Microsoft pulled the account verification trick with Minecraft after forced account migration a few years back, locking accounts and forcing customers to verify mobile phone number to even launch the game.
If you want to play something minecraft-like, Luanti (VoxeLibre) is really excellent. I play it with my child, and it's indistinguishable from 'real Minecraft'.
In the most minor defense of the devil: with Minecraft, you have a substantial audience who is underage, the game features multiplayer heavily, and I don't think it's the worst idea ever to have verified accounts there.
Yea, that was a major pain. I had a Mojang account since basically day one when the Minecraft beta came out and then over 10 years later I want to boot up the game to play with some friends for nostalgia and my account no longer works.
That was a real scumbag move. Thankfully its easy AF to "pirate" Minecraft by simply commenting out account verification in a 3rd party launcher. But I will never forgive Microsoft for stealing my account with that dirty trick.
