My Story of the Single Bug That Almost Made Me Stop Playing Minecraft

In a recent rant, I brought up and talked briefly about a bug that I found to be so game-breaking and so downright NASTY, I almost stopped playing Minecraft. I realised that the bug was SO nasty - to the point it was perhaps my worst ever playing experience - that it deserved its own rant.

This one's personal.

To others, this bug was a minor inconvenience. To me, it caused a very visceral, nauseating reaction. It made me feel like the game was truly broken. This bug caused such a strong reaction, I became anxious to use snapshots for a while afterwards. And this bug has had PERMANENT ramifications on the way I play.

And you know the best part? It took Mojang literally YEARS to fix this bug. They kept SAYING it had been fixed... but alas, it hadn't been. It caught me out several more times.

My First Encounter with Bug MC-35856

The bug, officially MC-35856 on the bug tracker, first appeared in the cursed 1.7 snapshot, 13w42b. The unlucky 13th snapshot for 1.7, this snapshot released on October 18th, 2013, just one week before the full release of 1.7. The snapshot itself was a miniscule bugfixing snapshot towards the end of the snapshot cycle for 1.7. One of the last before pre-releases. It fixed exactly five bugs from the "a" snapshot. But BOY did it add one.

When I first loaded up my Minecraft world in 13w42b, I instantly noticed something was different. But I didn't really think too much of it. Didn't really think anything was WRONG, just different. Almost as soon as the world loaded, I heard the beginning of my favourite Minecraft track, "Mice on Venus". The music in Minecraft, to me, had always been one of the biggest and most defining features of Minecraft. In my first year of play, when I was properly addicted, the Minecraft soundtrack was my life's soundtrack (well, that and my parents arguing). I knew very well all 12 of the tracks that could play. I knew most of the jukebox songs too. I knew all their names. And naturally, I had my favourites.

My all-time favourite was Mice on Venus. It starts out very quietly, almost like one of the two nuance-style tracks. But after 30 seconds or so, the very soft, slow and calm piano kicks in, playing a very nice and calming melody which slowly gets louder and develops into the main melody, which is an absolute joy to listen to. Calm, nostalgic, melodic, blissful. After that ends, the second half of the track begins, which in itself is an enchanting wintry-style tune. The full track runs almost 5 minutes, and all of it is absolutely incredible.

I always either cheered when I heard that first note, or just stopped what I was doing to listen. It seemed to come on very rarely so I was always very delighted when it did. So you can imagine how happy I was when it came on INSTANTLY, as soon as I loaded up 13w42b. It was odd that music played instantly, it was usually a few minutes. But I didn't think much of it. I just sat enjoying the blissful music.

But then. I heard something else.

Something that was getting louder, behind the lovely music. Something familiar too.

It was... another track!! Playing behind Mice on Venus!!! WHAT?!?!? NO!!!!!!!!! YUCK!!!!!!!!!!

Blissful Music + Blissful Music = Total Cacophony.

You could say I have sensitive ears, or a sensitive stomach. But hearing two Minecraft tracks playing over each other like that was an EXTREMELY painful experience. One that I can only describe as a total earrape. Not because it was overly loud, but just listening to two songs I absolutely loved dissonantly playing over one another. THIS SHOULD NOT BE HAPPENING!!

The sound of Mice on Venus and Clark playing over each other was EXTREMELY unpleasant. Extremely dissonant. And these are songs that partly defined my life at the time. 

This wasn't just upsetting to hear - it was sensory overload. Physical and very real, sensory overload. Two songs with two different rhythms and two different chord progressions are NEVER meant to be played over one another, especially at the same volume. The result is something absolutely SICKENING.

Oh, but it got even worse.

I tried to keep playing the game with these two songs playing over one another, in what was a frankly nauseating experience. I was already spooked and overwhelmed from all the competing sound....... when those first few shrill notes of DRY HANDS started up!!!!!! 

At this point, I SLAMMED the game shut and had what I can only describe as an anxiety attack. I was hyperventilating. I was shivering. A very INTENSE reaction. No WAY was I playing Minecraft again. All I could do was stare at my blank screen in absolute shock and the visceral disgust.

I don't filter out sound as readily as others do, so this kind of competing noise where my brain is trying to focus on two different songs at once playing over each other will very readily lead to actual, genuine sensory overload for me.

Others on the Minecraft forum also reported this bug, but it seemed nobody else reacted to it like I did. To everyone else I spoke to, the bug was a bit of an unpleasant inconvenience. When I went on there to yell and scream about it, everyone told me to stop being dramatic. It's not a big deal, they said. It's just a bug, it'll be fixed in the next snapshot.

IT CAN'T EVEN BE STOPPED!!!

At the time, the game was being prepared to have some new music added, and changes were being made to the sound system in Minecraft. No doubt this bug was a consequence of their changes to accommodate the upcoming Minecraft Volume Beta music.

As if the cacophony of three Minecraft songs playing over each other wasn't bad enough, it COULDN'T EVEN BE TURNED OFF!!! Whenever I tried turning the music off in-game, it kept turning itself back on, or playing quietly but I could still hear it. Again, as a consequence of the new sound system. There was literally no escaping this bug other than muting the computer's speakers. NOTHING worked in-game as it should. The sound system was totally broken in a way that would guarantee sensory overload. So I either had to play with the sound off, or don't play at all. As you probably know, playing Minecraft with the sound off is a RISKY game to play. Not only can any mob sneak up on you, ESPECIALLY the creeper, you also can't hear things like lava. And there was no option to turn on subtitles back then.

So I rolled the game back to 13w42a using the newly-implemented ability to play on older versions, and waited for 13w43a.

13w43a dropped............ but the bug wasn't fixed. And very suddenly, 1.7 itself was releasing.

SURELY they wouldn't let 1.7 release with this bug.. right???

Wrong. 1.7 released and the bug persisted. You could now turn the music off if you turned it off enough times in the menu, but this was very unreliable still, as it would still keep turning itself back on.

And Then There Was More Music

Rolling in November 2013, Minecraft had a secret music update that didn't have a version number. But time finally came that all the new music was added. Menu music, Creative Mode music, Nether music, End credits music... almost all the music you hear nowadays that isn't Overworld ambience music, was added in this update.

But they didn't sodding fix MC-35856.

But I couldn't NOT have the music on with all this new music!

And that is how I was subjected to even MORE overlapping music. As you'd expect, the addition of all this NEW music only made it infinitely WORSE. Music now overlapped on the TITLE SCREEN!!!!!!!!!!! The new Creative Mode music overlapped. The new NETHER music overlapped. EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE, FREAKIN' OVERLAPPED. The title screen was by far the worst. I now couldn't even LOAD THE GOD-DAMNED GAME WITHOUT SENSORY OVERLOAD.

How they let this bug last until the new music was added, is still to this day absolutely beyond me.

The fact this KEPT happening, the volume sliders kept not working, I couldn't enjoy any of the new music, and now I could get earraped at the very TITLE SCREEN, all made me want to stop playing altogether. I didn't want to roll back to 1.6, either. Every time I played I had to battle with the title screen to turn the music off.

I did eventually get it to stay off permanently, and I knew that's how it was going to have to be from now on. No more Minecraft music. No more Mice on Venus. No more Sweden. No more Subwoofer Lullaby. A big part of the game was lost.

Silence...

I DEFINITELY felt the silence at first. Playing Minecraft without the music on meant the game had lost a LOT of its charm. A lot of my draw to it was gone.

After a few days, the silence of musicless Minecraft got too much, and I decided to give it one last shot. I gulped and took the plunge. I turned the music back on. Instantly, Biome Fest, a Creative Mode music, started playing. Nice. I was enjoying it. After several minutes, I thought "wow, they have fixed it, no overlaps!"

As the track was winding down, Danny started playing. It played for one bar, and then the music was gone. Truly for good. One more battle with the sliders later, that was the end of it. Looking at the Minecraft bug tracker, I could see MC-35856 was marked as fixed. WHAT!!! I scrolled down in the comments and there were a LOT of people saying "THIS IS NOT FIXED, REOPEN!!!"

That really was the very final straw. Now I can't even trust Mojang in saying they've FIXED this horrible bug.

It definitely took quite a lot of getting used to, not having the music. And it was a real shame that they had added all this new Minecraft music and I couldn't enjoy it. But hey, no music was definitely infinitely better than ear-rape. And it was either this, or I stop playing outright.

It Took Them HOW LONG to Fix This Bug???

I did eventually get used to not having music in Minecraft. But I did still, every now and then, check the bug report. Because I thought "it would be nice if I COULD play with music". After a while, I did miss it but was totally used to not having it. There was absolutely NO WAY I was going to turn it back on with a chance of having a sensory overload. But snapshot after snapshot passed, and the bug was still open.

When Minecraft 1.8 was released they once again stated they had fixed the bug. I wasn't falling for it this time. I checked the comments before I even thought about turning on the music again. Comments all said the bug was still not fixed. Knew it.

By 2015, I couldn't imagine playing WITH the music. And so I continued playing as normal.

But surely this bug, which appeared in October 2013, was fixed in 2015... right?

Nope.

2016?

Nope.

2017!?!??!

Nope.

Folks, it took Mojang till 2018 or 2019 to fix this bug... that appeared in 2013. For HALF OF MINECRAFT'S ENTIRE LIFESPAN, its background music could and did overlap. I'm sorry but that is just... HOW!!?!?!? 

HOW could a bug THIS BAD stay for THIS LONG????

I'm not sure which version the bug finally DID get fixed, and to be honest, I don't even trust the bug tracker with this bug anymore.

To this day, I still play with the music turned off. I can't imagine playing with it on at all now. I STILL don't trust the music. Everyone's been telling me on Reddit, on Discord, and even my friend who plays it with the music on, that the bug is fixed. Everyone's telling me they've never had overlapping music issues for years.... but I still don't trust it. As much as I'd love to FINALLY experience the game's menu music and Nether music, as well as 1.13's ocean tracks and 1.16's new Nether tracks... I just can't. I can't bring myself to turn the music back on. After the number of false-fixes and genuine pain and discomfort this bug caused, turning the music back on would cause me a lot of anxiety.

And I've played with the music off for so long now, I actually quite like the peace of no music.