Almost 350,000 people sign petition against annual Mob Vote
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.
Minecraft player Holly Mavermorne has starteda Change.org petitioncalling for the Mob Vote to be scrapped, and for Mojang to “keep up the content frequency that made Minecraft famous”. At the time of writing, the petition has attracted a little under 350,000 signatures. “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,” Mavermorne writes on the petition page. “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.”
“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.
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.
Personally, I would very much like to see larger Minecraft updates - to be specific, I really,reallywant some kind of proper maze generator to be added to the game’s terrain algorithms, with options such as number of routes, shapes and so forth. I would agree, as a player, that today’s Mojang should be prioritising chunkier additions to the game, rather than the death-by-a-thousand-cuts approach of doling out individual new mobs, skins and the like. Marvermorne’s point about fomenting dissension is fair, too, though I imagine Microsoft are even now looking at the traction this year’s Mob Vote is getting and thinking “our work here is done”.
I’m mixed on the version of Minecraft we have today. I much prefer the weirder, indie Minecraft of yesteryear, together with the many, parallel incarnations of Minecraft that are kept going by modders likeDirewolfand servers like the amazingAutcraft. I am deeply suspicious of Microsoft’s input on the game. I’m sure there’s a pitch somewhere within the parent corporation for a Minecraft Metaverse update, boasting crypotocurrency integration and NFTs - all the many demons of web3. But I think the justifiable anger about Minecraft updates needs to dig deeper than simply pointing to Mojang’s current team size and saying “give us more”.
