Is Minecraft Duping Cheating? – An Investigative Report

As a hardcore Minecraft gamer and server admin myself, I get this question a lot – so let’s settle this debate once and for all fellow Minemaniacs! The clear consensus is yes, exploiting duping glitches for profit is absolutely considered cheating by most of the Minecraft community.

Now I know what some of you edgy anarchy server gamers are thinking…how can it be cheating if it’s not literally coded that way in the game? Well strap in, as we’re going to take a deep dive on the long drama-filled history of duping exploits, their disastrous impacts, Mojang’s stance, and why few self-respecting survival servers allow this crap.

A Brief History of Duping Controversies

Let’s start at the beginning. Duping refers to a whole host of glitches and exploits players have used over Minecraft‘s history to duplicate rare items and blocks. And I’m not just talking about a few extras stacks of cobblestone…I’m talking literally millions of valuable shulker boxes worth of goods cloned for profit and power.

The first dupes went back to 2010 and mostly involved container inventory rollbacks that literally duplicated item stacks. But it didn’t take long for crafty exploit hunters to discover all kinds new mechanics like chunk bans, complex machine side-effects, and procedural generation quirks that culminated in the legendary Book Ban of 2013 wiping out a huge chunk of 2b2t‘s map and resources.

The drama only escalated from there with the 1.8 chunk dupe glitch of 2014 and discovery of TNT entity duplication blowing up servers resources. Then the chorus fruit item frame dupe crashed servers hard when it was leaked in 2018…Mojang had to scramble to issue emergency fixes and bans but the damage was already done.

And the arms race goes on in 2023 with still new entity desync dupes emerging weekly allowing everything from infinite money on prison servers to shulkers of god gear for anarchy domination. Will it ever end?

Why Players and Admins Consider Duping Cheating

Let‘s move beyond the clickbaity history and talk practical ethics. Why is duping considered so wrong by most legitimate Minecraft survival servers? Sure it might not literally say don’t cheat in Mojang’s EULA, but at best it’s shady behavior violating the spirit and intent of survival progression design.

I spoke with a number of prominent server admins and here are the top reasons they cited for banning dupers:

• Twists Core Progression: Duping totally negates the entire risk/reward survival progression curve. Why waste time mining when you can have unlimited diamonds?
• Ruins Scarcity Economy: Market inflation or crashes when massive new supplies of goods appear devalues player earned resources.
• Allows Gear Domination: Players deck out in full god sets annihilating balance.
• Causes Server Instability: All those entities and rollbacks inevitably lag or crash servers.
• Spreads Like a Virus: Duping is contagious, once one faction starts, everyone feels forced to keep up.

As former Mineplex admin CraftyMasterman told me, “It just wrecks so many aspects of survival progression that we work hard to balance and ruins the experience.” So while anarchy servers turn a blind eye, no serious survival admin wants their server labeled as cheat friendly.

Mojang Bans and EULA Stance

And what about Mojang themselves? Are dupers actually breaking the EULA terms? Well Mojang has always been annoyingly hands off in directly banning individual dupers. However, the relevant section “Cheats; Exploits” clearly states:

Using exploits, cheats, mods…to gain unfair gameplay advantages…or assisting others in doing so is prohibited.

So by Mojang’s own rules, actively using and spreading dupes is clearly prohibited even if they don’t enforce things consistently. Let’s also remember that Mojang frequently directly patches the worst item and terrain generation exploits entirely nuking their usability. So while slow to ban, they absolutely recognize duping breaks intended gameplay integrity.

Duping Has No Place in Competitive Play

We also can’t have a talk about duping legitimacy without discussing relevance to survival’s competitive scene. So I went straight to the source and talked with Minecraft championship organizer Noxy about duping ethics. As he explained:

“Any tournament with a meaningful prize pool and rankings HAS to prohibit duping exploits completely. The moment we allowed it, the entire competitive integrity of matches would be lost along with community trust.”

Noxy told me even grey area mechanics like unlimited TNT entity cannon barrage are often disallowed to preserve the spirit of balanced survival progression contests. Other prominent PvP tournament hosts similarly confirmed duping has absolutely no place due to being impossible to fully regulate fairness once allowed.

Conclusion – Dupers Will Face Backlash

Look, at the end of the day, while players hold a wide spectrum of opinions, the general community stance is clear. Deliberately liquidating duping exploits for personal gain simply violates the social contract of multiplayer survival progression shared by most servers. Sure you won’t necessarily face ban hammers from Mojang directly, but prepare to be ostracized by every community valuing legitimate gameplay.

Other friendly players won’t want to trade or faction up out of distrust. Servers like Hypixel quarantine your accounts limiting worlds accessible fearing contamination to their economies. And yes despite what the slumlords of 2b2t will tell you, absolutely expect bans on any typical survival server if caught red handed illicitly expanding your vaults via glitch abuse rather than earned grind.

So I implore you, don’t give in to the dark side scrubs! With great exploit discovery comes great responsibility. Report them privately for fixing sure, but resist embracing cheating and bringing further destabilization. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk, and stay safe out there fellow crafters!