Minecraft entering Beta on December 20th, 2010

Today, Notch, the developer of Minecraft, made a huge announcement on his blog, Minecraft will be entering beta come December 20th. When the beta comes, there will be many changes to Minecraft. These changes include a “larger focus on polish and content”, stable API for modding, and a price change.

When the game enters beta, the price will change just a little bit. It will now be 14.95 Euros or about $20. They will also be removing the licence that promises that you will receive all future versions of Minecraft for free. This does not affect people who purchased the game during the Alpha stages, only future purchases. If you do end up buying the game during beta, you will receive all updates until release and all bug patches will be free.

Along with the announcement that Minecraft will be entering beta, you will soon be able to gift Minecraft to someone. What is great is that if you buy a gift pass before December 20th, any account created with that gift code will be considered as an alpha account and receive all future updates for free.

Notch also notes that the next game update will be coming next week, before the beta.

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