Why Is That Squid Flying? Minecraft Bugs Explained!

Why Is That Squid Flying? Minecraft Bugs Explained!

(NARRATOR) For over 15 years,
Minecraft has evolved through countless rounds of
beta testing, updates and drops. This blocky world is filled with life, from the snowiest mountaintops
to the deepest mines. But beneath the surface
lies another existence. Some extinct, some still present
and waiting to get fixed. Some are easy to spot,
others are much harder to find. A few have passed by unnoticed, while others have affected
the game forever. Let’s talk about… Bugs. (NARRATOR) There’s the funny ones,
the disturbing ones, and the game-crashing ones. (SIGHS) And those are very, very serious. (NARRATOR) But what are bugs,
and why do they exist? Bugs are unexpected
or unwanted behavior in games, and they happen
because of accidents while programming. We are all humans and we make mistakes. It can happen for a number of reasons. Every time we add something new
to the game, we risk it not interacting
with something as we’d expected. And then someone finds it and then
we’re like, “Oh, that’s an issue.” The ones that are really serious,
of course, we want to get fixed straight away. We don’t want people to lose
anything in their games. But some bugs can actually be quite funny. The bugs where villagers
are floating around are just so hilarious. They lay in the bed,
they get nudged by another villager
or a player or something, and the next thing, they’re floating off
for no reason at all. Like, is that even possible? Bugs like that are what we live for. It just makes our day.
It makes us laugh. When I started working on Minecraft,
I didn’t really know exactly how everything worked, and I wanted to add a new mob,
so I added a squid. The best way for me to do that
was to copy an existing mob. So I based the squid on the cow mob, but I forgot to remove
the milking behavior, so for a while
you could actually milk the squid, which was a bit silly,
and also not the intended behavior. And then, again,
the squid was my first mob, so I managed to add
more problems to it. And one was that
in the way I made the movement code, the server and client wouldn’t agree
on where the squid actually was. This caused the behavior that you would
sometimes see squids flying around in the air,
and it was the flying squid bug. (NARRATOR) Some bugs have, of course,
affected the game more than others. For example,
the booster rail minecart bug. (JENS) When you put a minecart
next to another minecart, the bounding boxes would overlap, which would push
the minecarts next to each other. And people used this bug to create tracks that would accelerate minecarts
to extraordinary speeds. But we have a thinking
that we shouldn’t keep bugs, even though they are being used by players. Because we might introduce even more bugs
by just keeping bugs around, if that makes sense. So we fixed the bug and replaced it
with a powered rail, so you can now intentionally create
the booster tracks. (GNEMBON) So basically the bug exposed the need
in the game for a particular feature, and that feature was added
as a proper feature rather than a bug. (JAY) Each and every bug
has the chance to change Minecraft, and hopefully for the better. (NARRATOR) There are bugs that are
almost as old as the game itself. One bug that was reported very early
was the bug #2025, that mobs would sometimes glitch
through blocks or glitch through walls. And we’ve tried to fix
this bug many times. (JAY) Our developer, Panda4994,
fixed that from his phone at the strike of midnight
on New Year’s Eve for 2025, while he was watching the fireworks. (GNEMBON) The bug #2025
was fixed January 1, 2025. How could we miss
an opportunity like that? (JENS CHUCKLES) (NARRATOR) So there’s quite a few
bugs in the game. Um, I wouldn’t say that they are
more common in Minecraft. It’s just that Minecraft is a game that is
based on a lot of different systems, which causes many unexpected scenarios
and situations. (JAY) Give to that as well,
the fact we have so many people enjoying the game, there are going to be
so many different ways. The players are building things,
setting things up, different playstyles, and that includes
finding new and interesting ways sometimes to break the game. (NARRATOR) With a game as big as Minecraft, it takes time to scour every corner of the Overworld in the hunt for bugs. Yes, and thankfully,
since so many people are playing Minecraft, we are sure to hear about these bugs. (NARRATOR) Exactly, because you as a player
can always help improve the game. And here’s how you do it. When you encounter a bug,
you can report it in our bug tracker. There are a lot of bugs being reported. Let’s be honest, we’re not perfect. Just like this Hoglin’s leg movement. To keep track of all the bugs,
we have moderators and helpers confirming and organizing
all of the reports so the bugs can be picked up
by our developers. Let’s catch some bugs. (NARRATOR) They think for a bit,
dive into the code and start fixing the bug. You can follow their work through
the changelog in the bug tracker. When the bug is fixed, we release
an update, and voila, the bug is gone. Then we move on to the next one. (JAY) The way we track bugs for Minecraft,
I feel, is very unique and special. We do see it as an opportunity
to not only improve the game, but also hear the voices
of each and every one of our players as they report bugs to us. And they really are
the heart and soul of our bug tracker. We are very grateful
for all the effort and time that people spend on reporting bugs. (NARRATOR) And now
we’ve updated our bug tracker, and we can’t wait for you to report
more bugs to us at bugs.mojang.com. Job done.

Floating villagers, tumbling pandas, and flying squids! It may sound like the ultimate Minecraft-themed Halloween party, but these are just a few of the bugs we’ve tackled in the game! Join @Gnembon, Jens Bergensten, and Jay Wells as they talk about their favorite bugs, why they happen, and how they were fixed – or even replaced with handy features.

Have you tracked down a bug? Submit it to bugs.mojang.com and we’ll try to squash it – err, I mean gently scoop it up and carry it outside.