Today, I woke up to the news that Taiwan Minecraft (screenshot before the site was changed), the biggest cracked Minecraft server in Taiwan, was shut down by the police yesterday after Mojang's lawyers asked the police to step in.

It took us 2 years to get to where we are today.

Taiwan Minecraft was the biggest cracked Minecraft server in Taiwan, once having 35 servers, 17K accounts and a record of 4000 concurrent players. They have been in operation for around 5 years up to their owners' arrest. We estimated that they have earned over 200K USD from 2012 to 2014, and one media outlet reported a Mojang-estimated damage of 4.5M USD; given that the average Taiwanese earns around 10K USD this is a lot of money. There is no doubt that TWMC is the most successful cracked Minecraft server you've never heard of.

Back in 2014 I wrote a report on this matter and sent it to Mojang. The full report can be read here if you want to know everything. I'd just like to write this small recollection of events leading to Mojang's intervention.

It was June 2014, several months before the Microsoft acquisition rumours started to appear. I was (and still am, half a decade and counting!) operator of #minecrafthelp, a volunteer-run Minecraft technical support channel. We're in good terms with the support team, and some of them idle in The Supporters' Lair, usually /u/MissMarzenia and sometimes /u/Marc_IRL before they transferred to another team.

I was dealing with broken drivers and old hardware as usual, when this person came in. He was speaking very broken English, complaining about a pirate website. I did a quick IP lookup and it turns out he was from Taiwan. I switched to Chinese (I'm from Hong Kong so I speak fluent Chinese), and he started talking about this "Taiwan Minecraft" server, how they threw a defamation lawsuit at the people spreading the truth about them. Although I pitied the people being sued, there wasn't much Mojang can do as it makes no sense for them to step into civil lawsuits just because their game is part of the lawsuit. I dropped a message to /u/MissMarzenia and she asked me if I could get in touch with the defendants. Since the person didn't leave any contact information, I could only wait for him (or somebody else) to come back on #minecrafthelp before I could start investigating.

The day after, I was visiting a local Minecraft forum in Hong Kong when I noticed a thread about Taiwan Minecraft that I had not seen before. Apparently a few weeks before, word of TWMC had spread to Hong Kong and players in HK were starting to show support for the cause. That was when I started realising the severity of the incident.

Apart from distributing cracked clients (with malicious code, see report), they were actively trying to fool Taiwanese players into thinking that they are the "official publisher" of Minecraft in Taiwan, and since a lot of MMOs in Asia (collectively known as "online games" along with other games that require the internet, which doesn't help the situation) are published by a single company, this was not out of the ordinary, so non-English-speaking Taiwanese people fell for their tricks. Even worse, they registered the Minecraft trademark in Taiwan and the application was approved by the government without contest, because Mojang didn't know about it. When exposed, they covered a lie with another lie such as "we're negotiating with Mojang to become an official publisher" and "we have been paying Mojang". Finally, they ended up suing the core activists for defamation, not to mention harassing them by calling up their school for "badmouthing them".

I asked the OP of the thread to give me the contact details of the defendants, and started talking to them on RaidCall, a popular Discord-like software in Taiwan. They told me that they have tried emailing them (using very broken English, so I don't blame Mojang for not dealing with it immediately), mailing them letters (to the wrong address) and starting a petition to warn players of their wrongdoings. They were at wit's end to bring this matter to Mojang. They asked me to help them.

In the following days, I wrote a report on TWMC with the help of the defendants and supporters of the cause. I almost choked though when I saw the final figure put together. Allow me to quote a section of the report:

TWMC makes money by: (prices as of 10th July, 2014, i.e. before the EULA change)

• Selling in-game currency (Donate 300 TWD / 9.5 USD and get 90000 in-game coins; coins are hard to earn in TWMC and most players max out at 5000)
• Selling VIP ranks (Donate 979 TWD / 31 USD to get commands creating protection zones plus other benefits)
• Selling capes (20000 in-game coins for the first cape, 1000 for changing the cape)
• Reselling Minecraft Gift Codes (earns about 5 USD)
• Forcing players with legitimate copies of Minecraft to pay for VIP first if a cracked player registered the profile name on their system before the legitimate player did

Using the data available from the richest players and the VIP count, it is estimated that their earnings exceed 1458134 TWD (48588 USD). If we assume that:

• 1/4 of their players are VIPs
• 10% of their players have 5000 in-game coins (never bought coins), 30% have 90000 (excluding max 5000 they can earn), 25% have 180000, 20% have 270000, 15% have 540000, 3% have more than 900000 (top 100)
• they have resold 3000 gift codes

then their earnings would exceed 217081 USD.

I couldn't believe my eyes. I ran my script a few more times and even tried to hand-calculate the data. There was only one conclusion: They were cheating their way to a very profitable business. I sent the report to /u/MissMarzenia, hoping for the best.

In August, I got one of the defendants, Kevin82711, to speak with /u/Marc_IRL. I'll just quote Marc's reaction: "This is some pretty crazy shit". He told me that Mojang is more concerned with the trademark-stealing and player-harassing than the measly 200k, and that TWMC was now the top of the brand enforcement list. He suggested going to /r/Minecraft as journalists pick up news from here all the time, but I told both parties that it wasn't a good idea as there was a court case going on and they might destroy the evidence given the length of trouble they went to keep people quiet. So we did, but we also got an OK from Marc to announce to supporters that Mojang was looking into it.

And September came by. Mojang regained the copyright of Minecraft and its related branding rights. TWMC changed their link to gameserver.com.tw to avoid squatting on the Minecraft trademark (we assumed there were some cease-and-desist action going on). The defamation case was thrown out of court on the first day of hearing. Hopes were up again; we were finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel. (Although rumour had it that TWMC knew people "high up in Microsoft". Sorry, relationships with middle managers of Microsoft isn't going to save your ass in this one)

In late October, /u/MissMarzenia told me that their lawyers "have made progress on many fronts" got in touch with Taiwan Minecraft, but TWMC said that they "did not receive any payments from players", so she needed my help collecting evidence. I created a form on a online form software similar to TypeForm for players to submit their evidence against TWMC, but after an hour or two form became unavailable. We knew what it was: Mass-reporting from TWMC.

Except I work at the company that made the form software. It only took me 5 minutes to get my form back, and all reports were ignored after that. (Employee privilege!) We ended up with about 20 witness reports and 1 receipt, which wasn't much but it was something to counter their claim, and a lead for their lawyers to look at.

Nothing significant happened the following year, but people were still rallying against TWMC, and after a DDoS attack in early 2016, patronage almost halved, with service reliability in the decline. It might just be the case of players getting frustrated and giving up TWMC altogether, but I hope that at least some of them went and bought the real game.

Today, almost two and a half years later, TWMC was shut down by the authorities. Their website now features a temporary free-to-all server and some screenshots of a Minecraft-game they were developing, called TWMC v2.0. I can only wish them all the best with that one.

Looking back, I am amazed by how Taiwanese players got together and making it loud and clear about TWMC. They have made and written (http://ift.tt/T3HbwP) tonnes of articles and videos on the subject; there were more in 2014 but some got deleted. It's not fair for me to say it had a significant impact because of the sheer size of TWMC, but given that 3500 individuals and organisations signed the (local) petition this is a very astounding achievement. I'd like to thank them, because had they not made it big, Mojang wouldn't have known about it, and many Taiwanese players would still think TWMC is "the official partner of Mojang".

I would also like to thank the excellent support team at Mojang (especially /u/Marc_IRC and /u/MissMarzenia, love you and congrats on the new kid <3). Without them, TWMC might still be cheating money out of people's pockets. I do hope Mojang rolls out prepaid gift cards in Taiwan soon though, as many youngsters in Taiwan do not have a credit/debit card they can use online and have to get Minecraft through resellers.

I guess the takeaway here is: Don't make money off stolen goods while impersonating the author. It's just not cool.

TL;DR: I helped crack a 7-figure malicious-code-injecting, official-status-pretending, trademark-stealing, truth-covering, player-suing cracked Minecraft server in Taiwan.