Microsoft announced on Tuesday that its augmented reality game “Minecraft Earth” (based on the popular building block game from Mojang Studios) will be closed in June.
According to the company, this decision was partly due to the global pandemic that made the game unsustainable. “Minecraft Earth” is an AR game that uses mobile devices to superimpose the building blocks of Minecraft, creatures and monsters onto landmarks and objects in the real world, which requires players to walk outside. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, people are required to stay indoors and avoid crowds as much as possible to ensure safety.
“Minecraft” was originally developed by Mojang AB in 2011. It is a voxel-based sandbox game that allows players to modify the surrounding world by sculpting and placing the surrounding world to their liking. This game has been popular around the world for many years and has maintained a large following on YouTube. This popularity prompted Microsoft to acquire Mojang in 2014.
Before the end of support for the game, there is one remaining update that has been released to gamers, which will make single player games more interesting. For example, this update will remove real currency transactions, completely remove currency costs in the game, reduce all production and smelting time requirements, and enable almost everyone to quickly make anything in the game so that they can experience more from now on Games in June.
On June 30, Microsoft will stop all content distribution and service support for “Minecraft Earth”. This means that all development will end. After this date, the game will no longer be available for download. It will also become unplayable, and all player data related to “Minecraft Earth” will be deleted.
All players who have a paid ruby balance (in-game currency) will receive a refund of Minecoins. Minecoins is an advanced cash currency that can be used in the Minecraft market to purchase skins and texture packs, maps and even small games. In addition, any player who has ever made a purchase in “Minecraft Earth” will get a free copy of “Minecraft: Bedrock Edition” so they can get gifts on the market.
“Minecraft Earth” initially entered beta testing mode in July 2019. Following in the footsteps of other AR games that use mobile devices (such as Niantic Inc.’s Ingress), it paved the way for such outdoor games.
Ingress itself laid the foundation for the extremely famous “Pokemon Go”. “Pokemon Go” successfully occupied the gaming industry market during 2016 and helped the market earn an astonishing $91 billion in revenue. “Pokemon Go” itself gave birth to other mechanically similar games, such as “Harry Potter: Wizards Unite” by Niantic Inc..
For more information about the “Minecraft” sunset process, Microsoft has published a “FAQ” page.
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Post time: Jan-08-2021
