Public Worlds Require a Password — On Purpose

When we built the public world browser — the list where players can make their worlds visible to others — we baked in a rule you might stumble over: A world can only be listed publicly if it has a join password. If the owner removes the password, the world automatically disappears from the list. That sounds paradoxical — public, but locked? Here's the why.

Blocks Beyond The Stars is played by kids. An open list of freely joinable worlds would be an invitation for every anonymous stranger on the internet to show up in a child's world. We didn't want that — and no moderation AI in the world is as reliable as one simple rule: the only people who get into your world are the ones you gave the password to.

The world browser thus becomes a shop window instead of an open door: you can see which worlds exist, who has how many players, what looks exciting. But joining goes through the owner — on the schoolyard, in the family chat, on Discord. The social connection happens where people actually know each other.

Technically, the whole thing is also opt-in: every world is private and invisible by default, and visibility has to be actively switched on. And the password rule isn't a UI hint but enforced server-side — there simply is no "public and open" state.

Sometimes the best security feature isn't a feature but a restriction you stand behind. Nobody has held this one against us yet — quite the opposite: parents in particular understand it immediately.