The Minecraft subreddit is in uproar after a mod deleted one man’s tribute to his late girlfriend, claiming he’d “milked” her passing for karma.
The Minecraft community is full of incredibly passionate players who have built some shockingly impressive structures in the block-based sandbox game.
From recreating the entirety of King’s Landing to building a faithful in-game version of Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry, there’s no limit to the human imagination when it comes to Minecraft.
At the tail end of November 2022, a user on the Minecraft subreddit called ‘B_freeoni’ revealed that his girlfriend of five years had passed away, leaving behind an unfinished build she’d started in his realm.
Although it was just the foundation for a house or castle, the redditor wanted to memorialize the special spot to honor his girlfriend’s memory, and the community offered a slew of possibilities for him to do so.
A while later, the player returned with an update to his original post, showing that he’d created a beautiful tree hung with lanterns in the middle of the base foundation.
Unfortunately, the redditor’s post was removed by moderators. When he disputed the post’s removal, the mods explained their reasoning in a private message.
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One of the reasons mentioned was that no “chain posting” was allowed within “only a couple of days since the original post,” with the site’s new updated rules asking users to “add your updates as comments” instead. They also mentioned that memorial posts (which fall under ‘tired submissions’) are prohibited from being posted.
However, these two strict rules weren’t what got the Minecraft Reddit riled up. Instead, it’s what the mod said afterward: “You milked the death of your girlfriend for enough karma at this point.”
The redditor posted his conversation with the moderator, which spread across the Minecraft subreddit like wildfire. Users across the sub were speaking out against the moderation team, with some even saying they’d leave altogether.
On December 1, the moderation team posted a public apology to the Redditor, saying “a user’s dispute in a private moderation mail was badly dealt with by us.”
“On behalf of the team I apologize for the poor judgment used in the reply, and I personally apologize to u/B_freeoni,” they wrote. “It should not have happened and we will be handling this internally to make sure it does not happen again. Also, our plans are still in progress for a wholesale rules revision for the subreddit to make them clearer and simpler.”
Thus far, the redditor has continued to build upon his late girlfriend’s foundation in light of all the support he’s received from the community, saying that he “was met with so much love and positivity, it made me go through with the build.”