Minecraft wiki entry for 0x10c, associated text: The plan right now is to absolutely allow for private servers, and to ship the game with private server support built in. These will work similar to Minecraft servers, where you can choose to enable login verification via our servers, in which case they will need to be connected to the internet, or to skip that bit and just let anyone in, in which case they will work great for lan parties out at sea or in cabins in the woods. – Reddit, u/xNotch, October 19, 2012