Welcome to our updates website! Come back regularly to find the latest Hive updates.

We've extended the Platform Based MatchMaking experiment to all SkyWars queues on EU and NA regions. Read more on our support website.

Update: the below now also applies to SkyWars Solos on Europe.

We're experimenting with Platform Based matchmaking on SkyWars Solos, on our North America region. It is NOT active in other regions and game queues.

What is Platform Based matchmaking?

Instead of our classic 'fill a server' approach, we now group players into two groups: Touch and Non-Touch input. 

Why are you trying this?

PC and console players have a big advantage on mobile / touch players. With platform matchmaking, we're hoping to level out lobbies a bit better.

Why not Skill Based / ELO Based matchmaking?

We are not against looking into SBMM/ELO in the future, but went with Platform Matchmaking as a less extreme matchmaking solution that should alleviate most problems with our classic matchmaking.

Can I, a touch input player, opt to play with PCs and consoles?

If we decide to roll out this matchmaking type further, we will allow players to opt-in to the non-touch input queue.

I don't like this!!!!???

We will be collecting feedback over time, and we will take the rollout of this very slow. Our forums are the best place to discuss this! Please keep it civil and keep in mind this isn't a definitive system.

We've just started rolling out a new version of SkyWars, focusing on fixing some minor gameplay issues and bugs. You'll see this version appear on games over the next few hours.

Gameplay

• Ender Pearls will no longer cause death, but instead, leave you with half a heart of health
• Added play area enforcement, with minimum play height activating 3 minutes into livegame
• Decreased rate of "unlucky TNT" when mining lucky (gold) ores

Bugs

• Fixed "Ores Mined" lobby stat hologram
• Fixed an issue when breaking blocks outside of your island border would result in item drops even though the block remained
• Fixed an issue where right-click (interacting) to equip armor could cause enchantments to be lost
• Fixed "0 hearts left" when being killed by a player with a half a heart
• Fixed an issue where ghost boom boxes could be seen in the void
• Fixed fire turning invisible when destroying a block beneath it

There are some other issues we're currently researching and hope to have updates soon! As always thank you to anyone who reported bugs on our forums.

We are loving how everyone is responding to SkyWars - it's more popular than we came ever close to imagining.

With this update our goal is to incentivize taking risks leaving your island. Additionally, we did a ton of balance changes that can only come from large scale play testing.

• Starting kit now consists of just a Stone Sword and an Iron Pickaxe
• Made all Boom Boxes, except the Knockback one, throw-able (Right click/interact with air to throw it)
• Added "Knockback Boom Box" - only works on yourself, use it to "Island-Hop" or get away quickly!
• Added Life Spell (A heart will appear above the players head for clear gameplay)
• Mystery Chest: slightly improved rate of snowballs. Added spells, better diamond armor and arrows
• Added 4x "Epic Chests" to each middle island where things like + Diamond Armor can be found (they are the Ender chests)
• Lowered Diamond Ore spawn rate
• Diamond Ore no longer spawns 'useless' diamond tools
• Lucky/Gold Ore no longer spawns (useless) tools, planks or wood. Instead, they can now spawn Andesite
• Resource Ore spawns Andesite instead of planks and concrete
• Reduced duplicates in chests
• You can no longer move outside the world border

Previous changes:

• Heavily reduced snowball drop rate
• Added tracking compass

We will continue to watch everything as time goes on. We are always here to listen if the feedback is thought out and not an angry reaction from losing a single game.

Good luck in your games!

Yesterdays SkyWars release brought completely unexpected traffic to our network - we shattered the all-time Bedrock Concurrent Users records, going from a previous 30K to 40K. Whilst we have the systems in place to deal with near-infinite demand, the speed and specifics of the situation (all players going from a hub to a game lobby) was too much for us to handle.

After we got the supply for SkyWars games under control, we were hit by an unexpected bug in DNS resolution (DNS is, basically, what turns a domain name such as hivebedrock.network into an IP address): we simply had too many IP addresses behind our domain, which caused a lot of players to receive the Invalid IP Address error in Minecraft.

In the short term, we are working to make sure we have the DNS issue fully under control, so that all players can join again. In the long term, we will prioritize fixes and optimizations so that we can continue having big launch events - but without any issues. We'll be on call all weekend to monitor, fix and improve any situations that may arise.

We will provide a full SkyWars release post soon, and our game designers and engineers will balance, tweak, and improve the game. Respectful feedback is always welcome on our Discord and forums, and we monitor this closely. Having said that: with SkyWars, we didn't want to provide a 'copy and paste' of the SkyWars formula that other servers have. Whilst we're all ears for improvements and possible variations, we ask that you give us time to gauge the overall opinion and interest.

As we expand our game offerings, we're simplifying how boosters work. 

Starting later today, we will only offer boosters that work on ALL games. We're also cutting the price in half - a one-hour, 50% boost will cost 160 Minecoins. This is half the price of our old offerings.

We will also be offering all players a free booster (all games, 1 hour, 50% boost): you'll be able to grab this one hour before the launch of SkyWars. Do remember to redeem this offer in time - it'll only be available for a limited time. You'll find the offer in the Hive Store and the booster menu when it launches.

Please note you MUST activate boosters using the /booster menu - current boosters last exactly an hour, and can't be paused once started.

Happy SkyWars day!

The groundhog is gone 🦀 🦀 🦀 

Get ready for Hive SkyWars, releasing May 15th, 6PM UTC

Click for more time zones!

Enjoy triple XP on Ground Wars until it leaves tomorrow, May 8th.

Pack up the groundhogs, Ground Wars leaves this Friday, May 8th.

Contrary to our previous messaging we will NOT swap the game for a new game immediately. More info coming this Friday!