Content Policy

Effective date: 2026-08-21 Operator: sourama (an individual, operating as "Sour Client") Contact: [email protected]

Sour Client lets you upload an image and wear it as a cosmetic. This page is the whole of what that permits, what it refuses, and what happens to a file between the moment you upload it and the moment anybody else can see it. It is written against the code that actually runs, not against an intention.

Uploading your own image as a cape is a Sour Gold feature. The built-in cloaks are free to everyone. Everything on this page applies to any image anybody uploads, on any plan — screening is not something a paid tier opts out of.

The short version

• Every upload is screened before it is stored. Nothing is written to disk and then cleaned up later.
• Nothing is visible to other players until it has been judged. An unjudged cosmetic is invisible to everyone except the person who uploaded it — at every viewer setting, including the most permissive one.
• An image that copies or imitates an official Minecraft cape is refused outright. It is never stored, never served, and there is no setting anywhere that reveals it.
• Any player can report a cosmetic, and enough distinct reports pull it out of circulation immediately, before a human has looked at it.

What may not be uploaded

Do not upload an image that contains, depicts, or imitates:

• Official Minecraft capes, or any artwork that attempts to visually act like one. This includes recolours, re-saves, upscales, and near-copies. See Official Minecraft capes below.
• Sexual content, nudity, or sexualised imagery of any kind.
• Gore, graphic violence, or serious injury.
• Hateful or offensive imagery — slurs, hate symbols, extremist iconography, or content targeting a person or group.
• Terrorism or the promotion of violent extremism.
• Self-harm or suicide content.
• Someone else's copyrighted or trademarked artwork that you do not have the right to use.
• Real people's likenesses used to harass, impersonate, or mislead.

Text painted into an image counts as content. A slur written across a cape is a picture of a slur, and it is screened as one.

How an upload is screened

An upload passes through the following, in order, before it exists as a file:

1. The official-cape check. Local, deterministic, and run first. It compares the shape of the image against a reference set of official Minecraft capes. A match is refused at upload.
2. Content classification. The image is scored for sexual content, gore, hateful or offensive imagery, terrorism, and self-harm, and the text visible in the image is read and scored too. Anything over the line for those categories is refused; borderline material is rated rather than refused, and the viewer setting below decides who sees it.
3. Human review. Anything the automated checks cannot clear is held for a person. It stays invisible to other players while it waits.

If the classifier is unavailable, or an image cannot be read at all, the upload is held — never waved through. A screening step that fails resolves to "nobody sees this yet", never to "assume it is fine".

An animated cosmetic is a sequence of frames, and every frame is checked separately. Hiding disallowed artwork in the middle of an animation does not get it past anything, and a cosmetic is only ever as visible as its worst frame.

Official Minecraft capes

Minecraft's Usage Guidelines carve capes out of what may be sold or imitated. Sour Client enforces that rather than relying on people to observe it:

• Uploads that resemble an official Minecraft cape are refused at upload. The file is never written and never becomes servable.
• The check survives the obvious workarounds — re-saving the PNG, changing a pixel, upscaling it, or shifting the palette all still match.
• This is not a rating and not a preference. The viewer settings below govern how much rated content you opt into. A refused image has no rating to opt into, because it does not exist on our servers.
• No Minecraft artwork is stored to make this work. The reference set is a short mathematical fingerprint per cape, from which no image can be reconstructed.

Sour Client is an independent, fan-made client and is not an official Minecraft product. See our Disclaimer.

What other players see

Each cosmetic carries a rating, and each player chooses how much rated content they are shown:

Two things sit outside that choice entirely, at every setting: anything refused, and anything not yet judged. Neither is ever shown to another player.

You always see your own cosmetic. It cleared the hard floor to exist at all, and hiding someone's own upload from them teaches them nothing.

Reporting a cosmetic

Any signed-in player can report a cosmetic they are shown. Reports are counted per reporter, so one person cannot pile them up. Once enough distinct players have reported the same cosmetic it is pulled out of circulation immediately and queued for a human — it stops being visible before anybody reviews it, not after.

You can also report anything by email to [email protected]. Include the player's name and, if you can, a screenshot.

If your upload is refused

A refused upload is not stored, so there is nothing to delete and nothing to appeal against on the file itself. You can upload something else immediately.

If you believe a decision was wrong — the official-cape check errs deliberately on the side of refusing, so a false match is possible — email [email protected] and it will be looked at by a person.

Repeatedly attempting to upload disallowed content may cost you access to uploads, and in serious cases to the account. That is set out in the Terms of Use.

Changes to this policy

This page changes when the rules or the pipeline change, and the effective date at the top changes with it. Material changes are announced in the launcher and on this site.