Minecraft's smaller updates are helping it feel like the good old days

Originally published on January 16, 2025

When you have over 300 million fans, it’s unlikely there will ever be a clear consensus among them on what direction development should take. Admittedly, it’s a nice problem to have, but has resulted in a Minecraft fanbase that has steadily grown louder and angrier over the years as Mojang and Microsoft make questionable decisions over what to do with everyone’s favorite creative game.

Late last year, things took a step in a positive direction. Mojang announced that it would discontinue the big annual updates and the ever-divisive mob votes, instead focusing on smaller but more regular content patches. It’s been a little over four months since then, during which two of these patches have been released and the content for the third was recently announced. The result is that Minecraft feels more alive than ever, and we’re constantly seeing new ideas pour into this sandbox wonderland of a game.

The previous annual model resulted in us going many months without hearing from Mojang about the game’s development, leaving the game feeling stagnant for most of the year. This stands in stark contrast to the early days of Minecraft – especially in the pre-release period where creator Notch would drop random ideas into the game weekly to test them out, often without even telling players what they were so people could figure stuff out for themselves.

Even post-launch, the first few years of updates saw major features introduced every few months, keeping a constant hype train going that undoubtedly helped the game ride the incredible wave of momentum it generated in the early 2010s. When things changed and the frequency of updates slowed, the game lost some of its magic, and it’s not a coincidence that this change coincides with Minecraft’s brief dip in popularity in the mid-2010s.

Still, the game endured as it always has – and at this point, probably always will – and the decision to return to more frequent updates has given us a steady stream of new toys to play with and reasons to stick around for more than a couple of months each year.

The first of these small updates, named the Bundles of Bravery update, allowed the team at Mojang to finish off Bundles, a feature that had been stuck in limbo for years, always getting pushed to the side over the higher-priority features in the annual updates. Plus, it added Hardcore Mode to Bedrock Edition (where death means you lose everything), which had been heavily requested for years. 

This first outing proved that the idea had legs and that positive momentum continued into the second update, The Garden Awakens. Introducing a new biome, wood-type, and Weeping Angel-style mob called the Creaking, the update showed that we would still be getting fun creative ideas that expanded the exploration potential of the world – something people feared we might lose out on with the smaller scope.

The content for the third update – currently just called the “Spring Drop” – may not be as flashy, but it’s still a great example of how beneficial this new style is. A couple of new pig variants and falling foliage may not sound all that special, but they’re the kind of small features that fans have been requesting but were never seen as important enough for the big annual updates. However, they’re the perfect size for these minor tweaks and improvements to come through regularly, raising the quality of the whole experience.

Despite it being just four months, there’s enough evidence to call this change in direction a rousing success and Mojang should stick with it for a long time. It stops the community from getting impatient, allows for a variety of new content, and fills out Minecraft’s world better than ever before.

If you want to know more about the history of Minecraft's updates, check out our list of every Minecraft update ranked.