It’s nearly the end of the road for the Gear VR version of Minecraft; support for that version of Mojang’s enduring hit will end in October.
What does that mean, exactly? Well, as of October there will be no new updates for Minecraft Gear VR, and multiplayer and Realms support will be taken away too. You’ll still be able to play the game in single-player, but Minecraft with no online mode is a bit of a sad thought, isn’t it?
Support is also ending for Windows 10 Mobile, Android devices with less than 768MB of RAM, iOS devices running iOS 10 or below, or video cards that only support DirectX 10.1 or below. Make sure you’re updating where necessary if you want to keep playing.
Minecraft is still available on Oculus Rift and it doesn’t sound like support is ending there. Gear VR itself is basically dead at this point; Samsung itself has stopped updating its software, Facebook dropped Oculus SDK support for the device and the latest Samsung phones don’t support the headset, so it’s not too surprising to see this news. Minecraft never came to Oculus Go but, even if it had, that platform’s going the way of the dodo soon too.
Many of our hopes for Minecraft VR’s future rest on Oculus Quest, then. Back in June, Facebook’s John Carmack revealed he had the game up and running on the standalone headset, but could never get his company and Mojang owner Microsoft to collaborate on release. Minecraft VR support has always been a pet project for the legendary developer. Look, here he is wearing a Gear VR and playing the game at an Xbox E3 conference a few years back.
Online support for a port is gaining ground, though; even the Oculus Gaming Twitter account is encouraging fans to let Mojang know they want it. Fans are upvoting the idea on the official Minecraft site, too.
Still, even if it never comes to Quest, we’ll always have Minecraft Earth, right? Right?
