trying to act all "holier than thou" when talking about banning Minecraft accounts. If I buy a game at gamestop and later on I want to sell it, I can do so. But game companies who only offer their games via the internet can exert way too much control over game-access to the point where they try to tell you that you don't even own a copy of the game, which is absolutely ridiculous.

If you don't like Minecraft account selling, fine, but don't act as if you're better than people who do sell accounts. It's only a bit sad to see this happening because I started all my online business stuff on this website and now what got me started isn't there anymore. Obviously I kinda stopped using this site for selling accounts a few years ago, only posting a few things since, so this won't affect me really, but it's disappointing for those who were actively selling accounts and getting started by doing so. But ultimately the same opportunity will still be there, just not on this website in particular.

I’m in the same boat as you. I’m not very active on this site anymore but I still hold account selling in a special place because it’s what got me started on here. Users who belittle account sellers and act like they’re the scum of the Earth are morons plain and simple.

 

[Penguin]

Can we get an F in the chat

 

[Tucker]

Mick folded, L

 

[pomduh]

Sell the forum for a lot while you can :I

 

[Yohhan]

FUCK