Since the beginning of MCPlay, we have required both the usage of a username and an email address. However, in the years past we have noticed that the username has become unnecessary and can be replaced by only the email.

Whilst some might argue logging in with email might have cause regarding to gathering unnecessary personal information or having a security impact, this change only allows us to gather less personal info, seeing as the email was already required for registration. A username is also not a replacement for a secure password or two-factor authentication.

This change will allow us to implement more modern security and usability features like 2FA-OTP, WebAuthn hardware key support or passwordless login using passkeys.

For more information and more considerations about using email addresses as usernames, we recommend reading this article on Medium.com by Joel G. Samuel (external link), who explains some of the same design considerations and decisions we had.