Mojang, the developers and creators of Minecraft, have announced that the mobile game spin-off, Minecraft Earth, will officially be shut down later this year on June 30, 2021. The Pokemon Go-style mobile game was aimed at players roaming around the world to meet and build with others and was positively received when it was first announced. Despite having an Early Access release back in Summer 2019, the company has decided that, due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, finish it and released their final build at the same time of the announcement, giving us a mere six months to enjoy it before it goes away forever.
As part of the final build and newest update, players will no longer be able to purchase items with real-world money in Minecraft Earth. In addition, any paid ruby balances will be converted into Minecoins which you can use to buy cosmetics, maps, and other features on the Minecraft Marketplace. On top of that, those that did make any purchases with real-world money in Minecraft Earth will be eligible to obtain a free copy of Minecraft, albeit the bedrock version.
As we already mentioned, the game will be shut down on June 30, but Mojang is going one step further with this. The very next day on July 1, the company will then “delete any Minecraft Earth player data unrelated to Character Creator and Minecoin entitlements.” What this essentially means is that any character in the game that does not have any Minecoins available to use, or have a character not from the Character Creators section will be gone for good.
Either way though, the game will be completely unplayable once June 30 comes, and at that point, it won’t matter what happens to the player data. It’s an unfortunate end to what has been a very well-received Early Access up to this point. When the initial U.S. launch took place, it was more than 1.4 million downloaded in the first week alone, topping at 2.5 million globally. For those who have been enjoying it, and those who have been on the fence on getting it here’s your notice, you have until June 30.