Minecraft's 26.2 update just fixed a bug that's 14 years old

Look, I'm a big believer in better late than never. A job done, even if it took a while to complete, is better than it never being completed. That's why I'm proud of Mojang, because 14 years after a bug related to dropped items was first reported, the team behind Minecraft has finally dropped a fix with the 26.2 update, bringing an end to one of the game's longest-running errors.

Minecraft's 26.2 Chaos Cubed update launched on Tuesday, June 16, bringing with it the new Sulfur Caves biome, the Sulfur Cube mob, and a host of bug fixes and tweaks to the sandbox game. While many of them are welcome changes, such as the move to make cheating in Hardcore mode impossible, there was one specific fix that caught many people's attention.

Why? It finally squashes a bug that was first reported 14 years ago. But after all this time, Mojang has proved it hasn't forgotten about it, dropping the fix 4,983 days later.

The bug was first reported on Wednesday, October 24, 2012, and was given the name "MC-4" because it was the fourth bug ever reported on Mojang's bug tracker. The issue involved items that were dropped on the edge of the block in online servers. When dropped, the client sometimes made the item drop off the edge, while the server left it on the block it originally landed on.

Over the years, Mojang thought it had found fixes for this issue, with Minecraft Lead Designer and Mojang CCO Jens 'Jeb' Bergensten commenting back in 2016 that it was "fixed to the point that I can't reproduce it anymore." Still, it took another ten years for Mojang to finally mark it as resolved on its bug tracker, indicating that it is completely finished with this issue.

I tried to find an example of a bug that has run for this long, but my research came up empty-handed. The closest I could find was the GTA 5 loading screen issue. With loading times taking ages, a fan of the game with the username 't0st' looked into the game's code and found a CPU bottleneck that, when fixed, lowered load times by 70%. Eight years after the game's launch, Rockstar gave t0st $10,000 for their work.

Still, there's more work to be done for Mojang, as bug MC-14, which reports an issue with minecarts that occupy the same space maintaining their momentum, was reported on the same day as MC-4, and remains unresolved.