The Minecraft subreddit has become one of the most popular ways that fans of Mojang and Microsoft"s hit sandbox game could communicate with each other and also with team members at Mojang. It currently has over 7 million users. However, being able to get official updates from the dev team, or anything else from Mojang members, will no longer be available on that subreddit, at least for a while.
In a post on the Minecraft subreddit (via PC Gamer) by user "sliced_lime", who is labeled as the "Minecraft Java Tech Lead" (PC Gamer identifies that person as Mojang"s Mikael Hedberg), it was revealed that no one from the game"s development team will be posting on the subreddit anymore.
The post states:
As you have no doubt heard by now, Reddit management introduced changes recently that have led to rule and moderation changes across many subreddits. Because of these changes, we no longer feel that Reddit is an appropriate place to post official content or refer our players to.
This is almost certainly a reference to Reddit"s decision to charge money to access its APIs starting July 1. This has led to not only a number of popular third party Reddit apps planning to shut down after Friday, June 30, but also caused a large amount of subreddits to go dark in protest. In response to these protests, Reddit management has reportedly put pressure on community moderators to reopen these subreddits. It even allegedly tried to remove and replace moderators.
The message from the Mojang dev indicates that the team will continue to take feedback about Minecraft on their official social media accounts, and also on the Minecraft feedback site. However, the fact that it is departing an online location with a massive audience that loves its game shows that Reddit"s sudden changes in rules and its efforts to deal with the protests afterward will have big consequences.