Um, why? Because they both have blocks? Is Microsoft the only company allowed to use cubes now?
Even if they were similar, artistic style is not protected under copyright.
Even if they were similar, artistic style is not protected under copyright.
So with a straight face, you think a jury wouldn't call this Minecraft?
https://www.luanti.org/media/gallery/5.jpg
Also Luanti probably could doge all this if they just ditched all the blatant minecraft clone mods. A mining game with blocks is totally fine. If you look back at infiniminer, it's clearly a different vibe of the same concept.
That'll all become glaringly obvious when this is reinstated, because the copyright claim is bogus.
You can't take Minecraft assets, mix the pixels around a little bit, and then be legally free and clear. If the public looks at pictures of your game, and they say "100% it's Minecraft", you're gonna have a bad time.
IP protection is about reasonable confusion in the public. Not experts in field getting confused.
They're the same genre, but obviously not the same game. Is only one voxel sandbox game allowed to exist in the world? What's next, only one platformer can exist? Only one action movie is allowed to exist? Only one power metal band in the world?
Again, aesthetic is not copyrightable.