Minecraft players got what they wanted, but is it really what they wanted?
The Minecraft mob vote is an annual exercise in democracy and ritual combat in which Mojang puts forward a few new mobs for possible addition into the game, and the community pulls the metaphorical battleaxes off the wall and has at it. I didn’t discover the process myself until last year: I thought it sounded like fun but quickly learned the error of my ways. An awful lot of people take the mob vote very seriously.
Sadly for those who enjoy the online beef, the mob vote is no more. “We’re changing the format for Minecraft Live, and retiring the mob vote, to bring you something new,” Minecraft general manager Ryan Cooper said in an update on the future of Minecraft’s development.
“Instead of doing one show per year (usually in October)—Minecraft Live will now become a more focussed broadcast, and it will happen twice per year. Each show will be packed with everything you need to know about the latest features we’re working on, what’s coming into testing, and the newest news from across the Minecraft franchise.”
A Minecraft spokesperson explained the thinking behind the decision to end the vote, telling PC Gamer that developers “love how passionate our community is.”
“The mob vote is something that the team has long enjoyed doing, and they always put their hearts into it, from conceptualizing the different possibilities and imagining their feature sets and behaviors, to creating the fun teasers leading up to the vote,” the rep said.
“However, we also understand players’ frustrations with having to choose among multiple fun options. After last year we began thinking about new ways to set the game up for success, while giving the community more of what they want. We ultimately reached the decision to go in a new direction.”
There was some validity to discontent with the Minecraft mob vote. The big problem wasn’t that this mob was better than that one, but that only one of the three potentials would make it to the game, while the other two were left to fade away as occasionally-recalled ideas. That was the crux of a 2023 petition demanding Mojang stop the vote and simply add three new mobs to the game every year.
“The Mob Vote generates engagement by tearing the community apart, leaving fantastic ideas on the cutting room floor, and teasing content that will never be seen in the game,” the petition states. “That, mixed with the fact that Mojang somehow releases less content WITH Microsoft’s backing than they did without, means players see minimal content to the game they love, and watch as possibly the one thing to get them to play again is ripped from them.”
That petition ultimately drew more than 534,000 signatures, reflecting widespread dissatisfaction with Mojang’s approach to mob additions. In an update, the creator of the petition celebrated the end of the mob vote, writing, “Almost a YEAR after we all mobilized to tell Mojang that we wouldn’t take lackluster content strategies anymore, they finally listened! This morning, it was announced that the Mob Vote is DEAD, and Mojang will be moving towards smaller, more frequent updates, as opposed to a single large one per year!”
That celebration might be a little premature. Cooper did say that Mojang will “now be releasing a number of free game drops throughout the year” rather than one free update per summer, and a new mob was released in April as part of the Armored Paws update. But whether more mobs will follow with any sort of rapidity is an open question at this point: On that front, Cooper said only that the updates “will vary in size and will bring you features to explore more frequently.”
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