AI 'brand protection' bot pulls open-source Luanti from Play Store on bogus DMCA

Luanti, the open-source voxel game-creation platform formerly known as Minetest, has been removed from the Google Play Store after Tracer.AI filed a DMCA takedown on Microsoft’s behalf, claiming the app infringes Minecraft’s copyright. The notice cites only the copyright registration for Minecraft Java Edition 1.9 and names no specific infringing assets. Luanti’s maintainers point out that the engine ships with no games and no game content by default — just a handful of utilitarian textures and properly licensed fonts — while community-made content on its in-app catalog is manually reviewed for copyright issues before approval.

This is a repeat of a 2023 incident in which the same company filed an equally unfounded notice; Luanti won that appeal, but only after Google left the app offline for 46 days, well past the 10-to-14-business-day window the DMCA mandates for restoring content after a counter-notice. Tracer.AI, which markets AI agents that automate infringement detection and boasts of takedowns six times faster than traditional methods, also targeted the indie voxel game Allumeria on Steam earlier this year before Microsoft dropped that claim following public backlash.

The episode illustrates how automated, volume-driven takedown systems can be weaponized against an entire genre — cube-and-voxel games predate Minecraft and trace back to 2009’s Infiniminer — with little evidence or accountability. For a volunteer-run nonprofit without legal resources, repeated baseless notices are a real threat: they block discovery and updates, and risk pushing users toward sketchy third-party forks. Luanti has filed a counter-notice and expects reinstatement, while arguing the notice-and-takedown process is broken when a firm can refile the same unsubstantiated claim with impunity.