But they're not asking how to make their own game, they want "a game engine for making games in Minecraft style".

I'm all with you that actually doing something original is much more fun, but this isn't that.

"I want to build a shitty minecraft but with my name on it"

The only thing that Minecraft has going for it, is its unique type of gameplay. The sheer power of its original concept even elevated the hopelessly backwards retro graphics to its own genre.

I'm just saying, because simply modding Minecraft wasn't enough, that comes with "licensing issues", aka they can't say "I made this".