Minecraft Marketplace Q+A

Hello!

You might remember us posting about Marketplace a few weeks ago. It’s a new feature coming to Pocket and Windows 10 Editions of Minecraft that gives creators a chance to sell their creations and players opportunity to buy them. Marketplace will be stocked with skins, texture packs, and maps that will sell for a new magical currency known as Minecraft coins.

It’s a new concept for Minecraft, so there were a lot of questions about how it worked and why it even exists. To clear things up, we put some of the world’s leading Minecraft Marketplace experts at the mercy of Reddit. Apart from the "incident" involving Marc, an Ocelot hoodie, and the bear enclosure at Stockholm's Skansen, everyone was very well-behaved.

Some common themes came up in the discussion, so I’ve picked some of the most pressing, edited them for clarity, and pasted them in below. I’ve not credited specific redditors (or Marketplace experts), but you can always visit the original thread if you want to give kudos, gold, or some other type of virtual gift to the most inqusitive crafters.

Why is it okay to use a hard in-game currency given that they were explicitly banned on servers?

Coins can give us the opportunity to do cross platform things and adjust pricing on the fly. Nothing regarding our terms around monetization of Minecraft content is changing, except that we now have signed commercial agreements with content creators to sell content in the Bedrock Platform store.

If the coins are tied to my account will my purchases be also?

That’s our intent. We're working closely with the app stores right now to make this happen.

Who decides how much a piece of content will sell for?

The creators decide the price/pricing tier, though there is a reasonable upper price limit for content.

Could a user take someone else’s content and sell it on the Marketplace?

Content creators need to have the rights to the maps they're selling. If they're porting a map for a creator and they're working together, cool! If they're ripping off someone else's map, and we didn’t catch that in testing, we'd pull it the moment we were notified.

Are creators allowed to sell DLC for individual maps?

That's not supported at this time.

Will Mojang ever remove older (but still functional) content from the marketplace?

We intend to build up a large library, and currently don't have plans to cycle out old content.

Will skin creators have the opportunity to add extra geometry, or 3D parts and accessories to their creations, like some existing packs on console

Community content creators can't use the extra 3D bits yet. Only because those tools are rough and internal and there wasn't a great way to get everyone using this at launch.

How will the C# add-ons interact with the marketplace?

Plugins will be part of behavior packs. This could either be a completely separate thing on the marketplace or (I suspect more commonly) a part of a map. Our intention is that for more complex map logic, the best solution is to make a plugin rather than a very large command block system.

If a texture pack I've already downloaded gets an update, will stuff I've created with it automatically get updated? How about world templates?

Mostly, if a piece of content gets updated in the store, it will automatically update the content you have downloaded. If a texture pack gets updated, your existing world textures will get updated too. With world templates, however, the changes will only affect future worlds you create using that template - it will not update worlds you have already created.

How will you balance maps between large-team creators and small up-and-coming creators?

We are still refining how content is displayed. To start with, we will show all content grouped by type (skins, maps and textures) but over time would like to have a balance of new content, featured content and popular content.

Will these creations affect a creator’s ability to put their content on the Java Edition?

That’s up to the creators. We’re not expecting platform exclusivity.

Can I gift Minecraft coins, or transfer them to another user?

No - the coins are tied to your account.

Will there be support for “demos” or trials of content?

That’s not technically possible right now, but creators can offer free content. The marketplace is primarily a store, so there may eventually be limits on how much free content a creator can add. It’ll be easy for creators to change prices. But again, there’s a reasonable upper price limit for content.

Will there be support for content reviews on the marketplace?

Reviews won’t be available at launch.

What platforms will Marketplace be available on?

Ideally, as many as possible! It’s possible it will extend to other platforms than the ones at launch, but we don’t have specifics right now.