walderan

Btw, mineclone2 also rebranded as Voxelibre, months ago, and for the same reasons. Voxelibre now actively moves away from copying Minecraft exactly.
If you want the closest copy (and my personal recommendation) check out Mineclonia.

Valve is holding the carrot, Microsoft the stick.

Well for the sake of context Mineclonia is a fork of Mineclone2, which has now rebranded itself as VoxeLibre. The project was forked due to personal and design disputes. In fact the most productive developer of Mineclonia, used to be the lead dev of mcl2.

Currently VoxeLibre maintains the continuity of the original project and the community which explains its higher popularity. Mineclonia by comparison has very little presence, the discord server was set up like a couple of months ago I think.

But in terms of code, mineclonia has been the faster evolving of the two. More features, more bug fixes, and advances from voxelibre that are deemed valuable are cherry picked. In terms of specific features, I really prefer the double digging depth, and the better villages. And voxelibre has significantly shortened the attack range which I find really annoying.

Other than that, mineclonia is more commited to being a true clone of minecraft, with voxelibre going out of its way to diverge, especially after the rebrand, which might turn out to be wise if microsoft's trademark lawyers come knocking.

Indeed you can. Personally I find the phone interface a bit too clunky, but if your phone's hardware is up for it, it does run, and all platforms that support Minetest are compatible with each other.

Nope, you can just use these mods for the time being.
On the flip side, it's orders of magnitude easier to write a Minetest mod, and keep it updated with later versions and compatible with other mods.

Friendly, and unsolicited reminder that the Minetest engine + its game Mineclonia (or alternatively Voxelibre) are a pretty good open source alternative as of late.
Minetest is also getting some pretty nice upgrades to its graphics lately. The upcoming release should be looking quite pretty.

Downside of making them so stealthy? Have they checked between the cracks of the couch?

Don't forget your handkerchief

Ah yes, China's and India's rivalry over supremacy over East Asia wasn't enough. Now they can have KSA and Iran fighting over the Middle East, plus Egypt and Ethiopia ready to go to war over a dam, under the same banner. I guess if half the members of a consortium want to murder the other half it balances out?

If you think this is anything new you should look up who coincidentally invented the autopilot for airplanes and the mile high club.

It might be available in Ubuntu Pro, with star support expanded to 10 billion years.