Mojang is looking to make Minecraft a much more user-friendly experience. While the gameplay has always been fairly accessible for just about anyone, setting up your own server can be a hassle for those on the lower end of the tech savvy spectrum.
Polygon is reporting that Minecraft Realms, Mojang's new "kid friendly" service, will include tools for making private servers a lot easier to manage.
Carl Manneh, CEO and co-founder of Mojang, stated, "I remember early on we had parents coming knocking on our office door and asking us to provide such service because they were tired of being server administrator at home."
Manneh is calling the implementation of officially-run servers a "one click solution for Minecraft players. You can instantly get the server up and running and invite your friends."
These "Realms" servers will be priced somewhere in the range of $10 to $15 per month. In addition to Mojang managing the server's technical aspects for you, the service will also include a mod tool that will help prevent custom content from breaking the game. To accomplish this, Mojang hopes to standardize the way mods function inside of Realms. Free, custom servers will also still be supported if users would like to go that route.
At the outset though, Realms will be focusing on the core Minecraft experience before it expands into additional custom functionality.
Manneh stated, "Our service will be sort of catering for the vanilla experience of Minecraft, at least at the beginning, but we will build it out with more services around Minecraft Realms."
Minecraft Realms will be a paid subscription service primarily aimed at parents and their children. As traditional Minecraft servers have no content filters, Realms aims to create a safe, parent controlled environment for the younger audience to game in. The service is currently in an alpha stage, with a summer launch currently planned.