Four Times the Community Went Absolutely Mad Over.... Nothing.

Being a Minecraft dev is tweeting out anything.... ANYTHING.... and someone, somewhere will take that as a potential confirmation of a new feature coming to Minecraft. A dev tweets that they like rats? RATS CONFIRMED!!! A dev tweets that they're eating pizza tonight? PIZZA CONF1RMED in M1N3CRAFTE!!!! A dev tweets their laptop is broken? Well OBVIOUSLY they're adding broken laptops to Minecraft! Seriously, they could tweet ANYTHING and someone would try and take it as a confirmation of a new Minecraft feature.

This is a testament to just how much hype there is in the community about new features being added to Minecraft. As Minecraft is an ever-evolving game and new features are semi-frequently added, it's no wonder people get so hyped about new features, and will look into any sign of new features that could be on the way.

Not so much now, but back in the "middle" generation years, particularly around 2014-2015 when Searge was an active developer, it was not uncommon for the devs to tweet screenshots of features they had been working on and testing. And these screenshots often contained secrets. Very will hidden secrets. Or secrets hiding in the background. People still do this now, checking every far-off pixel for hints of a hidden secret. They still do hide things in the background very occasionally - such as recently when a bucket of axolotl was hidden far off in a screenshot, semi-cut-off, hinting axolotls would be coming in the next snapshot - which they did.

Back in the middle years, the secrets could get VERY cryptic - including codes made of numbers of items in the hotbar! The 2015 April Fools update even had a feature where if you went to 0x0 of seed 0 and let it snow, the snow revealed a freaking QR CODE which when scanned, revealed the theme of the 1.9 update!!!!!!!! Yeah, they got REALLY crazy back in the day, making it IMMENSELY satisfying when these cryptic hidden secrets were decoded. 

But there were also a handful of occasions where our hopes were unfortunately dashed. Where we all went on a wild goose chase of speculation for what ultimately turned out to be..... nothing. We'd been had. We chased our own tails. Here are some examples of the times the community went nuts over a supposed hint of a new feature that ultimately turned out to be nothing.

Note that April Fools features are not included as they are obviously jokes.

Skis

In 2012, a mysterious "Skis" mysteriously appeared in the texture files. Skis?! Was skiing going to be added to Minecraft?! Was Skis some Swedish word which meant something else??? They sure looked like actual skis! Would we soon be able to ski down mountains in Minecraft!?!?!

No. The texture was a red herring from Dinnerbone. A bazinga. He basically wanted to see us go mad and speculate and chase our tails over what was basically nothing.

Searge's Massive Reddit Quest

2015. The darkest year in Minecraft's history. Following the release of 1.8 in early September 2014, it had been literally MONTHS and we had heard not a single darnedest thing about 1.9. Not a snapshot, not a word of when we would see a snapshot, not a word on what 1.9's theme would be... absolutely nothing. We were incredibly starved of any new Minecraft content.

Searge was well-known for his cryptic secrets and EXTREMELY complex treasure hunts that would lead players to hints of what could be coming in Minecraft. And I mean, some of his hunts got REALLY INSANELY CONVOLUTED, spanning across multiple platforms and using some ciphers only a professional code-breaker could decrypt. The man had one hell of a brain!

Mid-April 2015, we had been without a single snapshot for some seven and a half months, with no mention or hint of any snapshot coming any time soon. We had only just even found out 1.9 was the combat update, in fact. There had maybe been a couple of screenshots of 1.9 features by now. That is when Searge started a treasure hunt on Twitter which ended up spanning onto Reddit. This treasure hunt contained multiple stages and spanned multiple platforms, and people in the community lost their MINDS trying to crack his masterful codes. Searge had promised prizes to those who solved each stage, with an ultimate prize at the end. 

Like the Gunters in Ready Player One, people flocked to Reddit to try and crack Searge's 100000 IQ puzzles. But whilst the Cambridge codebreakers were toiling away, us non-geniuses were sitting in our corner speculating like mad over what could be at the end of all this. We all thought there was going to be some major 1.9 reveal or something at the end of all this. The quest spanned over a couple of DAYS, and we all got super hyped as to what pot of diamonds would lie at the end of this mad quest.

.......Steam codes. It was Steam codes. No Minecraft reveal, nothing about 1.9. Steam codes. 

It was great that Searge did this and a lot of people had a lot of fun, and I'm sure whoever got the Steam codes was very happy with them.... but for us standard IQ fans who were absolutely gagging for a 1.9 reveal, it was a huge letdown, to the point of a bit of backlash. This could have all been avoided if Minecraft screenshots hadn't been used as part of the hunt, and we had been informed from the start that the prizes had nothing to do with Minecraft.

The Very Mysterious 1.9 Block

Staying with 1.9, when we finally did start getting screenshots of what would be appearing in the 1.9 update, people were quick to notice a mysterious block which featured in many of the screenshots. It wasn't even very well hidden most of the time. It was often in the hotbar or in plain sight. On one occasion, they even showed four villagers sitting in a circle (square?) around this block. The devs never mentioned or even acknowledged the existence of this block, but they kept showing it in almost every screenshot of test worlds. Its texture was extremely unique. It was dark and contained smudgy flecks of colours, as if it was reflecting in some sort of prismatic manner. It was a very beautiful block and looked like it could be a really cool building block or some sort of really rare mineral.

As literally no information was given about this mysterious block, the fans were left to speculate over what it was and what it did. A new mineral? A new specialty block like the beacon? How would this block fit in with the 1.9 combat theme, and why did they keep showing it in screenshots? It was like they were making a POINT to show it off to us, but deliberately skip right over any mention of it. A block unlike anything we've ever seen in the game before, presented to us over and over again, but pretending it doesn't exist. Like they were almost trying to make us question whether or not we were truly seeing this block at all.

It wasn't until MUCH later the devs FINALLY revealed what the mysterious block was. It was actually an early form of the Structure block, which was added in 1.10 with a completely different texture. When the first 1.9 snapshot finally DID come at the end of JULY, this block was added, but it did absolutely nothing and could only be obtained with commands. This block was SO heavily teased for the 1.9 snapshots and the 1.9 update, at a time when the community was very much starved of new content, but ultimately turned out to just be a technical block. At least, until it was properly implemented in 1.10. 

Okay, this one wasn't truly nothing. But I have put this here as a block was teased for many months that, when finally introduced, didn't do anything. The devs said they kept showing off this block simply because they thought it was fun to see us speculate about a mysterious block. Basically the skis all over again.

Bluestone!?!

Now we fast-forward to 2019, around the release of the Village and Pillage update. A minute-long, cinematic, animated trailer for the 1.14 update was released on Minecraft's official YouTube page. The cinematic trailer featured all you would expect to see for this update - a player entering the new and updated village and everything being wonderful and idyllic, before the skies darken, the music darkens, and a swarm of illagers crash the party. The villagers run away and there is a brief tussle between the player and the pillagers, ravagers and vindicators. The player defeats the pillagers and saves the day, and all the villagers come back out and start throwing items in the air to celebrate.

The items the villagers throw into the air include things like bread and....... wait what??? 

At exactly 0:43 in the video, every eagle-eyed fan had the video paused, mouth agape, trying to zoom in on that villager on the left throwing items into the air. It's got the shape of redstone dust, but it's...... BLUE!?! Is it just Lapis?? Nope... it is genuinely blue redstone!!

Needless to say, the fandom went NUTS. Did Mojang accidentally reveal an upcoming new mineral that's going to be in the next update??

Just about every popular YouTuber at the time uploaded a video speculating what this new mysterious bluestone could be. The community went MAD with speculation. Could it be some sort of parallel redstone mineral? Could it be cobalt that will be used to make magnets? Is it actually just gunpowder with funny lighting? Will it be something entirely new from a new system that we will see in 1.15???

For many weeks, speculations appeared all over Twitter, YouTube and Reddit as people tried to crack the case of the mysterious bluestone. People got so hyped over bluestone that nobody really listened when HelenAngel tried to tell us there was no such bluestone. AntVenom was still adamant there would be a bluestone mineral coming in the next update. Well, we have the power of hindsight now and know that 1.15 was no big cobalt magnets parallel redstone update, but rather the Ⓑ update.

As for the mysterious bluestone itself which caused quite the stir.... it was an artistic error.

And those are the times the community chased our tails and went mad over a troll texture, unrelated game codes, a technical block and a colouring error!! No doubt there will be more red herrings along the way, but it has been fun to look back and remember these times we all went nuts over what ultimately turned out to be nothing. It shows how much power this game has on people and how much people will try and look in the background for hints of new features! There will ALWAYS be someone who swears they can see some sort of new ore or mob or block far off in the distance, but remember: it is very rare nowadays for Mojang to hide stuff in the background. By all means have a look and zoom in, but analysing every pixel is likely a waste of time.