Gaming News

 

Let’s talk about Minecraft servers…

Hey! Most of you are familiar with the way Minecraft servers work, but lots of you aren’t. We’d like to fix that. Put simply, servers give Minecraft players the opportunity to play together online. There are many different types of servers, and we love almost all of them Apart from Minecraft Realms (which is another way for players to enjoy a persistent world with friends), no servers are owned or run by us. They are independent and set up by many different types of people for many different reasons. Some are set up by fans of the game so they can play with their friends and family, some are created to make money, some are weird social experiments that we don’t really understand. Many third-party Minecraft servers give our players...

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Let’s talk about password security

Have you been hacked? What’s going on, Moj? No! We haven’t been hacked. A bunch of bad people have tricked some of our users into disclosing their account information. We’ve emailed everyone affected, and reset all compromised passwords. If you haven’t received an email from us, you don’t need to worry. No-one has gained access to the Mojang mainframe. Even if they did, we store your passwords in a super encrypted format. Honestly, you don’t need to panic. So how did they get the info? You were hacked, weren’t you? No – we weren’t hacked. The bad people got their hands on other people’s passwords by using an evil technique called “phishing.” That basically means they pretend to be Mojang and fool people into entering their private...

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Hey, you! Buy The Humble Card Game Bundle!

Do you like digital card games? What about real-life, physical ones? T Shirts? Secret stuff? I bet you do. For that reason, you should obviously buy the Humble Card Game Bundle. It’s a very clever thing; you get different amounts of stuff depending on how much money you’re willing to pony up. You also get to choose exactly where your money goes. Hand it over to one of a few different charities, the games developers, or the good folks at Humble Bundle. Here’s an explanation of what you get for your cash. If it seems confusing, that’s because it is! Sorry. Free (available without purchase) Card City Nights (Digital + Print and Play) Escape from the Aliens in Outer Space (Print and Play) Pay What You Want Scrolls Full Version...

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You’ve bought Pocket Edition many, many times

Everyone likes big numbers, right? I know I do. Here’s a stonker: 30,000,000! You good people have bought Minecraft: Pocket Edition over 30 million times. Thanks! Let’s put that into perspective: if each Pocket Edition sale was an average sized dog, and you walked said dog every day with a retractable leash in moderate temperatures across uneven terrain, it would consume approximately 290,566,788^3 kj of energy. I know. It’s a big number. To celebrate the sales milestone, we’re planning a question and answer session with the devs. It will be broadcast LIVE on the internet. And you get to supply the questions. Hit this reddit thread and submit your query. We’ll pick the top-voted/least offensive ones and put them to the devs LIVE on...

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Announcing Minecraft name changes

Yes, it’s true! In the near future you will be able to change your Minecraft in-game name. When? When! When?! We plan to make name changing available on February 4th. What do I need to do this? Will it cost money? The only thing you need is a Mojang account. If you currently sign in to Minecraft with an email address, you’re all good! Otherwise, you can migrate your old Minecraft account here. There are no other requirements, and it doesn’t cost any money. It sounds good! Where can I do it? Just head on over to your Mojang account page! Once the feature is made available you’ll see a “change” link next to your Minecraft name. Can I steal somebody’s name? Can I call myself “Dinnerbone” too? No. There is already somebody called...

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Win an Xbox One with Minecraft Skin Studio Encore

Hello again! I just posted about Minecraft Skin Studio Encore, but I have even more exciting news to share. Design a festive skin using the app and you’ll be in with a chance of winning an Xbox One! Here’s how the competition will work: Submit a festive skin to Minecraft: Skin Studio Encore between December 22nd and January 5th. Include #xmas in the title! Don’t forget to include #xmas in the title of your skin. That part is super important! The more festive the skin, the better! Santas, Snowmen, Elves, Mince Pies, the lot. All users can “Like” their favourite festive skin. Whoever gets the most likes by the 5th of January wins. The winner of the competition gets an Xbox One and Minecraft: Xbox One Edition! Nice! Terms & conditions...

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Minecraft Seeds Pro has been updated! On-sale now!

Minecraft Seeds Pro – the best seed-sharing app ever developed – has just received a massive update. Even better, it’s $1.99 instead of $2.99 from today (it’s Christmas Eve in case you didn’t know), until the 29th of December! Here’s what comes with the latest update: Group PM, stay in touch with ALL your Minecraft friends directly through private messaging in the app! Follow your friends and let them follow you and you can PM each other directly and instantly directly from the app, without exchanging numbers or anything! Up to 10 users can PM in the same group! Browse through thousands of awesome seeds and creations posted by other users! Get featured with your own! Share your creations, post your favourite seeds and discuss cool...

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Minecraft Skin Studio Encore now available!

To celebrate two years of skin sharing, Minecraft Skin Studio has been completely redesigned! Since the release of Skin Studio over 900,000 skins have been created, almost 3,000,000 comments written, and over 2,500,000 likes cast. Not too shabby. A lot has changed in Minecraft since then too, so rather than patch the older version, the good people at 57digital have remade their app from the ground up. Skin Studio Encore now features: A completely new user interface and easier to use editing system Full support for both Steve & Alex 3D Previews everywhere – including while editing your skin! Uses the new Minecraft API for importing a skin by username Loads of advanced tools (including the much requested copy & paste!) Over 900,000...

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Play Info Quest II. You might learn something…

CLICK THROUGH TO PLAY INFO QUEST II Continue reading...

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Minecraft 1.8.2-pre1 – Christmas Gift Edition

Just in time before the holidays, we have the pre-release for 1.8.2 ready. There are some bug fixes and performance tweaks we wanted to get out to you before most of us leave for vacation during the Christmas holidays. As always, there are some bugs fixed: [Bug MC-51573] – Hostile mobs continue to follow/attack you in spectator mode [Bug MC-65697] – Explosion force on entities is directionally biased [Bug MC-66089] – Explosion physics changed, range of some TNT cannons greatly reduced Aside from bug fixes and performance increases this update includes cookies, milk and of course lots of hugs. Don’t open your gifts before Christmas! The Minecraft team and everybody else at Mojang wish you happy holidays and a great transition into...

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Scrolls released on PC, Mac, and Android tablets!

Scrolls – Mojang’s second game – has just been released on PC, Mac, and Android tablet. Scrolls costs $5 but you can play the demo version for free! Wander over to scrolls.com and download it! Scrolls is hardly anything like Minecraft, but it’s still super fun to play. Watch the trailer below to get an idea of how the game works. See you on the battlefield, Mojang fan. You are great! Owen – @bopogamel, and the Scrolls team. Continue reading...

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Pocket Edition comes to Windows phones

Hello! Windows phones just got significantly cooler. Now you can play Minecraft: Pocket Edition on the darn things! Hooray for Minecraft! Hooray for Windows phones! Hooray for portable gaming devices. Hooray for direct download links! Just in case you’re not sure what a Windows phone is, I’ve included a handy reference image below. Minecraft: Pocket Edition for Windows phones costs a reasonable £4.99/$6.99, and includes all the features that come with the iOS and Android versions. Download and be merry, kind crafter folk. Owen – @bopogamel Continue reading...

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The Games Against Ebola Game jam is underway!

Hello, friends. You’ve probably heard of ebola by now. It’s a terrible disease that’s claimed over 5000 lives in a recent epidemic in West Africa. We’ve known about it for over 40 years, but it’s still considered a serious illness with no known cure. Despite that, 50% of ebola sufferers do survive, and potential vaccines are currently being tested. Good hospital care and emergency shipments to Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone are vital during this time of need. But they don’t come cheap. That’s where we can help out! A crew of Mojangstas, along with a few other game developers are participating in a game jam that runs from now until 11AM PST/8PM CET on Saturday. Even better, every smidgen of cash raised goes straight to Direct...

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Realms is packed with awesome maps

Minecraft Realms is getting even more exciting! We’ve packed it to the brim with fresh mini-games, maps to spark an epic adventure, and intricate custom spawns. Realms gives you and your friends a persistent Minecraft world. It doesn’t matter if the host is online or what time of day it is; Realms worlds are always available for building, adventuring, and crafting. You can start from a random seed, or choose one of our pre-installed maps. You can even switch between the two and save/restore your progress when convenient. We thought it would be good to give you a rundown of the pre-made maps currently included in Realms. Thanks to all the fantastic community members for creating these masterpieces. You are all talented and generous and...

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Minecraft 1.8.1 Pre-release 1

We’ve been keeping a close eye on the 1.8 release and have put together a small update that should fix a lot of issues that people have reported to us. This update is compatible with 1.8 servers, but even though it’s not strictly required to update to 1.8.1 we’d strongly recommend that you do for all the performance and stability gains it gives you. Bug fixes: [Bug MC-3] – Player facing changes when passing through nether portals. [Bug MC-4] – Item Drops Sometimes Appear at the Wrong Location [Bug MC-1607] – Ghost End Portal in The End / Missing layer with AMD/ATI graphics cards [Bug MC-2545] – Persistant Chunk error / Corrupted world / Wrong location spam [Bug MC-6594] – Non-living entities (boats, minecarts, fallingsand, item...

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Minecraft PS Vita is out tomorrow!

(n.b. the picture is a montage) Hi everybody! We have some great news to share! Minecraft for PSVita is coming tomorrow and we hope you’ll enjoy it. It has been a lot of work with 4J and Sony to make this happen and we’re thrilled to see what you guys will build on the go! Remember that if you have already bought Minecraft for PS3 you’ll get the Vita version for free! You can also transfer worlds between the PS3 and PSVita! And if you want to buy the PS4 version after that, it will only cost you 4,99 smackeroonies! Here is also a longer article from Sony about the various purchase options: http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2014/10/10/minecraft-ps-vita-edition-launches-playstation-store-next-week/ xoxo /Daniel – @kappische Continue...

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Cobalt Game Jam #1 is happening this weekend!

Creating video games is creative, fun, and cool. Loads of awesome people are doing it right now. And you can be one of those awesome people! To celebrate, the friendly folk at Oxeye Game Studio are hosting a Cobalt Game Jam this weekend. That basically means that a bunch of folk have agreed to make a game within a set time limit. Some participants are streaming their progress too; it’s a great way to get instant feedback and stay motivated. The Oxeye Game Jam is a casual affair. There’s no pressure or cost, but there is an extremely high chance of fun and increased knowledge. The jam finishes this Sunday at 12:00 CET. If you’re interested in taking part, or would like to watch the current participants cook up their creations, visit...

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Yes, we’re being bought by Microsoft

Yes, the deal is real. Mojang is being bought by Microsoft. It was reassuring to see how many of your opinions mirrored those of the Mojangstas when we heard the news. Change is scary, and this is a big change for all of us. It’s going to be good though. Everything is going to be OK. <3 Please remember that the future of Minecraft and you – the community – are extremely important to everyone involved. If you take one thing away from this post, let it be that. We can only share so much information right now, but we’ve decided that being as honest as possible is the best approach. We’re still working a lot of this stuff out. Mega-deals are serious business. Why did you sell Minecraft? Minecraft has grown from a simple game to a...

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Minecraft: Xbox One Edition now available hoo!

Yeay! Minecraft for Xbox One is available to download from Xbox Marketplace! Here are some questions and answers to celebrate. I’ve bought Minecraft for my Xbox 360 but now I want it on my Xbox One. Help me! If you’ve bought Xbox 360 digitally, or played online with the the disc version, you can upgrade to Xbox One Edition for just $4.99. Log into the Xbox Marketplace to upgrade. You can import your existing Xbox 360 world to Xbox One Edition. To so that, load up Xbox 360 Edition, upload your world to the Excellent Xbone Extra Cool Cloud (not the official name), then re-download it from inside Xbox One Edition. All of your existing Xbox 360 DLC will work on Xbox One Edition. You can’t play cross-platform between Xbox 360 and Xbox...

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Minecraft: Playstation 4 Edition now available woo!

Yeay! If you’re in Europe, you can download Minecraft for Playstation 4 right now. It’ll be available in the US very soon. Here are some questions and answers to celebrate! I’ve bought Minecraft for my Playstation 3 but now I want it on my Playstation 4. Help me! If you’ve bought Playstation 3 Edition digitally, or played online with the the disc version, you can upgrade to Playstation 4 Edition for just $4.99. Log into the PSN store to upgrade. You can import your existing Playstation 3 worlds to Playstation 4 Edition. To do that you’ll need to load up Playstation 3 Edition, upload your world to the Magical Minecraft Cloud Land (not the official name), then re-download it from inside Playstation 4 Edition. You can’t play...

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Minecraft 1.8 – The Bountiful Update

The 1.8 update is now published to the launcher! Your game should be updated automatically. See this post for a list of changes and features: Pre-release info Get the cross-platform server jar here: https://s3.amazonaws.com/Minecraft.Download/versions/1.8/minecraft_server.1.8.jar Report bugs here: Minecraft issue tracker! // The Minecraft Team Continue reading...

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Minecraft 1.8 Pre-release – The Bountiful Update

Hello! It’s time for us to pre-release the next major Minecraft update, the Bountiful Update! This will bring Minecraft to version 1.8, and should be officially be published in the launcher on Tuesday, September 2. This is the update that to date has taken the longest time to create (over 300 days), and is the result of many, many changes. These changes consist of both new features, and large game structure changes such as replacing the hard-coded “block renderer” with a system that is able to read block shapes from data files, or performance enhancements such as multi-threading the client-side chunk rendering. We hope you will enjoy it! Here’s a list of the major changes in the game: Added Granite, Andesite, and Diorite stone...

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MINECON 2015

Hey everyone! I’ve been getting a lot of questions about MINECON lately, because before this time last year everyone knew the date and location and ticket info for MINECON 2013. While we don’t have a set date for the next MINECON just yet, I wanted to let everyone know that it won’t be until some time in 2015. I’m shooting to have it in the spring in London! While we’d love to do MINECON every year and it’s the only event we do as a company, we want to make sure we can give it the attention it needs, and that means that springtime next year will work best! As soon as I have confirmed information it’ll be out there. We always announce as soon as we confirm with the venue and have a signed contract, but never before, because we want to...

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Minecraft snapshot 14w34b

Update: Snapshot 14w34b has been released to fix the following crashes: [Bug MC-67915] – written_book item page text not backwards compatible with v1.7 saves [Bug MC-67974] – Crash when reaching y=254 [Bug MC-67976] – Cannot place armor stands [Bug MC-67981] – Furnace Inventory is not being updated correctly / Furnace is generally unusable [Bug MC-67983] – Hopper: java.lang.NullPointerException: Ticking block entity With some luck, this week may be the last week of 1.8 snapshots! We’re hoping to do a pre-release this Thursday if there are no major issues remaining in the snapshots by then. Please help us out by searching for issues on the bug tracker and voting up the ones that affect you! Notable changes: Features fixed. Bugs...

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Minecraft snapshot 14w33a

It’s snapshot time. After last weeks snapshot, which did not include any changes at all, we decided to make this weeks snapshot a little bit more interesting. So we added tons of new features, all of them disguised as bugfixes. Bugs fixed: [Bug MC-29408] – Tab support is not possible with player names when using the '/playsound' command [Bug MC-57714] – Placing torches on other torches [Bug MC-61245] – Upside down stairs have hitbox of regular stairs / regular stairs have wrong hitbox [Bug MC-63319] – Heads Dropped from Charged Creeper Explosion Ignore Gamerules [Bug MC-65522] – Tool-tip for regular sandstone slab is incorrect [Bug MC-65790] – If you place block on two-b-tall plants,it will destroy them. [Bug MC-65909] – Skulls...

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Minecraft snapshot 14w32a

This weeks snapshot contains absolutely nothing. Not a single thing. No bugs fixed, no features creeped. Nuhuh. No sir. Notable changes: Beacon light changes as it goes through glass. Added red sandstone. Added an armour stand. Fixed many bugs. Erased all knowledge of The Event. Bugs fixed: [Bug MC-2911] – Gamerule commands allow parameters other than true/false [Bug MC-2930] – Heart bar doesn't show how much damage is dealt to the player [Bug MC-3664] – Golden Carrot Creative Misplacement [Bug MC-3718] – Textures and Effects are off when far away from the center of the map [Bug MC-3818] – Playing stacked music discs in jukebox will duplicate them [Bug MC-3884] – No splash sound when items dropped in water [Bug MC-29431] – Search...

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Minecraft snapshot 14w31a

We’re starting to wind down our development cycle, and as such we’re now focusing on bug fixing for a smooth release. This weeks snapshot comes with a bunch of fixed bugs, some more optimization and only minimal featurecreep. Notable changes: Experimental: Mob pathfinding is threaded. Rabbits have sounds! Bunch-o-optimizations! Bunch-o-fixes! The surface of the sun is no longer incorrectly made of cheese. [ MC-267] – Potion effect status doesn't show If the inventory was open when it was cast upon the player. [ MC-1831] – Incorrect Fire Charge Noise [ MC-2053] – Inconsistent door texture [ MC-2071] – Pausing the Game or opening any GUI in a nether portal does not work [ MC-3100] – Stone stairs are named incorrectly. They should be...

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Pocket Edition 0.9.5 submitted to every store

Hey everyone! We just released MCPE 0.9.5, another bugfix version for 0.9. This time, it may or may not be the last, but we hope so! We found and squashed many nasty bugs still hiding in the very fabric on the game, so 0.9 should be now quite stable. Here are the bugs we fixed: - (Android) fixed a really nasty bunch of problems caused by locking the device like freezing, crashing, corrupting the world and more - (Android) fixed a bad graphics corruption issue (missing chunks, corrupted chunks and animals) that happened when switching away from the game - fixed chunks not loading in multiplayer when the client device is slower than the server - fixed a crash when loading flat worlds after updating from 0.9.0/2 - fixed a possible...

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Minecraft snapshot 14w30b

Update: We’ve released snapshot 14w30b to fix some crashes and world holes. It’s apparently my birthday today, so you get a present! That’s how birthdays work inside Minecraft. Todays snapshot is heavily focused on more optimizing, with a pinch of bug fixing and a sprinkle of feature creeping. I think you’ll like it! Notable changes: Added Banners! But I’m not going to tell you how they work :) Made Creeper, Skeleton and Zombie Heads available in survival. How? Don’t ask me! Major optimizations to client rendering. It’s magical! Lots of fun bugs fixed. Lighting should behave a little nicer now! Crafting cuddles now requires one extra hug in the recipe. [Bug MC-7508] – lighting error due to Chunk.heightMap ignoring block at the top...

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Pocket Edition 0.9.3 submitted to Google Play

Hello! We just released a new Pocket Edition version to Google Play, 0.9.3! This version fixes some last nasty bugs that we introduced in 0.92: - fixed several crashes that prevented from playing in multiplayer - fixed a nasty bug that on death might hang the game and/or spawn you really up in the sky - on Android, you can get more than 3 levels of view distance again - the game now handles when a world is corrupted and not repairable showing an error screen - Creepers don’t spam weird sounds anymore - mobs won’t spawn anymore in peaceful, and existing ones will be removed - correctly despawning entities on clients - fixed soft shading on wool tiles - possibly fixed other lock-ups and crashes We are going to wait and see how it works...

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