Minecraft wants to crack down. Some of your “beloved” skins may soon no longer be available – because they are blocked manually by the developer.
Minecraft is a perennial favorite. The game delights young and old and has fans in pretty much all generations. Not surprising, after all, the creative freedom in Minecraft is almost unmatched and that appeals to all age groups equally. At the same time, this makes Minecraft a game in which children cavort, who therefore have to be protected from certain content.
And because this could often be circumvented by the different skins, Minecraft will take tougher action in the future.
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What was the problem? With the skins, i.e. the optical design of the character played, there was almost absolute freedom so far. You could design and upload your own skins and there was a lot of creativity here. Well-known characters such as Link (Zelda), the Master Chief (Halo) or simply a creeper in a suit could become your own look.
But this freedom also created problems. Because some people also gave themselves a skin as an oversized penis, Adolf Hitler or other tasteless designs.
This is a problem as the skins will also show up when you join public servers where kids are playing, for example – but everyone else really doesn’t need to see it either.
What will be changed now? In the latest “Snapshot”, i.e. a test version for the next patch, the option has now been introduced to report player names or their skins. So if you spot someone with more than a questionable name or offensive skin, you can report them directly to the developers with just a few clicks.
What are the consequences of reporting? When a skin is reported, it is manually reviewed by human moderators. If they decide that the skin does indeed violate the Community Guidelines, several things can happen:
Basically, however, someone with a locked skin can continue to play Minecraft – both online and offline. If a skin is blocked because of a message, there is a message explaining this when you log into Minecraft.
Of course, after the skin has been blocked, a new skin can be chosen afterwards – but you should then think very carefully about whether you want to do such nonsense again to risk your own Minecraft account.
For happier things, check out All the Animals in Minecraft — and How to Tame and Breed Them.