announced they’re shutting down Minecraft Earth.

The augmented reality smartphone game will shut down on June 30th of this year – nearly two years after its early access launch back in October of 2019. The reasoning behind the closure is mostly due to the massive coronavirus restrictions, which have prevented people from roaming around and meeting publicly for most of 2020.

“Minecraft Earth was designed around free movement and collaborative play–two things that have become near impossible in the current global situation,” Mojang said. “As a result, we have made the difficult decision to re-allocate our resources to other areas that provide value to the Minecraft community and to end support for Minecraft Earth in June 2021.”

Despite the incoming closure, a new update for the game was dropped to remove the real-money in-game microtransactions, making it easier to play the game while indoors and still limited by coronavirus restrictions, a year later. Furthermore, if you sign into Minecraft Eart between now and June 30th, you’ll get a free set of character creator items.

Lastly, Mojang has promised any players of Minecraft Earth a free copy of the original Minecraft as a way of thanking them for playing.