Courtesy of Reddit
One of the many Cold War era propaganda posters that players have created for the 2023 boycott.
Last Friday, the official Minecraft YouTube channel uploaded a seemingly innocuous video to advertise their upcoming mob vote. This mob vote is an annual event that allows players to vote on elements to be added to the game. Within 48 hours of the video’s upload, a petition had been created, people were posting Cold War-era propaganda posters and the #boycottmobvote hashtag on TikTok had over a million views.
So, what led to this?
Background
Since 2017, Mojang, the game development studio behind Minecraft, has hosted an annual mob vote. Prior to the vote, Mojang introduces several new game entities or “mobs” – which often resemble living creatures. The mob that wins the vote is added to the game. Mojang has promised that the mobs who lose the vote are not forgotten. However, they have yet to incorporate any of the losing mobs into the game.
In 2020, the vote drew criticism from much of the Minecraft community after popular Minecraft streamer Dream encouraged his millions of subscribers to vote for a specific mob, the glow squid. The glow squid won and was added to the game and as a result, many Minecraft players accused Dream of rigging the vote.
The Boycott
On Oct. 6, the three different mob choices for this year’s vote were released. Players would be able to choose between the crab, the armadillo and the penguin, all of which have unique in-game attributes that can help the player.
The community’s response was nearly instantaneous. Many believed that all three mobs were good options and they didn’t understand why they had to choose. A boycott of the vote was proposed and the idea took off like wildfire.
On Oct. 7, one day after the video with the mob list premiered, a change.org petition was posted by user Holly Mavermorne, titled “Stop the Mob Vote: Put an end to the scrapping of great ideas.” As of writing this article, the petition has over 250,000 signatures.
The petition argues that Mojang has gotten lazy, which seems to be a common sentiment among some players. Allegedly, a modder was able to code all three mobs into the game over the course of one day, adding to the outrage and making some question why Mojang can’t do the same.
The petition’s success can easily be linked to the social media activity surrounding it. Cold War-era propaganda-style posters have become one of the most common ways of spreading the word of the boycott, with slogans such as, “Why settle for less when we could have it all? BOYCOTT THE VOTE” and “ALL OR NONE. NOT JUST ONE. BOYCOTT THE MOB VOTE.”
Though these posters seem to have originated on TikTok, X user mufflekip reposted several of these designs to their account on Oct. 7. At the time of writing this, the post has over 3 million views and 100,000 likes.
Future Vote
The mob vote will open at 1 p.m. EDT Oct. 15.
At the time of writing this, Mojang has not responded to the proposed boycott.