Minecraft Promises To Patch Their Parrots After Pet Owners’ Persistent Protests

Minecraft is promising players a parrot patch. That isn't an obscure technical term – they're literally going to be patching the game's parrots. Why the parrots specifically? Allow me to explain.

Minecraft added parrots relatively recently, and like all the critters in the game, feeding two nearby parrots will cause them produce an offspring. The problem lies with what you have to feed the parrots to get them in the mood – chocolate chip cookies. I suppose those are the closest thing Minecraft has to crackers? Anyways, as Redditor 1jl astutely points out, chocolate can actually kill parrots.

"Dear Mojang. Please remove feeding chocolate to birds to make them breed. Millions of kids will play this game. You picked the one food in the game that will kill them to make them breed and tame them. I get that you want to give chocolate chip cookies a use in the game, but literally millions of kids will play this game and chocolate and pet parrots are common enough that this will cause a problem. There is no question about that. You can't tell me some 6-year-old is going to play Minecraft and then try to feed their Mom's 45 year old Macaw chocolate chips or a chocolate chip cookies. It's a minor change that will have major consequences. Thanks."

Of course, cartoons and other kiddie entertainment get basic animal facts wrong all the time, but, for whatever reason, this embarrassing parrot blunder really struck a nerve with the Minecraft community. The parrot post is the biggest the Minecraft subreddit has ever seen, with over 37 thousand upvotes. No, really. Minecraft lead designer Jens Bergensten has personally responded to the controversy…

"If Minecraft has any effect on children's behavior, we want it to be a positive one, so we'll change the item used to breed parrots before the 1.12 update is released. Our reasoning for originally using cookies was twofold -- it gave cookies a reason to exist within Minecraft, and it was a subtle reference to the Nirvana song 'Polly.' However, we didn't consider what the chocolate ingredient would mean to real life parrots!"

There you go – regular fans really can make a difference. Also, whatever you do, don't feed your parrot a chocolate chip cookie. I'm watching you.

[via Vice Motherboard]