The two young kids of a friend have recently lost all of their ~700 ‘coin’ in Minecraft, and the parent thinks it was ‘stolen’. How would that work? Does some one have their ‘password’? How would that happen?
Also, he likes the idea of restricting them to a private server. Is that possible? How would it work? (They play from Windows 10)
I wonder if they might’ve just spent it. 700 coins isn’t much, you can buy 8800 coins for $50 US. You can’t transfer Minecraft coins from one account to another, so I’m not sure by what process the coins could be “stolen”.
Pretty sure you can limit multiplayer Minecraft to just friends, or just play as a local multiplayer.
You can. I used to play Minecraft with my oldest daughter. I set up a server and only us two were on the whitelist to get in it. It wasn’t too difficult either. At least on PC it’s pretty simple.
I have played Minecraft for several years and never heard of Minecraft coins. I had to Google it. Apparently they are only relevant for the pocket and Windows 10 editions. I play the Java edition, which tends to have more features, and has no coins for in-app purchases of extra content.
The coins can be used for purchases on the Xbox edition.
I did some more reading regarding Minecoins. When purchasing them directly, there is no specific ratio of Minecoins per dollar. The more you spend, the Minecoins increase by some geometric progression, and your best values might be through big box stores like WalMart, where $19.99 gets you 3500 Minecoins. You cannot gift Minecoins within the in-app purchase system. If you gift someone a bundle that includes Minecoins, they may receive all the items except the Minecoins. I wonder if the kids with the missing Minecoins ever received them in the first place. The Minecoins could be tied to the parent’s Microsoft account.
I find irony in Minecraft having a non-minable virtual currency.
It’s possible, if they’re using the Bedrock Edition (the version with cross-play on various platforms; not the Java edition). With the Bedrock Edition, the player’s Minecraft account is their Microsoft Live Gamer account. A parent links the kids’ accounts to their own Live account. And then there’s a bunch of controls for who and what the kids can do, including limiting what servers they can connect to.
In principle, that sounds great, but of course Microsoft makes the interface as confusing as possible. I tried it for several months, but it was difficult even allowing my two kids permission to play together. I ended up switching to Java Minecraft. There’s not any direct way to control what server they can connect to, except the old fashioned way of looking over their shoulders and seeing what they’re doing.
Oh, it’s easy enough to rent an “official” private server through the Minecraft website. Pay something like $8 per month and the company will spin one up for you with a limit of 10 simultaneous players. You can invite whoever you like to play there, and ban them if they misbehave.
And there are many third-party companies that will happily rent to you a Minecraft server. Prices vary, but typically give you more options, like running mods. If you have a spare machine that can run Linux, it’s fairly simple to run a Minecraft server on it, as well.
I, too, have been playing Minecraft (java edition) and am surprised to hear about coins. So i have nothing constructive to say about that, but I’ve been considering getting my own server, and/or buying the bedrock edition to play on my switch, so I’m interested in this discussion.
I’d like to clarify my previous post, I have always played the Java version. Setting up a personal server might not be as easy or even possible in other versions.
Definitely possible (and actually easy) to set up a private server for the Bedrock edition. You do it through the Minecraft website; I think there’s even an interface within the game itself that will take you to the right page. Once it’s set up, from within the game, you send invites to whoever you’d like to play. Any game console, phone, or Bedrock player can potentially play on it. That’s the one advantage over Java, in mine opinion: cross-platform play.
[quote=“Richard_Pearse, post:2, topic:945877, full:true”]
I wonder if they might’ve just spent it. 700 coins isn’t much, you can buy 8800 coins for $50 US. [/quote]
What exactly can you buy with them? And is it anything the kids have? Please tell me they don’t do lootboxes....
I don’t believe they have loot boxes for Minecraft. But there are skins, map packs, texture packs and things available from their store.
It sounds like Minecoins let you purchase things that are free in the Java version, with your benefit being that you are purchasing from a curated collection, rather than scouring the internet for worthwhile goodies buried in an avalanche of junk.
If they’re not transferable, and not useful IRL (i.e. there’s no sort of RMT secondary economy going on like in other games for in-game currency or loot), then there’s not going to be much incentive for people to steal them. The effort to hack someone’s account and delete their coins (you can’t really steal them if they’re not transferable) would probably be better spent just hacking your own account and upping your own coins.
My suspicion is that as young kids, there was probably some kind of cosmetic or handy thing that could be bought for coins, and the kids just bought it, as there aren’t usually too many hoops to jump through to buy stuff in-game with already purchased in-game currency. That’s probably where the coins went- the parents need to find the purchase logs, etc… and double-check that.
OKI think I have a possible explanation. There is a market for ‘alt accounts’. Hackers try to hack into accounts and the ones they do hack into they bundle and sell to gamers who use them as throwaway accounts. Usually to be able to use cheats on a server, which will lead to that account being banned. Alt accounts can cost as little at under a dollar per account. If your kids account was hacked and had coins and the person buying a ‘Alt’ noticed they could spend them and most likely would. the solution would be as simple as changing the password, but add migrating to a Microsoft account if you have not yet and still using a Mojang account.
Additionally it is likely that your kids account is banned on several servers by now, which you could try by going to the popular ones, HiPixil is one such server for JAVA edition but IDK about Bedrock.