2011 video game
This article is about the video game. For the franchise, see Minecraft (franchise). For other uses, see Minecraft (disambiguation).
Not to be confused with Minecart.
2011 video game
Minecraft is a 2011 sandbox game developed and published by Swedish video game developer Mojang Studios. Originally created by Markus "Notch" Persson using the Javaprogramming language, the first public alpha build was released on 17 May 2009. The game would be continuously developed from then on, receiving a full release on 18 November 2011. Afterwards, Persson left Mojang and gave Jens "Jeb" Bergensten control over development. In the years since its release, it has been ported to several platforms, including smartphones, tablets, and various video game consoles. In 2014, Mojang and the Minecraft intellectual property were purchased by Microsoft for US$2.5 billion. Minecraft is the best-selling video game of all time, with over 300 million copies sold and nearly 170 million monthly active players as of 2024.
In Minecraft, players explore a procedurally generated, three-dimensional world with virtually infinite terrain made up of voxels. Players can discover and extract raw materials, craft tools and items, and build structures, earthworks, and machines. Depending on their chosen game mode, players can fight hostile mobs, as well as cooperate with or compete against other players in multiplayer. The game has two main modes; survival mode, where players must acquire resources to survive, and a creative mode where players have unlimited resources and the ability to fly. Other game modes exist, such as one that allows players to spectate others and one that plays identically to survival mode, but features permadeath. The game's large community offers a wide variety of user-generated content, such as modifications, servers, skins, texture packs, and custom maps, which add new game mechanics and possibilities.
Minecraft has received critical acclaim, winning several awards and being cited as one of the greatest video games of all time; social media, parodies, adaptations, merchandise, and the annual Minecon conventions played prominent roles in popularizing the game. Minecraft has been used in educational environments to teach chemistry, computer-aided design, and computer science. The game started a franchise, which includes several spin-off games including Minecraft: Story Mode, Minecraft Earth, Minecraft Dungeons, and Minecraft Legends. A live action film based on the game titled A Minecraft Movie is scheduled for theatrical release in April 2025.
Minecraft is a 3Dsandbox video game that has no required goals to accomplish, allowing players a large amount of freedom in choosing how to play the game.[3] The game also features an optional achievement system.[4] Gameplay is in the first-person perspective by default, but players have the option of a third-person perspective.[5] The game world is composed of rough 3D objects—mainly cubes, referred to as blocks—representing various materials, such as dirt, stone, ores, tree trunks, water, and lava. The core gameplay revolves around picking up and placing these objects. These blocks are arranged in a 3D grid, while players can move freely around the world. Players can break, or mine, blocks and then place them elsewhere, enabling them to build things.[6] The game also contains a material called redstone, which can be used to make primitive mechanical devices, electrical circuits, and logic gates, allowing for the construction of many complex systems.[7][8] Many commentators have described the game's physics system as unrealistic.[9]
Players can also craft a wide variety of items, such as armor, which mitigates damage from attacks; weapons (such as swords or axes), which allows monsters and animals to be killed more easily; and tools (such as pickaxes or shovels), which break certain types of blocks more quickly. Some items have multiple tiers depending on the material used to craft them, with higher-tier items being more effective and durable. They may also freely construct helpful blocks—such as furnaces which can cook food and smelt ores,[10] and torches that produce light—or exchange items with a villager (NPC) through trading emeralds for different goods and vice versa.[11][12] The game has an inventory system, allowing players to carry a limited number of items.[13]
The game world is virtually infinite and procedurally generated as players explore it, using a map seed that is obtained from the system clock at the time of world creation (or manually specified by the player).[14][15][16] While there are limits on the world's verticality, Minecraft allows an infinitely large game world to be generated on the horizontal plane, up to 30 million blocks from the world's center.[17] The game achieves this by splitting the world data into smaller 16 by 16 sections called chunks that are created or loaded only when players are nearby.[14] The world is divided into biomes ranging from deserts to jungles to snowfields;[18][19] the terrain includes plains, mountains, forests, caves, and bodies of water or lava.[16] The in-game time system follows a day and night cycle, with one full cycle lasting for 20 real-time minutes.[20]
New players are given a randomly selected default character skin out of nine possibilities, including Steve or Alex,[21][22] but are able to create and upload their own skins.[23] Players encounter various mobs (short for mobile entities) including animals, villagers, and hostile creatures.[12][24] Passive mobs, such as cows, pigs, and chickens, can be hunted for food and crafting materials. They spawn in the daytime, while hostile mobs—including large spiders, witches, skeletons, and zombies—spawn during nighttime or in dark places such as caves.[25][26] Some hostile mobs, such as zombies, skeletons and drowned (underwater versions of zombies), burn under the sun if they have no headgear and are not standing in water.[27] Other creatures unique to Minecraft include the creeper (an exploding creature that sneaks up on the player) and the enderman (a creature with the ability to teleport as well as pick up and place blocks).[28] There are also variants of mobs that spawn in different conditions; for example, zombies have husk and drowned variants that spawn in deserts and oceans, respectively.[29]
Minecraft has two alternative dimensions besides the Overworld (the main world): the Nether and the End.[28]
The Nether is a hell-like underworld dimension accessed via a player-built obsidian portal; newer versions of the game feature naturally generated damaged portals that the player can repair.[30] The Nether contains many unique resources and can be used to travel great distances in the Overworld, due to every block traveled in the Nether being equivalent to 8 blocks traveled in the Overworld.[31] Mobs that populate the Nether include shrieking, fireball-shooting ghasts, alongside anthropomorphic mobs called piglins and their zombified counterparts.[32] The piglins in particular have a bartering system, where players can give them gold ingots and receive items in return.[33] The player can also build an optional boss mob called The Wither out of materials found in the Nether.[34]
The End is reached by underground portals in the Overworld. It consists of islands floating in a dark, bottomless void. A boss enemy called the Ender Dragon guards the largest, central island.[35] Killing the dragon opens access to an exit portal, which, when entered, cues the game's ending credits and the End Poem, a roughly 1,500-word work written by Irish novelist Julian Gough,[36] which takes about nine minutes to scroll past,[37] is the game's only narrative text,[38] and the only text of significant length directed at the player.[39]: 10–12 At the conclusion of the credits, the player is teleported back to their respawn point and may continue the game indefinitely.[40] Players can also explore further regions of the End beyond the main island, which can harbor structures known as end cities or ships to find valuable loot as well.
In survival mode, players have to gather natural resources such as wood and stone found in the environment in order to craft certain blocks and items.[16] Depending on the difficulty, monsters spawn in darker areas outside a certain radius of the character, requiring players to build a shelter in order to survive at night.[16] The mode also has a health bar which is depleted by attacks from mobs, falls, drowning, falling into lava, suffocation, starvation, and other events. Players also have a hunger bar, which must be periodically refilled by eating food in-game unless the player is playing on peaceful difficulty.[41] If the hunger bar is empty, automatic healing stops and depletes. Health replenishes when players have a full hunger bar or continuously on peaceful.[41]
Upon losing all health, items in the players' inventories are dropped unless the game is reconfigured not to do so. Players then re-spawn at their spawn point, which by default is where players first spawn in the game and can be reset by sleeping in a bed[42] or using a respawn anchor.[43] Dropped items can be recovered if players can reach them before they disappear or despawn after 5 minutes. Players may acquire experience points by killing mobs and other players, mining, smelting ores, breeding animals, and cooking food.[44] Experience can then be spent on enchanting tools, armor and weapons. Enchanted items are generally more powerful, last longer, or have other special effects.[25]
The game features two more game modes based on survival, known as "hardcore mode" and "adventure mode". Hardcore mode plays identically to survival mode, but features permadeath, meaning players only have one life, forcing them to delete the world or explore it as a spectator after death.[45] Adventure mode was added to the game in a post-launch update,[46] and prevents the player from directly modifying the game's world. It was designed primarily for use in custom maps, allowing map designers to let players experience it as intended.[46][47]
In creative mode, players have access to an infinite number of nearly all resources and items in the game through the inventory menu and can place or mine them instantly.[48] Players can toggle the ability to fly freely around the game world at will, while their characters do not take any damage nor are affected by hunger.[49][50] The game mode helps players focus on building and creating projects of any size without disturbance.[48]
See also: Minecraft server
Multiplayer in Minecraft enables multiple players to interact and communicate with each other on a single world. It is available through direct game-to-game multiplayer, LAN play, local split screen (console-only), and servers (player-hosted and business-hosted).[51] Players can run their own servers, use a hosting provider, or connect directly to another player's game via Xbox Live. Single-player worlds have local area network support, allowing players to join a world on locally interconnected computers without a server setup.[52]Minecraft multiplayer servers are guided by server operators, who have access to server commands such as setting the time of day and teleporting players. Operators can also set up restrictions concerning which usernames or IP addresses are allowed or disallowed to enter the server.[51] Multiplayer servers have a wide range of activities, with some servers having their own unique rules and customs. The largest and most popular server is Hypixel, which has been visited by over 14 million unique players.[53][54]Player versus player combat (PvP) can be enabled to allow fighting between players.[55]
In 2013, Mojang announced Minecraft Realms, a server hosting service intended to enable players to run server multiplayer games easily and safely without having to set up their own.[56][57] Unlike a standard server, only invited players can join Realms servers, and these servers do not use IP addresses. Minecraft: Java Edition Realms server owners can invite up to twenty people to play on their server, with up to ten players online at a time. Minecraft Realms server owners can invite up to 3,000 people to play on their server, with up to ten players online at one time.[58] The Minecraft: Java Edition Realms servers do not support user-made plugins, but players can play custom Minecraft maps.[59]MinecraftBedrock Realms servers support user-made add-ons, resource packs, behavior packs, and custom Minecraft maps.[58] At Electronic Entertainment Expo 2016, support for cross-platform play between Windows 10, iOS, and Android platforms was added through Realms starting in June 2016,[60] with Xbox One and Nintendo Switch support to come later in 2017,[61] and support for virtual reality devices. On 31 July 2017, Mojang released the beta version of the update allowing cross-platform play.[62] Nintendo Switch support for Realms was released in July 2018.[63]
See also: Minecraft modding
The modding community consists of fans, users and third-party programmers. Using a variety of application program interfaces that have arisen over time, they have produced a wide variety of downloadable content for Minecraft, such as modifications, texture packs and custom maps. Modifications of the Minecraft code, called mods, add a variety of gameplay changes, ranging from new blocks, items, and mobs to entire arrays of mechanisms.[64][65] The modding community is responsible for a substantial supply of mods from ones that enhance gameplay, such as mini-maps, waypoints, and durability counters, to ones that add to the game elements from other video games and media.[66] While a variety of mod frameworks were independently developed by reverse engineering the code, Mojang has also enhanced vanillaMinecraft with official frameworks for modification, allowing the production of community-created resource packs, which alter certain game elements including textures and sounds.[67] Players can also create their own "maps" (custom world save files) that often contain specific rules, challenges, puzzles and quests, and share them for others to play.[68] Mojang added an adventure mode in August 2012[69] and "command blocks" in October 2012,[47] which were created specially for custom maps in Java Edition. Data packs, introduced in version 1.13 of the Java Edition, allow further customization, including the ability to add new achievements, dimensions, functions, loot tables, predicates, recipes, structures, tags, and world generation.[70][71]
The Xbox 360 Edition supported downloadable content, which was available to purchase via the Xbox Games Store; these content packs usually contained additional character skins.[72] It later received support for texture packs in its twelfth title update while introducing "mash-up packs", which combined texture packs with skin packs and changes to the game's sounds, music and user interface.[73] The first mash-up pack (and by extension, the first texture pack) for the Xbox 360 Edition was released on 4 September 2013, and was themed after the Mass Effect franchise.[74] Unlike Java Edition, however, the Xbox 360 Edition did not support player-made mods or custom maps.[75] A cross-promotional resource pack based on the Super Mario franchise by Nintendo was released exclusively for the Wii U Edition worldwide on 17 May 2016,[76] and later bundled free with the Nintendo Switch Edition at launch. Another based on Fallout was released on consoles that December,[77] and for Windows and Mobile in April 2017.[78] In April 2018, malware was discovered in several downloadable user-made Minecraft skins for use with the Java Edition of the game.[79][80]Avast stated that nearly 50,000 accounts were infected, and when activated, the malware would attempt to reformat the user's hard drive.[80][79] Mojang promptly patched the issue, and released a statement stating that "the code would not be run or read by the game itself",[79] and would run only when the image containing the skin itself was opened.[81]
In June 2017, Mojang released an update known as the "Discovery Update" to the Bedrock version of the game.[82] The update includes a new map, a new game mode, the "Marketplace", a catalogue of user-generated content that gives Minecraft creators "another way to make a living from the game", and more.[83][84][85]
Before coming up with Minecraft, Markus "Notch" Persson was a game developer with King through March 2009, at the time serving mostly browser games, during which he learned a number of different programming languages.[86] He would prototype his own games during his off-hours at home, often based on inspiration he found from other games, and participated frequently on the TIGSource forums for independent developers.[86] One of these personal projects was called "RubyDung", a base-building game inspired by Dwarf Fortress, but as an isometric three dimensional game like RollerCoaster Tycoon.[87] He had already made a 3D texture mapper for another zombie game prototype he had started to try to emulate the style of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars.[88] Among the features in "RubyDung" he explored was a first-person view similar to Dungeon Keeper but at the time, felt the graphics were too pixelated and omitted this mode.[88][89] Around March 2009, Persson left King and joined jAlbum, but otherwise kept working on his prototypes.[90][89][91]
Infiniminer, a block-based open-ended mining game first released in April 2009, sparked Persson's inspiration for how to take "RubyDung" forward.[88]Infiniminer heavily influenced the visual style of gameplay, including bringing back the first-person mode, the "blocky" visual style and the block-building fundamentals.[88] However, unlike Infiniminer, Persson wanted Minecraft to have RPG elements.[92]
The original public alpha build of Minecraft was released on 17 May 2009 on TIGSource forums.[93] As years passed, Persson regularly released test builds which included more features, such as tools, mobs, and even entirely separate dimensions. In 2011, partially due to the rising popularity of the game, Persson decided to release a full 1.0 version, which later became the "Adventure Update". It was released on 18 November 2011.[2] Soon afterward, Persson quit development on the game and gave the project lead to Jens "Jeb" Bergensten.[94]
On 15 September 2014, Microsoft, developer of the Windows operating system and the Xbox video game console, announced a $2.5 billion deal to buy Mojang, along with the ownership of the Minecraft intellectual property.[95][96][97] The deal was suggested by Persson when he posted on Twitter asking a corporation to buy his share of the game after receiving criticism for enforcing terms in the game's end-user license agreement (EULA), which had been present in the EULA in the prior three years.[98][99][100] According to Persson, Mojang CEO Carl Manneh received a call from a Microsoft executive shortly after the tweet, asking if Persson was serious about a deal. Mojang was also approached by other companies including Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts.[100] The deal with Microsoft was arbitrated on 6 November 2014 and led to Persson becoming one of Forbes' "World's Billionaires".[101][102][103][100]
Since the first test build of Minecraft, the game has been continuously updated with multiple feature drops, available for free to users who have already purchased the game.[104] Each major drop adds new blocks, items, creatures, and locations for the player to explore. Early updates frequently introduced gameplay-altering mechanics and new concepts while the more recent ones tend to include quality-of-life changes and adjustments to existing features.[105][better source needed] As of 13 June 2024, the most recent major drop for the game was the 1.21 "Tricky Trials" update, which introduced a new Trial Chambers structure, a mob called the Breeze, and a Mace weapon, among other blocks and items.[106]
The original PC version of the game was renamed to Minecraft: Java Edition on 18 September 2017 to separate it from the cross-platform Bedrock Edition, which was renamed to just Minecraft in the Better Together Update.[107] The Bedrock Edition has also been regularly updated, with these updates now matching the themes of Java Edition updates. Other versions of the game such as the various console editions and Pocket Edition were either merged into Bedrock or discontinued and as such have not received further updates.[107]
On 16 April 2020, a Bedrock Edition-exclusive beta version of Minecraft called Minecraft RTX implementing physically based rendering, real-time path tracing,[108] and DLSS was released by Nvidia on RTX-enabled GPUs.[109] The public release version was made available on 8 December 2020.[110] Path tracing can only be enabled on supported worlds that can be downloaded for free via the in-game Minecraft Marketplace,[111] with a texture pack that can be downloaded from Nvidia's website,[111] or with compatible third-party texture packs;[112] it cannot simply be enabled by default with any texture pack on any world.[113] However, according to Nvidia, it will be possible to activate the feature directly in-game in the future.[114] In the beginning, Minecraft RTX was affected by many bugs, display errors, and instability issues.[115][116]
| 2009 | Pre-Classic |
|---|---|
| Classic | |
| Survival Test | |
| Indev | |
| 2010 | Infdev |
| Alpha | |
| Alpha v1.2.0 - v1.2.6: "Halloween Update" | |
| Beta | |
| 2011 | Beta |
| Release 1.0: "Adventure Update" | |
| 2012 | 1.1 |
| 1.2 | |
| 1.3 | |
| 1.4: "Pretty Scary Update" | |
| 2013 | 1.5: "Redstone Update" |
| 1.6: "Horse Update" | |
| 1.7: "The Update that Changed the World" | |
| 2014 | 1.8: "Bountiful Update" |
| 2015 | |
| 2016 | 1.9: "Combat Update" |
| 1.10: "Frostburn Update" | |
| 1.11: "Exploration Update" | |
| 2017 | 1.12: "World of Color Update" |
| 2018 | 1.13: "Update Aquatic" |
| 2019 | 1.14: "Village & Pillage" |
| 1.15: "Buzzy Bees" | |
| 2020 | 1.16: "Nether Update" |
| 2021 | 1.17: "Caves & Cliffs: Part I" |
| 1.18: "Caves & Cliffs: Part II" | |
| 2022 | 1.19: "The Wild Update" |
| 2023 | 1.20: "Trails & Tales" |
| 2024 | 1.21: "Tricky Trials" |
Development began for the original edition of Minecraft - then known as Cave Game, and now known as the Java Edition - on 10,[117] 11[118] or 12 May 2009,[119] and ended on 13 May, when Persson released a test video on YouTube of an early version of the game, dubbed the "Cave game tech test " or the "Cave game tech demo".[88][120] The game was named Minecraft: Order of the Stone the next day, after a suggestion made by a player.[121] "Order of the Stone" came from the web comic The Order of the Stick, and Minecraft was chosen "because it’s a good name".[122] The base program of Minecraft was completed by Persson over a weekend in that month and a private testing was released on TigIRC on 16 May 2009.[123] The game was first released to the public on 17 May 2009 as a developmental release on TIGSource forums.[93] Persson updated the game based on feedback from the forums.[86][124] This version later became known as the Classic version.[125] Further developmental phases dubbed as Survival Test, Indev, and Infdev were released in 2009 and 2010.[89]
The first major update, dubbed Alpha, was released on 30 June 2010.[126][127] Although Persson maintained a day job with Jalbum.net at first, he later quit in order to work on Minecraft full-time as sales of the alpha version of the game expanded.[128] Persson continued to update the game with releases distributed to users automatically. These updates included new items, new blocks, new mobs, survival mode, and changes to the game's behavior (e.g. how water flows).[128] To back the development of Minecraft, Persson set up a video game company, Mojang, with the money earned from the game.[129][130][131] Mojang co-founders included Jakob Porser, one of Persson's coworkers from King, and Carl Manneh, jAlbum's CEO.[86]
On 11 December 2010, Persson announced that Minecraft was entering its beta testing phase on 20 December 2010.[132] He further stated that bug fixes and all updates leading up to and including the release would still be free.[133] Over the course of the development, Mojang hired several new employees to work on the project.[134]
Mojang moved the game out of beta and released the full version on 18 November 2011.[2] On 1 December 2011, Jens "Jeb" Bergensten took full creative control over Minecraft, replacing Persson as lead designer.[94] On 28 February 2012, Mojang announced that they had hired the developers of the popular "Bukkit" developer API for Minecraft,[55] to improve Minecraft's support of server modifications.[135] This acquisition also included Mojang apparently taking full ownership of the CraftBukkit server mod that enables the use of Bukkit,[136] although the validity of this claim was questioned due to its status as an open-source project with many contributors, licensed under the GNU General Public License and Lesser General Public License.[137]
"Pocket Edition" redirects here. For the type of book, see Pocket edition.
In August 2011, Minecraft: Pocket Edition was released for the Xperia Play on the Android Market as an early alpha version. It was then released for several other compatible devices on 8 October 2011.[138][139] An iOS version of Minecraft was released on 17 November 2011.[140] A port was made available for Windows Phones shortly after Microsoft acquired Mojang.[141] The port concentrates on the creative building and the primitive survival aspect of the game and did not contain all the features of the PC release.[142] On his Twitter account, Jens Bergensten said that the Pocket Edition of Minecraft is written in C++ and not Java, due to iOS not being able to support Java.[143] However, there now exists a way to play Java Edition unofficially on both Android and iOS devices.[144][145]
On 10 December 2014, a port of Pocket Edition was released for Windows Phone 8.1.[146] In January 2017, Microsoft announced that it would no longer maintain the Windows Phone versions of Pocket Edition.[147] On 19 December 2016, the full version of Minecraft: Pocket Edition was released on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone.
Pocket Edition was later remade into the Bedrock Edition in 2017, enabling cross-platform play with the new Xbox One and Nintendo Switch versions of the game.[148]
An Xbox 360 version of the game, developed by 4J Studios, was released on 9 May 2012.[149][150] On 22 March 2012, it was announced that Minecraft would be the flagship game in a new Xbox Live promotion called Arcade NEXT.[150] The game differs from the home computer versions in a number of ways, including a newly designed crafting system, the control interface, in-game tutorials, split-screen multiplayer, and the ability to play with friends via Xbox Live.[151][152] The worlds in the Xbox 360 version are also not "infinite", and are essentially barricaded by invisible walls.[152] The Xbox 360 version was originally similar in content to older PC versions, but was gradually updated to bring it closer to the current PC version prior to its discontinuation.[149][153][154] An Xbox One version featuring larger worlds among other enhancements[155] was released on 5 September 2014.[155]
Versions of the game for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 were released on 17 December 2013 and 4 September 2014 respectively.[156] The PlayStation 4 version was announced as a launch title, though it was eventually delayed.[157][158] A version for PlayStation Vita was also released in October 2014.[159] Like the Xbox versions, the PlayStation versions were developed by 4J Studios.[160]
On 17 December 2015, Minecraft: Wii U Edition was released. The Wii U version received a physical release on 17 June 2016 in North America,[161] in Japan on 23 June 2016,[162] and in Europe on 30 June 2016.[163] A Nintendo Switch version of the game was released on the Nintendo eShop on 11 May 2017, along with a physical retail version set for a later date.[164] During a Nintendo Direct presentation on 13 September 2017, Nintendo announced that Minecraft: New Nintendo 3DS Edition, based on the Pocket Edition[165], would be available for download immediately after the livestream, and a physical copy available on a later date. The game is compatible only with the New Nintendo 3DS or New Nintendo 2DS XL systems and does not work with the original 3DS or 2DS systems.[166]
On 18 December 2018, the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, Xbox 360, and Wii U versions of Minecraft received their final update and would later become known as "Legacy Console Editions".[167] On 15 January 2019, the New Nintendo 3DS version of Minecraft received its final update, effectively becoming discontinued as well.[168]
On 20 September 2017, the Better Together Update was released on the Xbox One, Windows 10, VR, and mobile versions of the game, which used the Pocket Edition engine to enable cross-platform play between each of these versions. This version of the game became officially known as the Bedrock Edition,[169] although within the game itself, it is referred to simply as Minecraft, as opposed to the original Java-based PC edition which received the Java Edition subtitle to differentiate it from the new Bedrock Edition.[170] The same year, the Bedrock Edition was also ported to the Nintendo Switch. The PS4 version was updated in December 2019 and became part of the Bedrock Edition, which enabled cross-platform play for users with a free Xbox Live account.[171] The newest console version to launch as part of Bedrock Edition is the PlayStation 5 version, which released on October 22, 2024.[172][173]
Formerly Minecraft: Education Edition,[174] an educational version of the game, designed specifically for use in educational establishments such as schools, released on 1 November 2016.[175] It is available on Windows, Android, MacOS, iPadOS, iOS, and ChromeOS.[176][177] Based on the Bedrock Edition codebase, it includes a Chemistry Resource Pack,[178] free lesson plans available online, and two free companion applications: Code Connection and Classroom Mode.[179]
An initial beta test was carried out between 9 June and 1 November 2016.[180] The full game was then released on Windows 10 and MacOS on 1 November 2016.[175] On 20 August 2018, Mojang announced that it would bring Education Edition to iPadOS in Autumn 2018. It was released to the App Store on 6 September 2018.[181] On 27 March 2019, it was announced that it would be operated by JD.com in China.[182] On 26 June 2020, a public beta for the Education Edition was made available to Google Play Store compatible Chromebooks. The full game was released to the Google Play Store for Chromebooks on 7 August 2020.[177]
On 20 May 2016, China Edition (also known as My World) was announced as a localized edition for China, where it was released under a licensing agreement between NetEase and Mojang.[183] The PC edition was released for public testing on 8 August 2017. The iOS version was released on 15 September 2017, and the Android version was released on 12 October 2017.[184][185][186] The PC edition is based on the original Java Edition, while the iOS and Android mobile versions are based on the Bedrock Edition. The edition is free-to-play and had over 300 million players by November 2019.[187]
Apart from Minecraft: Java Edition, there are other versions of Minecraft for PC, including Minecraft for Windows, Minecraft Classic, Minecraft 4k, and a version for the Raspberry Pi.
This version of Bedrock Edition is exclusive to Microsoft's Windows 10 and Windows 11 operating systems. The beta release for Windows 10 launched on the Windows Store on 29 July 2015.[188]
After nearly a year and a half in beta, Microsoft fully released the version on 19 December 2016. Called the "Ender Update", this release implemented new features to this version of Minecraft like world templates and add-on packs.[189] This version has the ability to play with Xbox Live friends, and to play local multiplayer with owners of Minecraft on other Bedrock platforms. Other features include the ability to use multiple control schemes such as a gamepad, keyboard, or touchscreen (for Microsoft Surface and other touchscreen-enabled devices). Virtual reality support has been implemented, as well as the ability to record and take screenshots in-game via the Windows built-in GameDVR.[190]
As of 7 June 2022, the Java and Bedrock Editions of Minecraft were merged into a single bundle for purchase on Windows; those who owned one version would automatically gain access to the other version. Both game versions would otherwise remain separate.[191]
Minecraft 4k is a simplified version of Minecraft similar to the Classic version that was developed for the Java 4K Game Programming Contest "in way less than 4 kilobytes".[192] The map itself is finite—composed of 64×64×64 blocks—and the same world is generated every time. Players are restricted to placing or destroying blocks, which consist of grass, dirt, stone, logs, leaves, and bricks.[193]
A version of Minecraft for the Raspberry Pi was officially revealed at Minecon 2012. The Pi Edition is based on an alpha version of Pocket Edition with the added ability of using text commands to edit the game world. Players can open the game code and use the Python programming language to manipulate things in the game world.[194] It also includes a scripting API to modify the game, and server software for multiplayer. The game was leaked on 20 December 2012, but was quickly pulled off.[195] It was officially released on 11 February 2013.[196] Mojang stopped providing updates to Minecraft: Raspberry Pi Edition on 24 January 2016. It is preinstalled on Raspberry Pi OS and can be downloaded for free from the official Minecraft website.[197]
Main article: Minecraft (franchise)
For the tenth anniversary of the first public build's release, Mojang remade a version of Minecraft Classic in and made it available to play online.[198][199] It functions much the same as creative mode, allowing players to build and destroy any and all parts of the world either alone or in a multiplayer server. Environmental hazards such as lava do not damage players, and some blocks function differently since their behavior was later changed during development.[200][201][202]
Around 2011, prior to Minecraft's full release, there had been collaboration between Mojang and The Lego Group to make a Lego brick-based Minecraft game to be called Brickcraft. This would have modified the base Minecraft game to use Lego bricks, which meant adapting the basic 1×1 block to account for larger pieces typically used in Lego sets. Persson had worked on the preliminary version of this game, which he had named "Project Rex Kwon Do" based on the joke from Napoleon Dynamite