Last year, Minecraft players fed up with the game’s annual voting process (in which players choose the next creature to be added to the game) “united” by spreading war propaganda-inspired posters on TikTok and creating Change.org petition which has collected over 500,000 signatures. Now, Minecraft has revealed that this tradition is coming to an end as part of the game’s recent update structure.
Today, Mojang announced that Minecraft Live, its annual livestream, is doing away with crowd voting and will be split into several smaller streams via post on your blogThe recent broadcasts, described as “more targeted,” will occur twice a year.
Say goodbye to Minecraft Mob voices.Mojang also revealed that it will be releasing free content updates more frequently, moving away from larger yearly updates in favor of smaller ones, such as the smaller Armored Paws update that came out earlier this year.
In addition to this update, Mojang announced that it is “focusing on long-term initiatives to ensure we can continue to develop Minecraft well into the future.” This currently includes work on a native PlayStation 5 version of the game, which was announced this summer, though the blog post also hints at multiplayer improvements across all platforms.
Mojang talks Switch support and what to expect from future updates
In a separate interview with IGN, Minecraft’s Ryan Cooper discussed how gigantic updates can be for fans. “Well, we don’t always use size as a measure of size. And I don’t want the size of the update to be irrelevant. I mean, some updates are going to be big in terms of the size of the content, some might be a little bit smaller. What we really care about is the impact. We want to deliver more features and content to players based on what we’re hearing, what the community is telling us. And some of those features might seem small from a size of content perspective, but they’re going to really, really impact players,” he said.
“And I think if we look at the last six to eight months, we’ve been experimenting with these in-game drops since December of last year, and we’ve had a really fantastic positive response from our community. Starting with the bat and pot update. We went into the spring and we had the armored paw update, which included eight new armored wolf variants. We also added the armadillo. And we found that the response to that was really, really positive. And those are the things that we’re looking forward to in the future. Some of them are going to be really big, and some of them are going to be smaller in comparison, but we’re really aiming for impact. We really want players to be excited about in-game drops.”
When it comes to older platforms like the Switch, Cooper said the Nintendo platform is still relevant. “I wouldn’t consider the Switch to be old or legacy. I would consider the Switch community to be a very, very important community. We could call it a subcommunity if you will, or a platform community. So yeah, I mean, we’re focused on all platforms, all platforms are equal. It’s very important to us that everyone gets the best experience possible. And when things come up on a particular platform that need our attention, we’re all hands on deck to make sure those experiences are great.”
“We’re always looking to the future. So we definitely want to make Minecraft available on as many platforms as possible, because we’re truly platform agnostic. We want as many people on Earth as possible to play Minecraft and experience it for what it is. It’s obviously a game that promotes creativity. It’s a game that brings people together. It’s a game that brings people together. And that’s why we do what we do – we want as many people as possible to play this game.”
Either way, it looks like Minecraft fans are in for some gigantic changes. However, as the game celebrates its 15th anniversary, updates aren’t the only thing in store — Netflix also has an animated Minecraft series in the works (and of course, we couldn’t forget the Minecraft movie trailer that seemingly split the internet).
Meanwhile, Minecraft’s latest major update, Tricky Trials, introduced trial chambers, recent weapons, and recent paintings for the first time since 2012.
Additional information provided by Kat Bailey.
Amelia Zollner is a freelance writer at IGN who loves all things indie and Nintendo. Outside of IGN, they’ve worked with sites like Polygon and Rock Paper Shotgun, and recently released a game called Garage Sale. Find them on Twitter: @ameliazollner.
