The power of nostalgia is an incredible thing. It can make you really crave spaghetti hoops after a hard day’s work, it can make you feel like a kid when you get a whiff of a scent that you can’t quite place, and it can make you restart Minecraft for the tenth time, only to stop playing it after a week.
VR was the first time I felt surprised opening up a new blocky world in years, and it happened about thirty minutes after my Oculus Quest (yes, the first one) arrived. Now, almost a decade after its first implementation, Mojang has removed VR support.
Okay, we actually knew about this for some time. Last October, Mojang announced it would end support for Minecraft VR in March 2025, and it even gave a small grace period, which is why it has now stopped in May (as spotted by PC World). Softening that blow in a very strange way, Mojang’s implementation of Minecraft in VR was both temperamental and a little underwhelming.
In my time with the game, I always felt like I was playing Minecraft, with a little asterisk up the top right. Firstly, performance was inconsistent, and I often had to tinker with things or turn my setup off and on again to get it working.
Hitting trees, mud, and zombies also didn’t feel quite as satisfying as I would like, often missing clear shots or generally losing out on speed (I swear, it’s the game’s fault I keep missing the zombie). To feel more like actual Minecraft, I had to swap to clicking a button to hit trees, but it just doesn’t quite capture the magic of actually playing VR.
With these rather large caveats out of the way, Minecraft VR is one of the most fun experiences I’ve had in my years playing VR. Games like No Man’s Sky and Phasmophobia prove that transforming flat games into the world of VR can give the game a nice shot of adrenaline, and I think this is largely because these games become very comfortable in their original form.
When my Keyboard or PlayStation controller is removed from my hand, and I’m given the Meta controller in their place, I’m suddenly afraid of zombies, creepers, and skeletons once more. Meta Minecraft added a depth to the world that made me feel like I was playing it for the first time again. This sounds like a bit of a cliche, but it’s true. Seeing Minecraft in VR just felt different.
In fact, in a funny coincidence, I tried to boot up virtual Minecraft just last month. It didn’t work, and I can only assume that was partly my fault, but it shows the game was on my mind. There are workarounds, should you still want to play it, in the form of mods like Vivecraft.
Vivecraft is an embodiment of one of the best things about PC gaming. It’s a free fan fan-supported mod that allows people to play Minecraft in VR from their PC. It, alongside a handful of similar fan projects, offers a better experience than the official port.
However, Vivecraft doesn’t account for compatibility. Playing Minecraft in VR through the official route meant you could join other worlds your friends were playing on, and they didn’t need a VR helmet to play alongside you. Now, to play with others, you will, at minimum, need to get a few mods working and convince all your friends to do the same. It also doesn’t fix that PSVR Minecraft VR players don’t have any sort of workaround.
Unfortunately, we don’t know what the player figures were like for Mojang’s VR port prior to the end of its support, but Mojang’s rationale is likely tied to Minecraft’s single biggest selling point right now—its ever-evolving nature.
Minecraft is a very different game from the one I’m nostalgic for, and that’s due to the implementation of new mobs, areas, ores, and more. Each update also requires an update to every other version of Minecraft, and that extra work is compounded by the fact that Mojang has to update both Bedrock and Java versions of the game. The Xbox 360, PS3, Xbox One, and PS4 versions of the game have all been discontinued, not receiving updates in years. As the game gets larger and larger, developers have to think more broadly about what they choose to implement and which platforms deserve to see that update.
Minecraft VR losing support is only another rung in the planned obsolescence of older or less popular versions of Minecraft, and official VR support felt particularly half-hearted even when it was in its prime.
It’s a shame to see official Minecraft VR support go, even if it doesn’t feel like a huge surprise. Given the strength of virtual reality Minecraft ports in fan circles, hopefully, the community can continue picking up the slack.
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