Minecraft mob voting is no more, players celebrate mob democracy's death

The Minecraft mob voting is an annual ritual of democracy and ritual battle in which Mojang proposes a few mobs that could be added to the game and the community takes the battleaxes out and gets to work. I only discovered the process last year. I thought it was fun, but quickly realized my mistake. Many people take the mob vote extremely serious.

The mob vote has been discontinued. This is a sad day for those who love the online beef. "We're changing Minecraft Live's format and retiring the mob voting to bring you something else," Minecraft general manger Ryan Cooper said in a recent update on the development of Minecraft.

"Instead of one show per annum (normally in October), Minecraft Live will now be a more focused broadcast and will take place twice per annum. Each show will include all the information you need about the latest features that we are working on, the new things that are coming into testing and the newest updates from the Minecraft franchise.

A Minecraft spokesperson explained why the vote was ended, telling PC Gamer developers "loved how passionate our community was."

The team enjoys the mob vote and puts their heart into it. They imagine the different possibilities, their features and behaviors, and create the fun teasers that lead up to the vote," said the rep.

"However we also understand the frustration of players who have to choose between multiple fun options. After last year, we began to think about new ways of setting the game up for its success while giving the community what they want. We decided to take a new route.

The Minecraft mob vote was not without merit. The big problem wasn't that this mob was better than that one, but that only one of the three potentials would make it to the game, while the other two were left to fade away as occasionally-recalled ideas. The petition for 2023 demanded that Mojang stop voting and add three new mobs every year.

The petition claims that "the Mob Vote creates engagement by tearing apart the community, leaving fantastic ideas on a cutting room floor, teasing content which will never be in the game," "This, combined with the fact Mojang releases less content WITH Microsoft’s backing than they did before, means that players see minimal content in the game they love and watch as perhaps the one thing that will get them to play it again is ripped away from them."

This petition drew over 534,000 signatures in the end, indicating widespread dissatisfaction about Mojang's mob additions. In an update, creator of the petition, wrote, "Almost A YEAR after we mobilized to tell Mojang we wouldn't accept lackluster content strategies any longer, they finally listened!" Today, Mojang announced that the Mob Vote was DEAD and they will be moving to smaller, more frequent updates instead of a large update per year!

This celebration may be premature. Cooper did mention that Mojang would "now be releasing several free game drops throughout each year" instead of one free update every summer. A new mob was also released in April, as part of Armored Paws. Cooper did not say if more mobs would follow in a rapid fashion.