Minecraft Snapshot Gets LAN Support

It goes without saying that experiencing Minecraft with friends online has been one of the best gaming experiences of the last few years, providing countless hours of entertainment and pixelated building projects. Indeed, the game has come a long way since creator Markus "Notch" Persson released Minecraft as a freeware java test back in 2009.

Now regarded as the best-selling indie game of all time and branching across consoles and phones worldwide, Mojang has worked to bring in more and more new features as fans push in suggestions. In the latest Snapshot Update, it looks like they're finally ready to tackle one of the most-requested features since the launch of the game: local area network support.

For those who may not know, Jens and the development team at Mojang release beta builds of each update, so that they can hear feedback from fans before the official update is rolled out to gamers worldwide. In the latest Snapshot Update, Jens states that users can now use a console command to instantaneously turn their single player game into an open LAN session, so friends on the same network can hop into the game and help out your building (or, you know, place dynamite everywhere. Looking at you, Riley Little.)

Nothing in the Snapshot updates is guaranteed to make it into the official release, but the inclusion of such a highly-requested and useful feature must make it a certainty for a later patch. According to Jens, the LAN feature is in a very early development stage, and as such is missing several key settings. This includes selecting the game mode your friends will be playing in, or even if they're allowed to use cheats or not. With a little time, Mojang are sure to work out these kinks and likely turn it into a polished feature.

There's still no word on when the next big update will be, but it's good to see that the development team is still cranking out bug fixes and adding in some potential game-changing features like LAN support. If included in one of the official releases, LAN support will bring easy multiplayer access to groups of people all over the world who just wanted to play with a few friends, but didn't want to go through the hassle of finding servers online.

If you're interested in downloading the latest Minecraft Snapshot, you can grab it here. It may be a little unstable, but playing it and giving feedback will help the greater good.

What do you think about LAN support for Minecraft? Would it make life easier for your group of friends?

-

Follow me on Twitter @Makelevi.

Source: VG247