Ah, it's a bad time to be an app that's all about going outside. We don't even know if we remember what "outside" is, actually. Is it the place where ducks are?
Sadly, Minecraft Earth - a lovely app-game-thing that's all about exploration and, uh, fighting skeletons - has just a few months left to live, no thanks to COVID. Much like Pokémon Go, Minecraft Earth used augmented reality to bring the game to live in the real world, letting players build, fight, and co-operate to create life-size Minecraft creations in their neighbourhoods.
Mojang announced today that the servers will be shut down forever on June 30th, but not before one last update, released today, which will add the following changes:
Removing real-money transactions
Drastically reducing ruby costs
Including all completed, unreleased content currently in our pipeline
Reducing time requirements for crafting and smelting
Replacing unused crafting & smelting boosts with radius boosts of the same level
Granting a set of Character Creator items to players who sign in between January 5 and June 30
There are a bunch of questions that players might have, of course, such as "what happens to my purchases?", "what if I have leftover Rubies (the in-game currency that costs real money)?" and "why is the world so cruel?!". Mojang have provided answers to at least the first two, stating that all players who have spent money in Minecraft Earth at any point will receive a code for Minecraft Bedrock Edition, and any remaining Rubies on their account will be turned into Minecoins, which can be used on the Minecraft Marketplace and the Character Creator to buy new maps, clothes, and mods.
Beginning July 1st, 2021, Minecraft Earth will be unavailable for download, and even players who already own it will be unable to play it anymore. Mojang says that this was "not an easy decision", but that they're re-allocating the resources to other departments, hoping to continue to "provide value to the Minecraft community". It's sad news, for sure - but Minecraft Earth will live on in our hearts.
Did you play Minecraft Earth? Will you be sad to see it go, or was it just gathering dust on your home screen? Leave your eulogies in the comments below.
[source minecraft.net]
Comments 21
I never got the point behind the Pokemon GO clones. I mean the appeal of Pokemon GO is to catch all the pokemon, which most players will be familiar with since their childhood etc
That's something that you can't copy that easily
Always felt this was just an attempt to cash in on Pokemon Go but it's sad to see it go so soon. In a few years it'll only really be remembered for having an arrangement in Smash Ultimate and the Glow Squid coming to the main game
That’s a shame, Minecraft Earth seemed like a neat app to play but I never downloaded it, might as well play it soon to see if it was ever good
I had no idea this was a thing and I don't know why they thought this would work. Pokemon is perfect because it's a collectithon. What did you even do in a Minecraft game like this?
I know a lot is shut down - but I also know that I see people out walking more than ever, that bicycle sales are crazy high - seriously go try to buy one, and that National Parks were busier than ever this year.
I get COVID is impacting things - I also wonder if AR might have had some positive impact from COVID as well? I mean, there is no question that people are out and about - Pokemon Go had a better year in 2020 than 2019.
Just thoughts...
@Heavyarms55 in pokemon go you can spawn pokemon where your in. in this game you spawn a mini world and collect things while you are walking. I have Pokemon Go and this game and they are very simular
Pokemon Go, The Pokemon Company’s answer to Ingress, shuts down.
Forgot this even existed tbh and given how little people are talking about it, I would assume everyone else did too.
This is actually really disappointing. I didn't get into this as much as I did Pokemon Go, but it was a really fun, unique take on Minecraft. It was especially fun using AR to view creations life sized in 3D. My biggest complaint was that farming for goods took waaaaay too long. I would've like to see the AR functionality be something more like building blocks on a table in a shared build with friends.
That's too bad, my nephew was raving about this
Damn, I would have played it had I known about it.
i tried to play a game but it is so confusing..i did not really enjoy it
I showed my son a trailer of this last year as he loves Minecraft and was interested but I didn't know when it was releasing. Now I learn it's shutting down when I didn't even know it had released which kind of says something about how Microsoft failed to truly push this as a thing. On the other hand, I saw Minecraft Dungeons stuff all over the place so I guess this was a complete afterthought for Microsoft. What a waste.
I’d say I’m pretty up on my gaming news and this game passed me by completely.
Welp. My phone from 2016 was never supported in the first place.
Wow. This game just got a music remix in Smash a few months ago.
That was how I first heard of this game.
....I read some article about how it worked in public squares and stuff and it seemed interesting, you built structures and other people would see it. That's definitely a different take than just copying Pokémon, which often makes no sense (I used to like Harry Potter but collecting Potter moments or whatever makes zero sense, who wants that? Pokémon is Pokémon)
But I thought it hadn't even been released yet! Well, I'm not a Minecraft guy but I think I'd have at least heard about it's release.
@Noel360 But why? The appeal of collecting Pokemon is obvious. What is the point of collecting random Minecraft stuff? Can you send it to your PC game?
Been playing this consistently since it came out. I was really sad when I heard about it. To everyone saying it's just a clone of pokemon go, I would say it builds upon it. The AR is incredibly impressive, and it was really fun to collect all the brand new exclusive mobs. The glow squid is coming to the base game, and the wooly cow is in dungeons, so the mobs will at least hopefully live on in the other games, but sad to see it go none the less.
@Heavyarms55 so basically with the power of AR it can bring a Mini-World to where you are right now. while you walk you can get materials like in Minecraft and use them in the mini worlds.
So sad... I will miss it a lot
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