Back in 2014, the Danish government had the brilliant idea of recreating the whole country in Minecraft for educational purposes. But just a few weeks after the launch of the initiative, cybervandals had already raided it in the name of America.
The Danish Geodata Agency had the marvellous idea of building a virtual version of the entire country of Denmark at a 1:1 scale. One of the biggest Minecraft creations ever made, the government agency built the model based on official topographical data so people could walk around the whole country, free to even visit their own address. Four billion bricks and one terabyte of data, the whole thing was a thing of wonder.
Well, it was nice while it lasted.
The use of dynamite was banned on the Danish server to prevent the structures from being blown up, but users managed to find a workaround and discovered dynamite could be hidden in mining carts.
Cyberpirates started raiding the place, blowing apart small portions of the map and erecting US flags and “America” signs in red, white and blue.
Views of virtual Denmark after being “Americanised” by players.
“I americanlized [sic] the place a bit,” wrote one user on fan site minecraftforum.net. Another said, “Not enough ‘Murica, and did you find the oil?”
The Danish Geodata Agency repaired the damage and described the incident as part of Minecraft’s “nature of play”.
“It was the players who cleaned up the damage, replacing it with green grass and flowers the following morning,” Chris Hammeken, chief press officer at the Danish Geodata Agency, told the BBC.