"No Snapshot This Week"

Those four words. In that exact order. It's what absolutely no Minecraft fan ever wants to read. For those who follow the snapshot cycle and count down the days till Wednesday, having all their hopes and dreams dashed with those four words is akin to the average person in 2021 reading "new strain of covid".

Today, Wednesday March 24th 2021, our Twitter feeds have once again been graced with the Four Words of Doom^TM. We all had it marked in our painfully empty calendars - "21w12a release date today!" It's the only thing in the nuclear covid winter we have to look forward to, and yet for precisely the 9th time since 1.17 snapshots begun, Christmas has been cancelled. With nothing to live for and a whole 7 days until the next snapshot being totally unbearable, the apocalypse is upon us and we all start a riot against the sorry soul who has to actually put the FWoD to the world.

I'm Sorry But You Kinda Brought This on Yourself.

I get it. Yes it's frustrating. Yes it's disappointing. But seriously, you should know by now snapshots are never guaranteed. The devs have tweeted this enough times by now. If you got hyped for a snapshot that was never confirmed or guaranteed, you actually have no right to harass the devs. In fact, you never have any right to harass anyone. But ESPECIALLY not the devs for the lack of a FREE update that was never even confirmed in the first place. 

The fact is, you had a false expectation for something that was never confirmed, and you got hyped for something that was never a given. By getting hyped days and days in advance, you are just setting yourself up for disappointment and frustration. The time to get hyped is when the devs start tweeting pictures of frogs on a Wednesday afternoon. Not on Thursday the previous week.

I honestly feel sorry for the person who has to tweet the FWoD, because they get so much CRAP thrown at them when they're the ones making the game we all play and love. The pitchforks and torches come out, and particularly the dreaded L-word, which I will get into later, is thrown around a lot.

The Snapshots are for BUG-SEARCHING and Feedback!

It's easy to forget in the modern day what the original purpose of snapshots was and still is. Snapshots are not to "tie us over until the next update", and they never were. They are essentially beta-tests for us, the players, to test new features, give feedback and report bugs. That's it. If there is nothing substantially complete for us to playtest, there is no snapshot. It's that simple. It does NOT mean they are taking a break... or god forbid... L***. It's because they are maybe working on big features that aren't quite stable enough for us to play yet.

I think a big problem with a lot of the fandom, particularly the vocal kids on Twitter who tend to throw all the crap at the devs is failing to realise how big of a job game development can be. I saw a very nasty thread once where some kid was attacking Kingbdogz on Twitter about how L*** this update was and how few features had been added given the time. This just made me incredibly sad to see how entitled and ungrateful some members of the community can be. It is true that 1.17 seems to have had more "missed" weeks of snapshots than any other update in recent times, but that's because a lot of the 1.17 features are INCREDIBLY large. Rewriting the entire underground and world generation, making vertical biomes possible, and an entirely new cave gen from the ground up is absolutely NO small feat. 1.17's features have been on the larger scale, so it is naturally taking longer to get each feature to snapshot-level completion. And this means a lot of missed weeks. And because snapshots are for community feedback and bug-searching, no stable features that week means NO 👏 SNAPSHOT 👏THIS 👏 WEEK 👏.

Mojang Owes You NOTHING

Another thing that really bothers me is how entitled people are to a snapshot. Yes it is absolutely frustrating when there is no snapshot, but as I have said before, these are FREE updates. Mojang could EASILY try to monetise the updates - I'm sure they could make a HUGE amount of money if they did - but they don't. They make us these free updates, and (if you're on Java Edition) you only pay the upfront cost and that's it! For a game I have played and loved for eight and a half years, which has since had fourteen MAJOR updates and is a completely different game to the one I first played... this may just be the most bang for any buck I've ever gotten. $27 for UNLIMITED playtime and unlimited free updates!!! My pair of shoes which broke in a week costed double that!!

To see people attacking the devs and call them L*** for missing a snapshot week just makes me really sad honestly. How can anyone, even a kid, be so ungrateful and so entitled? If you've ever played just about any other videogame, you will know the Mojang team are EXCEPTIONAL in how they develop their game. What other game the size of Minecraft works SO closely with its community? Snapshots are an incredible facet of this team - they are not your birthright.

I am sorry this rant sounds so patronising, but this really does my head in every time the FWoD are tweeted. I'm not even telling you not to tweet an "aww man" or "that sucks"... but hurling crap at them and saying they are incompetent and L*** and they just ruined your week... is just not cool. At all.

Two wrongs don't make a right

Just today, in a response to the FWoD, I saw a tweet that was just two angry emojis. Of all the responses, that was one of the less aggressive ones. But someone else replied to them calling them all kinds of names and saying horrible things for being ungrateful. In my eyes, this is just as bad as the ones who hurl abuse at Mojang. I don't think being a dick is ever okay, and that includes being a dick on behalf of Mojang. It's not what Mojang stand for, and I'm sure they hate people "standing up for them" with abuse, just as much as they hate getting abuse as a direct response to the FWoD.

There is More to Life Than Minecraft Snapshots!

Finally, I know times are really hard right now and many of us have been trapped at home with nothing to do for the best part of a year. We've been cut off from our social lives, our independence and our freedom. In this world of uncertainty and entrapment, snapshots may seem like the only "routine" thing to look forward to. I can absolutely see why people look forward to the snapshots a little too much, and give them a little too much weight in their lives, and thus get a little too irate when they see the FWoD pop up on their screen. But honestly, the best thing I can say is... find something else to do with your time such as ranting in a blog that nobody reads! Continue any Minecraft projects you have going, or join a new club or start a new course online. It's incredibly hard to get motivated in this global pandemic. I know, I've struggled with it myself. But honestly, if you can remove some of the weight the snapshots have in your life, it will feel a lot less disappointing and upsetting when they miss a week.

And what's more, if you distract yourself with another hobby or activity, it will be Wednesday again before you know it!