The Story of Minecraft Unlocking.
The detailed story of cracking Minecraft.
When Minecraft was released, people started to look for ways to play the game for free (as usual). The game had a trial version which was limited and you could only play for 60 minutes in a world.
Then, people started to notice that the paid version and the trial version was the exact same app! So, efforts started to try to unlock the game, and here we are today.
The Beginning, M Centers & online-fix.me
The First Method - Force Disabling ClipSVC
The first hack to unlock Minecraft, discovered by tinedpakgamer, is the ClipSVC Method. With some registry code, you could force stop ClipSVC and prevent it from running in the background. After that, when you start Minecraft, it would buffer at 46% which you would then go and force stop Runtime Broker under Minecraft in Task Manager. And this worked! This was then packed into a program named M Centers by the discoverer. But, this method was the opposite of safe, as it breaks MS Store completely and on 10th October 2022, it got patched in the version 1.19.50 of Minecraft.
The Second Method - DLL Replacing
Then came along a permanent method, the DLL Replacing. By replacing Windows.ApplicationModel.Store.dll with Cracked DLLs and making it say the game was licensed, Minecraft was able to be unlocked! This was the method used by Tinedpakgamer in M Centers, released as version 3.0 (2.0 was a sentry launcher using precracked appx. Its development failed and got scrapped). After M Centers 3.0 became commonly used, M Centers 3.3 was released which did the same thing, but fixed a bug in the previous version.
The Third Method - Memory Manipulation
In 2021, online-fix.me (a well-known Russian site) released their own version of memory injection crack, which became popular as well. After this, Tinedpakgamer developed M Centers 4.0 which added Appx Download and discarded some in-development methods like, DLL RAM Patch, Store Purchase Crack using pre-cracked dlls from a Github repository. M Centers 5.0 was released and it used In-Memory Code Manipulation without the need of any DLLs. This version also had a UWP app but it was tricky to install (it needed Developer Mode to be enabled, and made users install his self-signing certificate which was not secure at all). M Centers 6.0 was released, but it was just a re-made UI for the exact same app (it was intended to provide auto-patching DLLs, but it was never done).
The End of M Centers & The Rise of M Community
The DMCA
After some time of the releases, Tinedpakgamer announced the end of M Centers, and started slowly deleting everything related to him. The reason for this was because he wanted a break and also had his identity leaked, so this was why he had left.
SOMEONE
While M Centers was slowly shutting down, a user named someone1060 created a server named "M Community" and shared it through a major chunk of users on the M Centers server. his server, M Community, was the unofficial revival and archive of M Centers. As this server got increasingly popular, tinedpakgamer found out about it then proceeded to delete the invitation message. But it was too late, and most of the stuff was archived and lots of users were in the server already. M Centers eventually deleted the Discord server, leaving no trace of it.
M Centers 7.0 (Akshnav)
Later, a video titled something along the lines of "How to get MCBE for free" blew up. This video had linked the M Community server, which caused it to get lots of members. This soon led to M Centers joining the server and uploading M Centers 7.0 (also known as Akshnav) which also used In-Memory Code Manipulation. But this method had some issues.
Akshnav
It was basically closed-source, it got frequently flagged by AV software as a virus, and you had to open the app and launch Minecraft that way to make it work. It also didn't work with all versions of Minecraft or Windows, so it was basically just a mess which got some people upset, and some left. Then there was a new player in the game.
The New Beginning of the OpenM Project
The Decompilation
Developers in M Community started work on decompiling Akshnav, cleaning it up and the sorts. This led nowhere in the end, but it was still a helpful resource to get an idea of how it was done. This work was done under M Community-Development.
OpenM Community
And then some staff members and developers created a new server named "OpenM Community", and therefore the OpenM Project. They started work on librosewater, which was a process memory manipulation library written in pure Python.
BEAMinject
This hinted at their next release, BEAMinject which was a fast and secure unlocker using DLL Memory Manipulation for Minecraft. Development was slow and steady, but it was a breath of fresh air in the Minecraft cracking scene because of its features:
- It was the only maintained and at that time, currently working tool that was open-sourced
- It worked with all kinds of Minecraft and Windows versions
- It natively supported ARMv7 and ARM64 devices
- It had a silent executable which allowed users to just create a nice-looking shortcut
- It didn't permanently modify system files and didn't have any prebuilt DLLs
The Demise of OpenM and Rebirth of M Centers
The Merge
OpenM has been aborted, as the old developer retired on OpenM to begin a new individual project. The rest Mods/Admins deleted OpenM and set sail to M Community, as they have merged with them.
M Centers arrival
Since MCenter's discontinuation, tinedpakgamer has become silent ever since, except in Twitter. But, as of 1st May 2024, he joined M Community and announced that he was working on M Centers 8.0, so, M Centers prevail!
M Centers 4.5
First, tinedpakgamer revived the Youtube Channel. He then created the Discord Server in which, on 8th May 2024, officially released M Centers 4.5 [The base code of M Centers 8.0]. It uses DLL Replacing, just like 4.0, but used .NET Framework replacing .NET Core, in which removes the requirement of .NET Runtime in your device. It also has an x86 version.
M Centers 8.0
Next, also on the 8th of May, 2024, M Centers (tinedpakgamer) had officially released M Centers 8.0, built ontop of M Centers 4.5, at that time it did not have any major changes from 4.5, maybe even no changes from 4.5 except the version. After a long time of developing, and figuring out the Auto Patching system and how it worked, on the 3rd of June, 2024, M Centers 8.0.1.0 Preview released, being the first ever M Centers version to support basically every single windows version that supported Minecraft for Windows, and future versions, since the application used Zydis to auto patch DLLs. For now, M Centers 8th Edition does not support ARM, but in the coming months that will change with the release of M Centers 8th Edition for ARM and the auto patcher for it, since Zydis does not support ARM.
The Revival of OpenM
Through MCDOC
At one point in July 2024, OpenM's team thought of reviving its old community, OpenM. MCDOC and other repos were moved into OpenM-Project. Then [20th July 2024], the MCDOC discord was renamed into OpenM for the convenience of a single server. From then on, MCDOC is officially under OpenM.