Minecraft No Longer Officially Supports VR

Minecraft: Bedrock Edition has now removed its official support for PC VR and PlayStation VR.

If you're unfamiliar with the two versions of Minecraft:

• Bedrock Edition is the C++ version that runs across Windows, Android, iOS, iPadOS, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, Xbox, ChromeOS, and Amazon Fire.
• Java Edition is the original version for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Bedrock is the only of the two that had official VR support. Its removal was announced last year, and has arrived with this week's patch for the game on Windows and PlayStation.

The removal means there is now no way to play Minecraft in VR on PlayStation at all (unless you already have the game installed and block updates) and on PC you'll need to use the Vivecraft mod for the Java Edition, precluding easily playing with friends who use non-PC flatscreen devices.

QuestCraft 5.0 Brings Minecraft VR To Quest 3 Unofficially With 120FPS Performance

QuestCraft 5.0 brings the unofficial Minecraft VR port to Quest 3 with 120FPS performance, and a Pico version will follow later this year.

UploadVRHenry Stockdale

On Quest standalone, you can sideload an unofficial port version of the Java Edition in VR called QuestCraft, though its performance isn't great and it doesn't support the latest version of the game.

On PlayStation VR2 there's a Minecraft-inspired title called cyubeVR, and there are multiple clones on the Meta Horizon Store for Quest, but of course none of these are multiplayer compatible with the real Minecraft.

The History Of Minecraft VR

Mods that add VR to Minecraft have existed since 2014, when "Minecrift" brought support to the original Oculus Rift Development Kit (DK1).

‘Minecrift’ Going Offline This Week But ‘Vivecraft’ Lives On

Minecraft finally arrives on the Oculus Rift this week. Sadly, that means it’s time to wave goodbye to one of the headset’s most popular mods. The developers behind the unofficial Minecrift mod, which brought VR support to the incredibly popular videogame long before it was announced as a

UploadVRJamie Feltham

Minecraft officially came to the Oculus-powered Samsung Gear VR smartphone VR system in April 2016, then to the Oculus Rift on PC a few months later in August, and the now-dead Windows MR headsets the year after in 2017.

Three years later, in 2020, the game added VR support for the original PlayStation VR.

Uniquely for its time, Minecraft offered the ability to transition between fully immersive VR Mode and a Living Room Mode, where you sat in a premade Minecraft house and played on a virtual flat screen, at any time.

Updates ceased for the Gear VR version in 2020 (soon after the headset itself), though owners can still play singleplayer, while this week marks the end of that Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR support entirely.

Hands-On: ‘Minecraft’ For The Oculus Rift Provides The Sense Of Scale VR Was Made For

Before I jump into my experiences with Minecraft for the Oculus Rift let me begin with a brief caveat. Before this I had spent maybe eleven minutes total playing the regular 2D version of Minecraft. That’s about as long as an episode of Rugrats and while that may be

UploadVRJoe Durbin

Minecraft's official VR support was partially developed by John Carmack, and for many years Carmack lobbied publicly and privately for the game to come to the standalone Oculus Go and then Oculus Quest headsets.

Carmack has said he even had it working on Quest with positional tracking, but claims that Meta's focus with Microsoft was getting "some Xbox titles instead", which didn't pan out either.

Last year Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth said the company "tried to make our case" to Microsoft to bring Minecraft to Quest "many times", and the two companies have a long-term XR partnership that has brought Xbox Cloud Gaming to Quest as well as (currently experimental) seamless Remote Desktop for Windows 11. But with the removal of PC VR and PlayStation VR support, the prospects for Minecraft VR on Quest seem less likely than before.