Minecraft is no longer (officially) available on virtual and mixed reality platforms. The change was confirmed in today's patch notes for the game's Bedrock edition following an announcement from developer Mojang in October. Those fall patch notes suggested that the platforms would be removed in March, so players who favored VR wound up getting a few extra weeks to fully immerse themselves in their blocky worlds. Removing entire platforms isn't a choice game devs make lightly. Especially when Minecraft's player base still numbers in the hundreds of millions at any given time, it seems unlikely that Mojang would take away virtual and mixed reality unless it wouldn't cause a serious disruption for its many fans.

Mojang will stop supporting that version of the best-selling game of all time. Folks who like to escape to the block-filled, creeper-infested universe of in virtual reality soon won't be able to do that on PlayStation VR. Developer Mojang is winding down support on that platform. "Our ability to support PlayStation VR has come to an end, and will no longer be in updates after March of 2025," Mojang said in the latest, as spotted by . "You will no longer be able to use your PlayStation VR with as it will no longer be supported in the latest updates." Mojang as an update to the PS4 version of -- there hasn't been an equivalent update for PS5 and PS VR2 as yet.

While Minecraft was officially released in 2011, it was first introduced to the public back in 2009. This year, Minecraft is celebrating its 15th anniversary, and as part of the festivities surrounding that milestone, Netflix and Mojang Studios have announced that they're making an animated series based on the iconic sandbox game. It's a computer graphic-animated show that's being developed by Canadian studio WildBrain, which was also behind the animated Netflix shows Carmen Sandiego and Sonic Prime. The companies said the series will feature an original story based on new characters that show "the world of Minecraft in a new light." We'll most likely find out what that means exactly before the series launches when they start releasing previews and trailers.

Microsoft and Mojang are bringing Minecraft to Chromebooks, specifically the Bedrock Edition. Unfortunately, you'll need a rather modern Chromebook to play it, and what that means is going to baffle a number of frustrated parents. In a blog post, Mojang said that it doesn't have a release date for the full version of the Minecraft Bedrock Edition on ChromeOS, though the company plans to release updates as close to the timing of other platforms as possible. That means that the version for Chromebooks will include the Trails and Tails update, with its ability to ride camels and other features. Technically, what's being released is an "Early Access" edition.

On June 20, Microsoft-owned Mojang announced that NFTs and blockchain technology would no longer be allowed to "integrate" with Minecraft. That was bad news for NFT Worlds, which has spent months building an entire crypto-economy on top of a collection of the randomized seeds needed to make specific Minecraft maps. This story originally appeared on Ars Technica, a trusted source for technology news, tech policy analysis, reviews, and more. Ars is owned by WIRED's parent company, Condé Nast. Now, the team behind NFT Worlds announced it will create a new game that's "based on many of the core mechanics of Minecraft" but which will be "completely untethered from the policy enforcement Microsoft and Mojang have over Minecraft."

Minecraft will not allow non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to be used on the popular gaming platform, with the company describing them as antithetical to Minecraft's "values of creative inclusion and playing together". NFTs confer ownership of a unique digital item, typically an image or a video, with the ownership recorded on a decentralised digital register known as a blockchain. Digital files can usually be copied or deleted for free, but a NFT identifies the owner of the original file for the purposes of buying, selling, or trading the ownership – usually for cryptocurrency. The hype around NFTs led to a boom in sales peaking at US$12bn (AU$17.4bn) However, coinciding with the downturn in cryptocurrency, sales recently began crashing to a 12-month low of US$1bn (AU$1.45bn) in June.

The statement listed other issues Mojang had with NFTs around quality control and instances of fraud and NFTs sold at artificially inflated values. However, the ban on NFTs was conditional; Mojang said it would pay "close attention" to how the technology evolves. ""To ensure that Minecraft players have a safe and inclusive experience, blockchain technologies are not permitted to be integrated inside our Minecraft client and server applications nor may they be utilized to create NFTs associated with any in-game content, including worlds, skins, persona items, or other mods," reads the statement. "We have no plans of implementing blockchain technology into Minecraft right now."

Don't expect to buy a creeper skin as an NFT (non-fungible token) and plug it into your Minecraft server in the near future. Mojang has taken a firm stance against the massively popular game's involvement with NFTs and blockchain tech. "[To] ensure that Minecraft players have a safe and inclusive experience, blockchain technologies are not permitted to be integrated inside our Minecraft client and server applications, nor may they be utilized to create NFTs associated with any in-game content, including worlds, skins, persona items or other mods," the developer said in a statement. It will soon update the game's guidelines accordingly. Minecraft has a marketplace where people can sell their creations for others to use.

It has been purchased more than 200m times and after 10 years it's still one of the most played video games in the world – now the block building sim Minecraft has passed another milestone: YouTube videos of the game have passed one trillion views, making it the most watched game on the platform. Originally released in 2009, Minecraft has always been popular on the video sharing site, thanks to its open and highly creative nature. Players can build whatever they like in the blocky landscape, and talented modellers have flooded YouTube to show off their most impressive creations, from scale models of Hogwarts and the Starship Enterprise to working computers. The game also proved immensely popular with the first generation of superstar YouTube influencers – the likes of Stampy Cat, DanTDM and PewDiePie built vast audiences through playing Minecraft and creating their own narratives, events and challenges via the game's open design. According to Microsoft, there are are now more than 35,000 active Minecraft creator channels on YouTube, based in 150 different countries.

On Saturday, Mojang held its annual Minecraft Live fan convention. As in years past, the event saw the studio detail the future of its immensely popular sandbox game. And if you're a fan of Minecraft, the livestream did not disappoint. The studio kicked off the event with the announcement of The Wild Update. Set to come out sometime in 2022, Mojang promises this latest DLC will change how players explore and interact with the game's overworld.