Well, I guess that's a rare case of something unshittifying in 2025. A Microsoft-owned product, no less. That's genuinely great news for everyone and I was really not expecting this but I'm...
Well, I guess that's a rare case of something unshittifying in 2025. A Microsoft-owned product, no less. That's genuinely great news for everyone and I was really not expecting this but I'm absolutely glad to hear this.
I am initially surprised by this move. Especially since I have seen posts about how they have redesigned a few of the UIs on Bedrock to push more in game purchases (Realms and subscriptions)....
I am initially surprised by this move. Especially since I have seen posts about how they have redesigned a few of the UIs on Bedrock to push more in game purchases (Realms and subscriptions). Also, with Microsoft wanting 30% margins on their gaming division, was not expecting this.
My personal theory is that Mojang is starting to structure the two versions to meet different audiences:
Java: for the core fanbase. This group was always unlikely to pay Mojang directly for things, as the features were previously free (maps, mods, and such) or were already used to going with third party or self hosted options for multiplayer servers. This group will also never switch to Bedrock due to parity issues, especially with technical builds. This group also provides a lot of value to Minecraft, due to tutorials and content creators.
Bedrock: for the casual players. This group lends towards being less technical, and more willing to just pay for a solution. They are not going to go into %AppData% to install new mods or maps, and just want a simple solution. Or they are on consoles so they cannot easily access the folder structure to install them.
It sucks that it seems that Bedrock is getting increasingly monetized. However, it is nice that Mojang seems to understand the demographic playing Java and are working towards having that be a better experience, rather than try and monetize it.
Wow- I'm actually shocked and impressed. I understand that there exist a plethora of tools which, by this point, work around the obfuscation reasonably well, but this is just going to smoothen the...
Wow- I'm actually shocked and impressed. I understand that there exist a plethora of tools which, by this point, work around the obfuscation reasonably well, but this is just going to smoothen the process a bunch, especially when debugging.
Though I'm honestly shocked it wasn't done sooner, before the Microsoft purchase. Minecraft has always been a foremost example of a game which endures at least partly because of the size of the modding community, aided at least in part by the fact that the codebase is Java.
As mentioned in the post, they didn't even release the obfuscation maps until 2019, 5 years after the Microsoft acquisition. This is also years after Mojang had hired the co-founders of the Mod...
Though I'm honestly shocked it wasn't done sooner, before the Microsoft purchase.
As mentioned in the post, they didn't even release the obfuscation maps until 2019, 5 years after the Microsoft acquisition. This is also years after Mojang had hired the co-founders of the Mod Coder Pack, which was one of the earlier toolchains for decompiling/deobfuscating the game. I wonder what prompted them to remove the obfuscation step altogether, since it probably would have been easier to just keep it in.
Neat. NeoForge had already moved to Mojang's mappings, so their names won't be any different, but it's nice that they'll no longer need to deobfuscate at all. And for MCP and Yarn mappings, this...
Neat. NeoForge had already moved to Mojang's mappings, so their names won't be any different, but it's nice that they'll no longer need to deobfuscate at all. And for MCP and Yarn mappings, this will save them a fair amount of effort on each new game update.
The experience for modders themselves shouldn't be very different, except for the occasional situation where you'd hit an an untranslated string of text. It'll mostly affect the modloader/toolchain devs. It's nice that Mojang are releasing dual builds for now to help them migrate.
One lesser-known part of the obfuscation step is that it also applied some tree shaking to remove unused code. For example, if localization methods aren't ever called on the server-side, they won't be bundled into that jar. This was usually a good thing for performance and jar size, but occasionally you'd run into a situation where a helpful function was optimized out of the game. So I wonder if that will be affected by this change, too.
This is actually pretty cool. For years I've been wondering if Mojang would try and force people over to the bedrock edition somehow, but doing this seems like they still want people tinkering...
This is actually pretty cool. For years I've been wondering if Mojang would try and force people over to the bedrock edition somehow, but doing this seems like they still want people tinkering around with, and therefore playing, the java edition.
I suppose I'll convert my tiny mods over to the official mappings soon to make the upgrade easier. I'm sure the fabric/neoforge/architectury projects will be where most of the work is going to go, so it's nice they're releasing both obfuscated and non-obfuscated snapshots after the next major release.
Microsoft has some very atypical ideas about how to manage Minecraft. Rather than a single game or a live service game, they consider it a platform with which they can create new value from. For...
Microsoft has some very atypical ideas about how to manage Minecraft. Rather than a single game or a live service game, they consider it a platform with which they can create new value from. For instance, they are selling Minecraft Education Edition, a customized version of the Java edition of the game meant to be used by schools. Keeping people engaged in non-monied ways helps keep people around for their monied purposes.
I was always completely baffled that they released the game with obfuscation but then released official mappings to undo that obfuscation, instead of just removing the obfuscation to begin with....
I was always completely baffled that they released the game with obfuscation but then released official mappings to undo that obfuscation, instead of just removing the obfuscation to begin with. Clearly they wanted to be friendly to modders but they couldn't get someone in charge of the decisions to understand anything. It's nice that sanity broke through, six years later.
Pardon the misunderstanding - what is the difference between the Java version and the 'common' version these days? tmi, but cool thing to mention I guess, but I haven't touched Minecraft since I...
Pardon the misunderstanding - what is the difference between the Java version and the 'common' version these days?
tmi, but cool thing to mention I guess, but I haven't touched Minecraft since I decrypted/broke/cracked their update system when I was ~14 so that my friends (... and the world it turned out) could get instant up-to-date Minecraft for free in your browser - without waiting for someone to crack the updates (at the time, that could take weeks or months). There were so many people that used it, that it often crashed my home servers I set up (and my dad was not happy about) - so some of you may have used it, who knows!
But, I got a DMCA takedown notice (and a very explicit "we will destroy you in court and your life will be in jail forever") and haven't really touched it since. I even have it framed somewhere. There was only one version at the time, and that was Java.
What are the differences? Are there feature differences? Is it the same thing but in two different engines?
Java Edition is the original that you're familiar with and runs on Windows/Mac/Linux (+BSDs?). It supports modding through various 3rd party modding APIs. Bedrock Edition is written in C++ and...
Java Edition is the original that you're familiar with and runs on Windows/Mac/Linux (+BSDs?). It supports modding through various 3rd party modding APIs.
Bedrock Edition is written in C++ and runs on Windows, XBox, PlayStation, Switch 1/2, iOS, Android (not MacOS or Linux - technically you could run the iPad version on MacOS?). It's more performant and you can cross play across any of the supported platforms. It mostly works the same but the similarities start to diverge when you look really close. Specific redstone behavior for example differs between Bedrock and Java edition. For the most part mods to Bedrock come in the form of paid DLC.
There's Java Edition and Bedrock Edition. Bedrock Edition is the main one that users are pointed to nowadays. Java Edition pretty much only still exists to make the pre-existing modding community...
There's Java Edition and Bedrock Edition. Bedrock Edition is the main one that users are pointed to nowadays. Java Edition pretty much only still exists to make the pre-existing modding community and Linux and MacOS users happy, because those things aren't supported on Bedrock Edition. The two editions have been developed in parallel, sharing the main game features and assets, and only really differing in platform support (Bedrock supports consoles, phones, and Windows; Java Edition supports Windows, Linux, and MacOS) and in Bedrock's content marketplace where paid add-ons (skins, asset packs, and custom maps) are available.
Well, I guess that's a rare case of something unshittifying in 2025. A Microsoft-owned product, no less. That's genuinely great news for everyone and I was really not expecting this but I'm absolutely glad to hear this.
I have a feeling that because Minecraft makes so much money Microsoft is really hands off with them.
Fixed!
Just gotta say I love the Sweden tag you always put, I'm not from any of the Nordic countries but I appreciate that a lot LOL
I am initially surprised by this move. Especially since I have seen posts about how they have redesigned a few of the UIs on Bedrock to push more in game purchases (Realms and subscriptions). Also, with Microsoft wanting 30% margins on their gaming division, was not expecting this.
My personal theory is that Mojang is starting to structure the two versions to meet different audiences:
Java: for the core fanbase. This group was always unlikely to pay Mojang directly for things, as the features were previously free (maps, mods, and such) or were already used to going with third party or self hosted options for multiplayer servers. This group will also never switch to Bedrock due to parity issues, especially with technical builds. This group also provides a lot of value to Minecraft, due to tutorials and content creators.
Bedrock: for the casual players. This group lends towards being less technical, and more willing to just pay for a solution. They are not going to go into %AppData% to install new mods or maps, and just want a simple solution. Or they are on consoles so they cannot easily access the folder structure to install them.
It sucks that it seems that Bedrock is getting increasingly monetized. However, it is nice that Mojang seems to understand the demographic playing Java and are working towards having that be a better experience, rather than try and monetize it.
Wow- I'm actually shocked and impressed. I understand that there exist a plethora of tools which, by this point, work around the obfuscation reasonably well, but this is just going to smoothen the process a bunch, especially when debugging.
Though I'm honestly shocked it wasn't done sooner, before the Microsoft purchase. Minecraft has always been a foremost example of a game which endures at least partly because of the size of the modding community, aided at least in part by the fact that the codebase is Java.
As mentioned in the post, they didn't even release the obfuscation maps until 2019, 5 years after the Microsoft acquisition. This is also years after Mojang had hired the co-founders of the Mod Coder Pack, which was one of the earlier toolchains for decompiling/deobfuscating the game. I wonder what prompted them to remove the obfuscation step altogether, since it probably would have been easier to just keep it in.
Neat. NeoForge had already moved to Mojang's mappings, so their names won't be any different, but it's nice that they'll no longer need to deobfuscate at all. And for MCP and Yarn mappings, this will save them a fair amount of effort on each new game update.
The experience for modders themselves shouldn't be very different, except for the occasional situation where you'd hit an an untranslated string of text. It'll mostly affect the modloader/toolchain devs. It's nice that Mojang are releasing dual builds for now to help them migrate.
One lesser-known part of the obfuscation step is that it also applied some tree shaking to remove unused code. For example, if localization methods aren't ever called on the server-side, they won't be bundled into that jar. This was usually a good thing for performance and jar size, but occasionally you'd run into a situation where a helpful function was optimized out of the game. So I wonder if that will be affected by this change, too.
This is actually pretty cool. For years I've been wondering if Mojang would try and force people over to the bedrock edition somehow, but doing this seems like they still want people tinkering around with, and therefore playing, the java edition.
I suppose I'll convert my tiny mods over to the official mappings soon to make the upgrade easier. I'm sure the fabric/neoforge/architectury projects will be where most of the work is going to go, so it's nice they're releasing both obfuscated and non-obfuscated snapshots after the next major release.
Microsoft has some very atypical ideas about how to manage Minecraft. Rather than a single game or a live service game, they consider it a platform with which they can create new value from. For instance, they are selling Minecraft Education Edition, a customized version of the Java edition of the game meant to be used by schools. Keeping people engaged in non-monied ways helps keep people around for their monied purposes.
I was always completely baffled that they released the game with obfuscation but then released official mappings to undo that obfuscation, instead of just removing the obfuscation to begin with. Clearly they wanted to be friendly to modders but they couldn't get someone in charge of the decisions to understand anything. It's nice that sanity broke through, six years later.
Pardon the misunderstanding - what is the difference between the Java version and the 'common' version these days?
tmi, but cool thing to mention I guess, but I haven't touched Minecraft since I decrypted/broke/cracked their update system when I was ~14 so that my friends (... and the world it turned out) could get instant up-to-date Minecraft for free in your browser - without waiting for someone to crack the updates (at the time, that could take weeks or months). There were so many people that used it, that it often crashed my home servers I set up (and my dad was not happy about) - so some of you may have used it, who knows!
But, I got a DMCA takedown notice (and a very explicit "we will destroy you in court and your life will be in jail forever") and haven't really touched it since. I even have it framed somewhere. There was only one version at the time, and that was Java.
What are the differences? Are there feature differences? Is it the same thing but in two different engines?
Java Edition is the original that you're familiar with and runs on Windows/Mac/Linux (+BSDs?). It supports modding through various 3rd party modding APIs.
Bedrock Edition is written in C++ and runs on Windows, XBox, PlayStation, Switch 1/2, iOS, Android (not MacOS or Linux - technically you could run the iPad version on MacOS?). It's more performant and you can cross play across any of the supported platforms. It mostly works the same but the similarities start to diverge when you look really close. Specific redstone behavior for example differs between Bedrock and Java edition. For the most part mods to Bedrock come in the form of paid DLC.
There's Java Edition and Bedrock Edition. Bedrock Edition is the main one that users are pointed to nowadays. Java Edition pretty much only still exists to make the pre-existing modding community and Linux and MacOS users happy, because those things aren't supported on Bedrock Edition. The two editions have been developed in parallel, sharing the main game features and assets, and only really differing in platform support (Bedrock supports consoles, phones, and Windows; Java Edition supports Windows, Linux, and MacOS) and in Bedrock's content marketplace where paid add-ons (skins, asset packs, and custom maps) are available.
I thought licensing issues meant even if they released mappings, they couldn't really do much with them?
Hug of death for minecraft.net?
Azure is having a bad time right now, see the article on archive.org instead.
There was (is?) an azure outage, could be from that maybe.