Why are gamers mad at Mojang? The ‘Minecraft’ vote boycott, explained

It’s no secret that Minecraft is one of the most popular games of all time, transcending genres and literally becoming a phenomenon unto itself. The company that develops the game, Mojang, regularly updates the game and creates spinoffs, and is very plugged in to its fans. The company recently asked players to vote for what element to add to the game, but some fans are upset over having to choose.

Here’s everything you need to know about the Mojang Minecraft Mob Vote controversy.

What is Minecraft and why is it so popular?

For the uninitiated, Minecraft is an open world sandbox game that lets players explore a virtual world made of blocks. The player can craft items, mine resources and build things with the things they’ve collected.

The game’s world is made up of “biomes,” which include mountains, forests, deserts, and villages. There are other creatures as well – like pigs, cows, and zombies. The main game also has different modes that have different objectives, such as adventure, survival, creative, spectator, and hard.

One of the main things that sets the game apart is how it’s set up. There’s no point system, it’s all about a player’s creativity and ability to survive.

IGN said the game is the second best selling of all time with more than 238 million copies sold – since 2021, so that number is undoubtedly higher. In 2014, Microsoft acquired Mojang for around $2.5 billion.

Why are gamers mad at Mojang? The mob vote boycott issue explained

Basically, there’s a movement to boycott the vote, with the #boycottmobvote hashtag getting more than a million views. Why is everyone so mad?

Before we dive in here’s some background: Since 2017, Mojang hosts an annual “mob vote.” The studio introduces new creature entities, or mobs, and lets players vote on which one they like the best. While Mojang says the unpicked mobs won’t be lost in the shuffle, none of the losing ones have yet to appear in the game.

In 2020, the vote was highly controversial because popular gaming YouTuber Dream asked his millions of followers to vote for the glow squid, which won the vote and led many to complain they felt the vote was rigged.

A feedback post complained about the issue at the time, saying (the grammar on the post has been cleaned up):

“This year’s voting was a disaster (not because which mob was chosen) because there was a intervention from big YouTubers (Dream literally asked mr beast and Tommy innit and his friends as well as his huge stans to vote for glowing squid). Now they are within their rights to choose any mob or encourage people to vote, but it’s extremely unfair when someone with a million followers decide what mob wins for the entire international community. Twitter is not a good website to vote for, so even though using it won’t solve the problem but at least at the very least disable replies.”

Majong kind of listened because voting is now done inside Minecraft.

This brings us to October 6, when Minecraft announced the 2023 vote: “That’s right, the mob vote is making a triumphant return this year, with three new mobs for you, our wonderful community, to choose between! When you cast your vote for a new mob, you help us decide what we’ll spend time developing. Then the mob gets added into the game as part of the next major update!”

This year there are three different mob choices: the crab, the armadillo, and the penguin – all of which have their own characteristics. The crabs help with building, the armadillos drop an item that can be used as armor for your wolf and the penguin will let you move faster in the water.

However, once the choices were revealed the community almost immediately rebelled. Several people created Cold War era propaganda posters to show their discontent, like these:

There’s also a change.org petition about the issue (of course there is), which has more than 320K signatures as of this writing. The petition states that the vote might generate engagement but it’s also “tearing the community apart, leaving fantastic ideas on the cutting room floor, and teasing content that will never be seen in the game.”

The petition also complains that Mojang “somehow releases less content WITH Microsoft’s backing than they did without, means players see minimal content to the game they love, and watch as possibly the one thing to get them to play again is ripped from them.”

Finally, there’s a rumor that a modder coded all three mobs into the game in a single day, which makes many confused as to why Majong doesn’t just add all three and be done with it.

When will the Minecraft mob vote open and how do I vote?

The Minecraft mob vote opens “at 1pm EDT on Friday, October 13, and closes at 1:15pm EDT on Sunday, October 15.” Confused about time zones? Mojang has provided these helpful links, this one for when it starts and this one for when it ends.

Mojang provided the following info on how to vote:

“Join the live event server on Minecraft: Bedrock Edition to submit your vote, meet the Tinies, play mini-games, and even indulge in some mob parkour. You can also vote right here on Minecraft.net, or via the Minecraft Launcher.”

As of this writing, neither Mojang nor Microsoft has responded to the controversy. We’ll update this article if/when that happens.