Is Java Minecraft Still Being Updated

High in a higher place the wood floor, three figures run stiffly beyond a rope bridge. The bridge is long and appears to sag under its own weight, merely information technology doesn't buckle or break. Instead, it carries its passengers all the mode to the crest of a cliff, where a foreign artifact awaits them. Ii pastel monoliths – one red, ane blue, each the height of four men – bookend a vast ebony wall. It's a Nintendo Switch.

Related: the very best Minecraft seeds.

This is how Microsoft chose to announce the unification of Minecraft beyond platforms during their E3 conference. In one case the Amend Together Update hits in the summertime, the game's editions on Windows ten, Xbox I, Nintendo Switch, mobile, and VR volition simply be chosen 'Minecraft'. They volition share DLC – and players – in fulfilment of a plan the publishers have been working towards since they bought out Notch in 2014.

It's a good programme. But as a side effect, the Minecraft so many of us own and play has been sidelined. Minecraft: Java Edition – the original Minecraft – is not invited to Microsoft's unification party, and neither is the ginormous modding community that has sustained it for this long.

While Mojang have remained the public confront of the game, the background for a cross-play Minecraft was laid, non in Sweden, merely in Redmond. At last year'southward E3, I met the American team behind the Windows ten Edition. Their primary piece of work has been to accept Minecraft: Pocket Edition, which traditionally lagged behind its parent game, and plough it into the full-featured, cross-platform version presented at E3 this week.

The significance of that work? Pocket Edition was coded in C++, cutting information technology off from years of Coffee-based modding on the PC.

"Mod support is hard because C++ is not as reverse engineerable every bit Java," wrote Microsoft developer Tommaso Checchi when the Windows ten Edition was first announced. "Plus many stores don't let those kind of mods."

To their credit, the Redmond team have fabricated tangible efforts to ensure C++ Minecraft is easily editable to players. They've made the game's files accessible in a way they never were earlier, allowing whatsoever sufficiently curious player to redraw graphic symbol textures in MS Paint, or dabble with the values that determine a creeper's behaviour in WordPad. And they've washed it in a fashion that, unlike the mods of Java Minecraft, won't break with every significant update.

"We totally know that people will [want to] go off and build totally new mods and systems on acme," said programmer Jason Major final year. "Our ambition is to get in that location somewhen, letting people customise the game essentially in whatsoever way they've been able to do in the past, [simply] now in this official capacity."

It'south admirable piece of work that in some ways improves on the original. Only, even if new Minecraft is able to support modding at the level of its predecessor, an entire history volition exist left behind.

The mods that add functioning computers inside the game and teach quantum physics. The retextured servers that recreate GTA and The Hunger Games. The adventure maps that accept produced a culture and, lest we forget, catalysed a YouTube revolution. They volition all unavoidably remain bars to Java Edition.

This is non a niche concern. Often, in the world of hardcore PC gaming, it's easy to forget that modding isn't the norm. While nosotros may balk at the thought of booting up Skyrim without a cocktail of favourite mods installed, the vast majority of players volition perfectly happily play in vanilla forever. Minecraft, even so, is an bibelot: a year agone, the Redmond team estimated that nearly half of Minecraft: Java Edition players customise information technology in some fashion. If they desire to play online with their friends on console, they're going to miss information technology.

Microsoft say they'll continue to support Minecraft in Java, and nosotros've no reason to doubt that – they and Mojang take connected to work on it together over the by two-and-a-half years. But the fact remains that Minecraft: Java Edition – the Minecraft, where Notch began work the best part of a decade ago, and where the game became a PC gaming phenomenon – is no longer Microsoft'due south favourite build. It feels just right to take a moment to admit that.

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