Minecraft players petition to ‘stop the Mob Vote’

As one of the biggest video games in history, Minecraft has maintained a steady stream of content to keep old fans happy while enticing newcomers. Its annual Mob Vote also means players can decide which creature gets added next. However, some want to see this get tossed into lava.

A recent petition is asking the developer to “stop the Mob Vote,” scrapping this voting system entirely. At the time of writing, 354,836 people have signed, with 500,000 being the eventual goal.

Mob voting for 2023 is said to begin October 13. It offers a chance for fans to have some say in what mob gets implemented into Minecraft‘s world. Last year, it was the turn of the Sniffer. This year, people are being asked to choose between the penguin, the crab, or the armadillo.

Why is this petition happening?

The petition on Change.org – started by Holly Mavermorne – argues that, as part of the engagement and feedback, many ideas are left “on the cutting room floor.” They see this as “teasing content that will never be seen in the game.”

On top of this, Mavermorne believes that Microsoft’s ownership of Minecraft should see more content on a regular basis. Before the tech giant bought studio Mojang out in 2014, the game’s popularity could be attested to its “regular updates and large amounts of content.”

Additionally, a thread on Reddit shows some feel choosing one mob to be added is not an adequate way to engage the community. User dfjhgsaydgsauygdjh says fans “want all the mobs and all the features from the mob votes, because implementing just 1 and teasing us with the other 2 just… feels bad”.

User TheCarina chimes in by adding that if “Mojang does not bring a losing mob from a previous vote into this year’s update, I am firmly believing every lost mob is gone for good.”

Some may see the vote as a publicity stunt in which Minecraft becomes a focal point of conversation in the gaming world, perhaps to drum up hype for the Minecraft Live event.

On top of this, Mavermorne believes that the voting system can also encourage content creators to mobilize “their fanbases to vote for the least popular option for the joke of screwing over the other voters.” As such, Mob Vote is inherently flawed, they argue.

The end result of this petition is to put a complete stop to the vote in its entirety. Instead, three new mobs added into Minecraft on a yearly basis would be preferable. As they say:

If unpaid modders can add your mobs to the game within days after they’re announced, the least you could do is keep up with the content frequency that made Minecraft famous.

And in the time it took me to write this article, the signature count has gone up by another thousand.