Branding Gets New Rules In Minecraft
One of the beauties of Minecraft is that you have the ability to craft pretty much anything if you have the right materials and imagination and patience. While many use this to construct fun buildings, or references to their favorite movies or show, some have apparently used this to help market their brand or upcoming item in-game. Some have even created whole mods or servers featuring their branding, then use pics or videos from the mod/server to advertise.
In a post on their website, Mojang reveals what can and cannot be done in regards to branding:
If you are an ad agency, corporation, non-profit, or politician, you can’t do these kinds of things or hire someone to do them:
- Build a Minecraft mod or server that promotes unrelated products in playable form; e.g., if you are a restaurant chain, you can’t market your restaurant by releasing a mod that includes your restaurant built out of Minecraft blocks.
- Build a Minecraft map or mod that markets a movie or TV show; e.g., if you’re a movie studio, you can’t make a map that uses Minecraft blocks to build out the fictional world of the movie or its characters, and you can’t make an official movie trailer out of gameplay footage from that map or mod.
- It’s worth mentioning that fans of a particular restaurant, movie, or some other thing are still free to build things in Minecraft that represent or celebrate it so long as the goal or focus is not to promote or sell that stuff. The new rules only apply to companies or organisations that are using Minecraft to sell their products or promote their causes.”