Minecraft Delays Some Caves & Cliffs Content

Minecraft's Caves & Cliffs content is the next big release players have been looking forward to, but not all of it will be releasing on schedule. Mojang announced this week that it intends to split the content into two different updates, one of which will come during the summer while the other will release sometime during the holidays. This has effectively delayed some of the Caves & Cliffs content with the Mojang team saying the new schedule is necessary to avoid compromising on the quality of the updates.

The announcement about the Caves & Cliffs content came on Wednesday with a post on the Minecraft site explaining the decision to push the content back. The Caves & Cliffs content was described as the "most ambitious update" the team has ever developed, and to maintain its quality, it's being partially pushed back to later in the year.

From the highest peaks to the deepest caves: the Caves & Cliffs update is more ambitious than anything we’ve done before.

To make sure we can truly live up to the community’s excitement, we’ve unfortunately had to adjust our development timeline:

↣ https://t.co/0xNHBrbZRU ↢ pic.twitter.com/XsCXQlyOkb

— Minecraft (@Minecraft) April 14, 2021

"We know this news is disappointing to many of you, but there are several reasons for this change," the post on the Minecraft site said. "Firstly, we strive to deliver the most polished experience possible, and including all the Caves & Cliffs features in the summer update would have meant compromising on quality. And even though occasional bugs are a reality of game development, we want this update to be an amazing experience, not wreak havoc on your meticulously crafted worlds."

A video shared within the post featured Agnes Larsson, the game director for the vanilla version of Minecraft, and Henrik Kniberg, the gameplay designer for the vanilla version. The two have been featured in the past during discussions about the Caves & Cliffs content and went into more detail about the delay and the reasoning behind it. The pair said quality, the technical complexity of the update, and the health of the team working on it are the three main areas that made the delay a necessary one.

For those who are still eager for the updates' releases regardless of the delay, you can keep trying out the Caves & Cliffs content as it releases periodically. We've seen the beta version of Minecraft's Bedrock Edition get some of that content, but it more frequently comes to Java Edition players through various Snapshots.

Minecraft's Caves & Cliffs content will officially release in an update in the summer and another update during the holidays.