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Minecraft players start “revolution” against Mojang, demanding bigger Minecraft updatesAlmost 350,000 people sign petition against annual Mob Vote
Almost 350,000 people sign petition against annual Mob Vote
Image credit:raze.orion
Image credit:raze.orion
Hundreds of thousands ofMinecraftplayers are downing pickaxes and revolting against what they feel to be Microsoft and Mojang’s stingy approach to updating the decade-old sandbox building sim. The trigger isthis year’s Minecraft Mob Vote, a community ballot to decide which of three creatures will be added to the game. Many Minecrafters feel the Mob Vote (which has extended to potential new Minecraft biomes in the past) is needlessly parsimonious, and cynically divisive: given Mojang’s current headcount and Microsoft’s resources, why not add all three mobs to the game, rather than asking players to do battle over scraps? And now, those players are trying to shut the whole thing down.
“Many have expressed their discontent with the Mob Vote in the past, with fan favorites like the Moobloom not making it into the game, and with content creators mobilizing their fanbases to vote for the least popular option for the joke of screwing over the other voters,” Marvermorne continues. “This shows that the mob vote is inherently flawed.
“Lastly, Minecraft made its popularity due to its regular updates and large amounts of content. This was back as early as 2011. Now, Minecraft is not only the highest selling game ever released, but has the financial backing of the massive corporation Microsoft. Despite this, players only receive a single, very small content update each year. The Mob Vote teases at some of that content, only for a third of what was teased to make it in, further decreasing the content of the update.”
Marvermorne’s petition has been shared widely on TikTok, and has kicked off a landslide of parodic Minecraft protest art, often mocked up to resemble pieces of Communist revolutionary propaganda. There are so many now that “2023 Minecraft Mob Vote Revolution” has its own page onKnow Your Meme. It’s an amusing show, if worryingly reminiscent of Epic’s efforts to style themselves Champions of the People in theiropenly astroturfed #FreeFortnite legal battle with various storefrontsover the right to sell things within their games.
Image credit:sledgefanclub
All this comes during the build-up to Minecraft Live this weekend, when Mojang willshare details of Minecraft update 1.21. If the latter update is meaty, I suspect it will put many of the complaints to bed. But there is definitely a longer-term grievance at stake here between Mojang and their community.
