Mojang changes Minecraft system requirements after 17 years, recommends 16GB of RAM for "Fancy" graphics

[Alfonso Maruccia]

Winners & losers: For the first time in nearly two decades, Mojang has announced a significant change in Minecraft's hardware requirements, a rare move for one of the biggest gaming products in history. The Microsoft-owned studio wants to future-proof Minecraft: Java Edition, but players running older hardware won't be cheering this time around.

Minecraft: Java Edition now officially recommends 16GB of RAM, and that's just the starting point. Mojang recently explained that the wildly popular sandbox game is getting a more modern baseline for its system requirements, acknowledging that some players with aging systems will be disappointed as the company works to keep improving its blocky experience for everyone else.

The update arrives after 17 years without a change to Java Edition's requirements, a long stretch by any video game's standards. After nearly two decades, Minecraft has essentially grown out of its shoes: players will need stronger PCs to run future builds – no matter the impossibly expensive costs of crucial silicon components such as memory chips and GPUs.

Minecraft's system requirements officially changed on July 21, covering both the "Fast" and "Fancy" presets. The game's official store page now lists a 1080p, 30 FPS target for the Fast preset, and a 1080p, 60 FPS target for the Fancy preset. The Fast preset calls for 8GB of RAM with a discrete GPU, or 12GB with an integrated GPU. The Fancy preset, meanwhile, recommends 16GB of RAM for comfortably running Java Edition for the foreseeable future.

A 16GB recommendation might sound like a lot, especially considering Java Edition currently allocates only around 4GB of system memory by default. Mojang is also updating its CPU and GPU requirements, with stronger, modern processors, either x86-64 or Arm64, now needed to properly run the Fancy preset.

Minecraft: Bedrock Edition still has lower system requirements than Java Edition, though players will need the latter to use custom mods on PC. Mojang says the new requirements are still modest compared to modern AAA games, meaning Java Edition should keep running smoothly on most well-equipped gaming systems.

The company explained: "We want to make it clear for players what kind of computer can run Java Edition smoothly. While older devices may still launch the game, they will struggle to deliver a good experience. This can lead to low frame rates, visual issues, long loading times, or performance that doesn't match what players expect."

Guaranteed performance on older hardware is officially a thing of the past, but Mojang argues that's for the best. Leaving aging systems behind will let developers focus on meaningful technical upgrades, starting with the shift from OpenGL to Vulkan.

Permalink to story:

Mojang changes Minecraft system requirements after 17 years, recommends 16GB of RAM for "Fancy" graphics

 

[NumberNine]

Why did they develop it to perform worse?

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Why did they develop it to perform worse?

Same reason they developed it to ban you for saying naughty no no words like "black". Because they hate the consumer.

 

[arrowflash]

With the current consumer component crisis and soaring prices caused by the AI bubble and supply chain issues, it's really bad timing that doesn't make sense for game companies to do things like this. They should be focusing on optimizing and lowering requirements instead. Game studio teams are still stuck in bubbles with everyone in office using workstations with RTX 5090s.

 

[Thrackerzod]

I'm not really sure why a game where everything is made of giant pixelated blocks needs "fancy graphics". Wasn't it originally designed to look retro?

 

[Lew Zealand]

Play Bedrock or the current version of Java if you have a potato. it's not like there's a shortage of content, or mods for older Java.

 

[poshflamingos]

Why did they develop it to perform worse?

They didn't. They're moving from OpenGL to Vulkan, which gives you a huge increase in performance/framerates.

Using more memory ≠ performing worse.

 

[NumberNine]

They didn't. They're moving from OpenGL to Vulkan, which gives you a huge increase in performance/framerates.

Using more memory ≠ performing worse.

In my reality, using more memory on a system that doesn't have it creates reduced performance.

 

[poshflamingos]

In my reality, using more memory on a system that doesn't have it creates reduced performance.

And using more memory on a system that does have it creates better performance. Which is the whole point of why they're doing it.
Do you think that everyone else should be forced to have worse performance just because a small sliver of the playerbase have PCs that are too old?

 

[MasterMace]

Microslop buys Minecraft, RAM requirement increases to 16GB

 

[TooQik]

Surprised they haven't forced Copilot as a requirement also.

 

[acrossthestars]

Leaving aging systems behind will let developers focus on meaningful technical upgrades, starting with the shift from OpenGL to Vulkan

That doesn't make any sense. Vulkan is lower-level than OpenGL; if anything, the graphics should improve while performance stay the same. The only reason to recommend more RAM than before, is to front-load some unspecified tech debt onto the customer. I wonder if Minecraft is being ported over to UE 6, on the back end. I strongly doubt that its codebase from 17 years ago supports path tracing and all of this other superfluous nonsense they're cramming into it. Nor does it need these features. It's a voxel-based game. The whole appeal of its art style is that it's not a triple-A game. It not having CoD-levels of graphics fidelity is part of the point.

But, I suppose Microsoft failed to convince people to get new PCs because of Copilot, so maybe gaming will be their method of causing a "forced upgrade cycle"...

 

[Theinsanegamer]

That doesn't make any sense. Vulkan is lower-level than OpenGL; if anything, the graphics should improve while performance stay the same. The only reason to recommend more RAM than before, is to front-load some unspecified tech debt onto the customer. I wonder if Minecraft is being ported over to UE 6, on the back end. I strongly doubt that its codebase from 17 years ago supports path tracing and all of this other superfluous nonsense they're cramming into it. Nor does it need these features. It's a voxel-based game. The whole appeal of its art style is that it's not a triple-A game. It not having CoD-levels of graphics fidelity is part of the point.

But, I suppose Microsoft failed to convince people to get new PCs because of Copilot, so maybe gaming will be their method of causing a "forced upgrade cycle"...

Just using vulkan does not increase performance. You still have to optimize software, and mojang is horrible at that.

And using more memory on a system that does have it creates better performance. Which is the whole point of why they're doing it.
Do you think that everyone else should be forced to have worse performance just because a small sliver of the playerbase have PCs that are too old?

Using 8x as much memory as before to produce the same game isn't an efficient use of resources.

 

[poshflamingos]

Using 8x as much memory as before to produce the same game isn't an efficient use of resources.

Except it isn't "the same game". It had much of its codebase rewritten over the years, it got an improved chunk loading system, higher draw distances, tons of new materials and interactions, the new "vibrant visuals" graphics mode that is much more complex than "fancy" (it's already available on the Bedrock edition, but this Vulkan update is in part to bring that mode to the Java version as well). It had already been getting significantly harder to run for low end machines. It's not like the game will suddenly get heavier out of nowhere with this new update, they're just updating the requirements/recommendations to better match what already is reality. And the transition to Vulkan means all of the above will run better on PCs that do support it.

As for the other part of the comment, even though it wasn't directed at me, using Vulkan instead of OpenGL absolutely does increase performance, especially in CPU-limited scenarios, since OpenGL has a huge CPU overhead compared to Vulkan. Which is critical for Minecraft, where the bottleneck has always been chunk loading and draw distances.

 

[BobHome]

That doesn't make any sense. Vulkan is lower-level than OpenGL; if anything, the graphics should improve while performance stay the same. The only reason to recommend more RAM than before, is to front-load some unspecified tech debt onto the customer. I wonder if Minecraft is being ported over to UE 6, on the back end. I strongly doubt that its codebase from 17 years ago supports path tracing and all of this other superfluous nonsense they're cramming into it. Nor does it need these features. It's a voxel-based game. The whole appeal of its art style is that it's not a triple-A game. It not having CoD-levels of graphics fidelity is part of the point.

But, I suppose Microsoft failed to convince people to get new PCs because of Copilot, so maybe gaming will be their method of causing a "forced upgrade cycle"...

Aren't retro emulators great?

 

[Art C]

They need you to be on a bigger machine so that you can enjoy the new Copilot-enhanced Minecraft experience.

 

[PierreJG]

It is a bad time to do this, but they are also making the same mistakes as a lot of older game companies, including Microsoft. You never want to force your customers to upgrade their systems just to run your software. This is a very bad business practice. Even Blizzard Entertainment knew that. Diablo 2 Resurrected gives you a choice. A new design that will be hardware-intensive or classic. Not sure if they still have it, though, as I didn't play D2R for quite some time. This gives their customers a choice, and it still supports older systems, guessing even a 2000s pc can still run the classic mode(not sure though)