One of the things about Java is that it is stupidly easy to decompile back into java source code.

Obfuscation can make it harder to do but not impossible. There are also performance and licensing implications too.

What it would REALLY hinder is mod development, which is where a huge amount of it's diehard fanbase is, not to mention advertising via let's plays comes from. There's only so much material you can make out of simply building blocks, and the mod scene helps keep Minecraft relevant in Let's Plays and streaming.

The mod scene has been incredibly instrumental in keeping Minecraft as a whole relevant. Most footage and screenshots you tend to see today usually has a mod applied that you can see in the footage. Ever seen Minecraft with realistic lighting? That's a mod. Seen those weird survival challenges? Also done by mods.

If that dies off, Minecraft's word of mouth and relevancy dies with it. And from that, so do the console versions.

Mojang/Microsoft actually releases obfuscation maps for Minecraft: Java since 2019. This maps the decompiled random class names to the official variable/class names used by Mojang devs.

In an effort to help make modding the game easier, we have decided to publish our game obfuscation maps with all future releases of the game, starting today. This means that anyone who is interested may deobfuscate the game and find their way around the code without needing to spend a few months figuring out what’s what. It is our hope that mod authors and mod framework authors use these files to augment their updating processes that they have today. These mappings will always be available, instantly and immediately as part of every newly released version. This does not, however, change the existing restrictions on what you may or may not do with our game code or assets. The links to the obfuscation mappings are included as part of the version manifest json, and may be automatically pulled for any given version.

https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/article/minecraft-snapshot-19w36a

As others have said, Java is pretty easy to decompile, so there were community maintained obfuscation maps before (huge amount of work).

In the end it is always assembler. Enough time given and you can translate it to higher languages. A huge modding community and a lot of tooling for the Java language made it possible i guess.

There was a lot of work here. I doubt there were any symbols present in the binary.