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A 9-year-old known online as MightyMikePLays67 racked up $118,000 in YouTube ad charges on his father's company credit card while promoting his Minecraft channel. His father Dave lost his job as a result and must repay the bill within 30 days, prompting the family to consider selling their home.
Developer Luckey Faraday used the GPT Astra AI model to rewrite a browser-based recreation of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2's Hijacked map in Java so it runs directly inside Minecraft's own OpenGL rendering context, rather than as a screen-in-screen simulation. The mod, built with the Fabric loader, includes working collision, bots, navmesh and weapons, and reportedly runs at about 45fps.
A nine-year-old running the Mighty Mike Plays YouTube channel used his father's saved corporate credit card details to fund a series of self-directed ad campaigns promoting his Roblox and Minecraft content, ultimately charging $118,000 without his father's knowledge. His father, Dave, only discovered the spending after being summoned to a meeting with his company's finance team to explain the missing funds.
Microsoft revealed its September Xbox Game Pass additions, headlined by prequel title Gears of War: E-Day and Minecraft Dungeons 2, arriving alongside titles like RuneScape: Dragonwilds and Kernel Hearts. The rollout comes as Microsoft faces scrutiny over the service's costs, having already announced it will cap cloud gaming hours by tier starting in November instead of offering unlimited access.
In a 141-hour Minecraft benchmark run by Vals AI, OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra model progressed further than any AI system tested before, building a blaze farm and gathering enderman pearls. But after a Creeper destroyed its stored gear and bed, wiping its spawn point, the model spent hours doing little more than farming potatoes, appearing demotivated to viewers watching the live test.
A man identified as Dave says his 9-year-old son unknowingly spent $118,000 on YouTube ad campaigns promoting his Minecraft and Roblox gameplay videos over roughly three weeks. The charges went through a company credit card Dave had saved to a Google account shared with his son, after he had shown the boy how to run a small $20 promotion. Some of the promoted videos gained hundreds of thousands of views before finance staff flagged the spending.
Optimization developer OptiProjects has built OptiCraft Heritage Edition, a native C++ recreation of Minecraft Java 1.2.5 that runs on the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo Wii. The PS2 version manages 15-30 fps within just 32MB of RAM by limiting draw distance to two chunks, while the Wii version reaches up to 60 fps with four-chunk rendering and even supports online play on Java servers.
Malone Lam, a 22-year-old Singaporean living in Miami, has pleaded guilty to racketeering charges tied to a cybercrime ring that allegedly stole and laundered hundreds of millions in cryptocurrency. Prosecutors say the 12-member group, which reportedly first connected through Minecraft before meeting in person in 2023, targeted wealthy crypto holders using social engineering, with individual thefts ranging from $800,000 to a single $245 million heist. Lam now faces up to 20 years in prison, with sentencing still pending.
Following the release of GPT Astra, viral demos such as recreating Minecraft, drawing a pelican on a bicycle as SVG, and simulating a bouncing ball in a rotating box swept social feeds. A commentary piece labels these 'demo-benchmarks': tasks that look impressive and are easy to grasp, but are narrow enough that labs can specifically optimize for them before each launch. It cites Thinking Machines' Inkling Small, a much smaller model that nearly matched or beat its larger sibling on tests like Humanity's Last Exam and GPQA Diamond, as evidence that public, static test sets get gamed through training choices.
Microsoft does not send Xbox users a birthday gift directly, but it does award extra Microsoft Rewards points during a user's birthday week. Those points can be redeemed in the Xbox Rewards hub for items like gift cards, in-game currency for titles such as Sea of Thieves and Minecraft, or small charity donations, rather than for full games.
Luanti's Android app was removed from the Google Play Store following a DMCA takedown notice filed by Tracer.AI on behalf of Microsoft, accusing the open-source voxel game platform of infringing Minecraft's copyright. Luanti's developers say the app contains no proprietary Minecraft code or assets, noting that Tracer.AI filed a nearly identical notice against them in 2023, which was successfully appealed, and has separately targeted another voxel-style indie game called Allumeria this year.
A new guide from cua-sandbox shows developers how to boot a Windows virtual machine, install Minecraft Java Edition inside it, and control the game using an AI agent connected through the cua-driver MCP server. The setup works both on a local QEMU-based sandbox and on the Fleet cloud service, requiring version 0.3.3 or later of cua-sandbox.