Mojang's new Minecraft rules bar companies and politicians from creating in-game promotions

Minecraft developer Mojang has added a new section to their commercial usage guidelines officially barring corporations, ad agencies, non-profits and politicians from creating marketing campaigns in the popular world-building game. According to the new set of guidelines, Minecraft mods, maps or servers used "to promote unrelated products in playable form" are no longer allowed.

Businesses, organisations and other related entities have continued to create advertising and promotional campaigns through Minecraft gameplay for years in order to tap into the popular game's massive base that boasts over 100 million users.

"The number of Minecraft players has grown massively over the past few years," Owen Hill, the company's director of creative communications, wrote in a blog post. "In fact, it's now so big that Minecraft has become a viable place for companies to advertise unrelated products or for organizations to promote their causes."

"We want to empower our community to make money from their creativity, but we're not happy when the selling of an unrelated product becomes the purpose of a Minecraft mod or server," he adds. "That doesn't feel right, or more importantly, fun. The new rules are an attempt to stop these things from happening."

Released in 2009, the wildly popular game allows players to express their creativity and build their own unique structures and worlds while exploring those of others as well.

Fans will still be allowed to create content based on their favourite movies, brands or products, so long as they don't intend to promote or sell products through their creations or accept compensation from the company to build it.

Previous creations such as Minecraft streamer CaptainSparklez's working, in-game Verizon smartphone or the futuristic map based on the Tomorrowland film that was "commissioned by Polaris on behalf of Disney" are no longer allowed.

According to Mojang, studios will no longer be able to promote their movie or TV show through mods either.

"If you're a movie studio, you can't make a map that uses Minecraft blocks to build out the fictional world of the movie or its characters, and you can't make an official movie trailer out of gameplay footage from that map or mod," Hill writes.

The latest change in guidelines follows Microsoft-owned Mojang's announcement in May to bring a special version of Minecraft to China.

The developer also recently revealed that Minecraft will be getting a free death match-style Battle mode in June on console versions of the game.