Minecraft’s big Caves & Cliffs update was supposed to be released this summer (Q3), but the team at Mojang has decided to split the update content in half.
As explained in the video below, there will still be a Caves & Cliffs update coming this summer, but the other half, with more complex features, will be delayed to the holiday season. So it’s half-delayed.
The Caves & Cliffs update will change the way the world in Minecraft is generated, with the addition of new style of caves and mountains- which also increases the world height- and also brings in some performance issue.
The first update in summer will include all the blocks and mobs promised before. The second update in holiday season will see most of the world generation aspects.
Mojang decided to delay half of the update to ensure its quality (as in, making sure it’s not breaking already existing worlds people spent years in), making sure the technical issues of the new world generation is properly handled and for the health of the team. They don’t want to crunch, and productivity during a pandemic is understandably not as high.
This is an interesting way of handling game update delays- ship out portions of the update that’s ready rather than delaying the whole package as a whole. And it’s good to see the devs earnestly explaining why they are doing it, and what’s still in store for the first half of the update.