Is 'Minecraft' Really Shutting Down? Why Would the Popular Game End?

Minecraft is a pretty simple game, created by Swedish developer Mojang. It's sustained widespread popularity for years and, to date, has about 480 million players all around the globe. There are even tons of YouTubers who make a living basically streaming themselves playing this game.

So why in the world is it reportedly shutting down? It's available on a variety of different consoles and platforms and has a ridiculously active base of players, after all.

Fans of the long-running title expressed concerns over a Dec. 21, 2020 shut down report, meaning that they've got less than a year to play out their wildest virtual block-building and hammer and pickaxe fantasies. But is the report legit?

It seems like a lot of this server shutdown hysteria was propelled by the game's decision to pull its story mode support.

Telltale games was responsible for Minecraft's narrative gameplay, and, if you've been following the progress of this particular publisher, then you'll know that they've fallen on some hard times recently and are actually out of business. Which is a huge bummer for those who enjoyed their Batman brand of story-driven, you-make-your-own choice titles.

June 25, 2019 was the last day that fans could officially download the Story Mode and all its episodes for Minecraft so they could play it on their machines. But what about the game's other modes? Well they're all alive and well.

Is it really shutting down? Well, that's if you believe headlines like this one that have people all over the world in a tizzy.

As it turns out, however, Minecraft is not shutting down. Everything's business as usual in the Mojang offices and the company is even pushing out huge updates to its software. So why are so many people convinced that the game is going offline and they won't be able to engage in the wonderful world of virtual LEGO sets in the near future?

It's all because of fake news stories like this one, that's why.

If you visit any forum discussing the game or look at Mojang's release schedule for Minecraft, then it becomes very apparent that the game isn't going anywhere. I mean, why the heck would it? And what's causing all of the confusion about this potential "shut down"? Well, that's because a lot of people don't understand what shutting down a server means.

So even if Mojang does go and shut down a major server that tons of players are using, that doesn't mean the game is "going away for good." In fact, there are tons of first and third party servers that Mojang manages and some that they don't that can host plenty of games for fans of the game to enjoy.

But, like Braden Davis writes in a forum, it's in Mojang's best interest to keep the game going: "Minecraft has been regaining players slowly as of recently, and Mojang is getting ready to push a huge (1.15) update. For a while, the community was losing players simply because the game became stagnant. But with large influencers, such as Pewdiepie, Callmecarson, etc. players have slowly come back."

"As Mark Davis and Michael Johnson-Moore said, Minecraft is also decentralized. The servers on Java edition that you play every day are not reliant on Mojang. They rely on the games server jar, yes. However there are a lot of forks of it (Spigot, Sponge, etc.)"

Quinten Rotthier also made a good point as well about Minecraft's potential shut down: that it's never going to go anywhere, even if Mojang focuses on other titles it's developing.

"Minecraft is arguably the single best and most consistently popular game, shutting it down would be a huge mistake. They could however put it on halt to focus on Minecraft Earth and Minecraft 2."

So there you have it, if you're worried about never being able to play Minecraft again come the end of next year, then you're needlessly fretting.