What is the Minecraft mob vote petition?

The mob vote has become quite controversial within the community.

Three Minecraft players standing on a boat under the mob vote logo.
Image via Mojang

Each year since 2017, Minecraft has allowed players to have a hand in choosing one new mob that will be added to the game permanently through an annual mob vote event.

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This system has always led to some unrest in the community since only one of the three contenders will actually be chosen, which means some players always end up disappointed with the results. But for the 2023 version of the mob vote event, this unrest has become much more serious within the community as a special petition was created to ask Mojang to implement a massive change.

What is the Minecraft mob vote 2023 petition?

The mob vote petition for the 2023 installment of the Minecraft mob vote is a fan movement asking Mojang to end the mob vote permanently or change how it functions to implement all three mobs instead. This petition was founded on Oct. 6 and is called #StopTheMobVote.

Why are Minecraft players boycotting the mob vote?

The community has listed a couple of different reasons for wanting to put the Minecraft mob vote to an end and for boycotting it, but overall, they say it is to stop division, end the scrapping of great ideas, and see new content added to the game more frequently.

The 2023 mob vote has been an especially tough one for players as the crab, armadillo, and penguin all offer very different benefits that appeal to drastically different kinds of Minecraft players, which has resulted in many members of the community deciding to boycott the mob vote altogether.

In the official petition, the creator of #StopTheMobVote said the annual vote “generates engagement by tearing the community apart, leaving fantastic ideas on the cutting room floor, and teasing content that will never be seen in the game.”

Three mobs are presented as possibilities every year, but only the one that receives the most votes is actually implemented into the game. And because there are consistently three great options to choose from, the community is always extremely divided over which one should actually win.

Players get attached to certain mobs only for them to then lose and never be seen again, as is the case with the Moobloom that lost in the 2020 vote to the Glow Squid that many members of the community still regularly bring up to this day.

Two players standing next to the Moobloom in a forest.
The Moobloom is a fallen fan favorite that players refuse to let go of. Image via Mojang

Another reason players are boycotting the mob vote is that they believe Minecraft doesn’t see enough new content as is and that the devs should be able to release more updates than they have been. Instead of presenting three ideas and only picking one, the community is asking that all three be implemented or no mob vote happen at all.

The creator of the petition said Minecraft gained “its popularity due to its regular updates and large amounts of content,” which was all the way back in 2011. But now, “Minecraft is not only the highest selling game ever released, but has the financial backing of the massive corporation Microsoft,” according to the creator of the petition.

This player believes that since Minecraft has massive backing matched with massive popularity, it should be receiving way more frequent and sizeable updates than it has been.

“Players only receive a single, very small content update each year,” this fan explained. “The mob vote teases at some of that content, only for a third of what was teased to make it in, further decreasing the content of the update.”

Two players standing next to the Sniffer.
The last mob vote winner was the Sniffer in 2022. Image via Mojang

Overall, the consensus among most Minecraft players is that they either want the mob vote to come to an end for good or that all three contenders should be added every time.

“Give us three mobs each year,” the creator of the petition said at the end of the campaign. “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.”

Has Mojang responded to the Minecraft mob vote boycott?

Although the petition has accumulated over 370,000 signatures as of Oct. 11, Mojang has so far not responded, which means the mob vote is still scheduled to run from Oct. 13 to 15 and will feature only one winner between the crab, armadillo, and penguin as planned.

Author
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Kacee Fay
Staff Writer at Dot Esports covering new releases and a wide array of topics including Minecraft, Disney Dreamlight Valley, Phasmophobia, general gaming, streaming, and more. She has been avidly writing and gaming her whole life and now spends her time combining the two. Kacee graduated from San Diego State University in 2021 with a Bachelor’s Degree in English and a Certificate in Creative Editing and Publishing. She then joined Dot Esports as a Freelance Writer in 2022 before transitioning to a Staff Writer in 2023. In her spare time, she enjoys buying more books than she can read, gaming alone or with friends, drinking too much tea, attending concerts, fangirling over movies and television, listening to music, and spending time with her family, friends, and pets, who are the most important parts of her world.