Minecraft Subscription Fees Going Into Effect May 1st
Fans of the wildly popular video game Minecraft are going to soon find themselves angrier than if a creeper just blew up inside their cabin, after Microsoft announced Saturday morning that the famed mining and building game will require a $5 monthlyÂ subscription, starting with the release of patch 1.9 on May 1st, 2015. The upcoming patch, tentatively titled âThe Sea Shanty Patch,â will introduce a plethora of naval-themed updates, including large, multi-seat pirate ships, Viking ships, and new pirate and Viking mobs, as well as buried treasure chests in beach biomes and special maps that lead to that treasure. Players will also be able to craft their own ships. Theyâre also adding weather at sea, including waves, typhoons, and white squalls. But the patch will also carry with it the gameâs first subscription, which Minecraft developers Mojang say will be âoptional, but also sort of mandatory.â âThis patch is going to carry with it a subscription fee, which you donât need to pay, but youâll want to pay it,â says Minecraft developer Nathan âDinnerboneâ Adams. âThe subscription will get you access to all future patches, starting in theÂ `1.10â² era. non-subscribers will be stuck on 1.8, and in the future, new gameplay features will be turned off if you cancel your subscription.â Dinnerbone says the gameâs next three patches, 1.9 included, will all be focused on adventure. âYouâll want to pay the subscription, to be sure. I canât really go into details about what our future patches will look like, but I can tell you that 1.10 is already being planned out, and itâs going to involve building rockets and flying into space, with mining on moons and asteroids. And foreign planets will have funky, cool new biomes and alien creatures. So youâll want to pay the subscription. You wonât want to miss out on all of these new adventures.â Microsoft says Minecraft will be free to download starting on May 1st as well, with the subscription replacing the gameâs current one-time $26.95 purchase price. The more than 18.4 million people who purchased the game for PC prior to May 1st will all be reimbursed that purchase price, with their subscription feesÂ for the first six months being waived. Â