Minecraft 1.4.4 released, suffocates squids

Mojang have officially released their 1.4.4 update to the 8 million copy selling phenomenon Minecraft. As with all one-point-something-point-something updates, it focuses more on bug squashing than feature adding. When you next load up the client, you can look forward to no longer seeing squids happily breathe on land (sadists) or chickens with inverted head movement (who would even notice that?)

While this patch is only a relatively small bug hunt, it's also the first official release for the much larger 1.4.3 update, which stops some lag-induced errors that would see players randomly receive fall damage. The full list of fixes for 1.4.3 is here , with the added 1.4.4 enhancements here .

Meanwhile, PCGamesN have been keeping up with a Reddit thread that's attempting to decipher the cryptic message that Notch issued for Minecraft's 8 millionth sale celebration. So far they're not having much luck, but do report that the string (69I960EHE0A4A0IVG0EHE02500R4R0G1T30PLJ00V6V0EHE0V1U01V10U5U0VGV0V4R, in case you'd forgotten) does make for a cool world seed with a "weird" cave system. So that's nice.

Phil has been writing for PC Gamer for nearly a decade, starting out as a freelance writer covering everything from free games to MMOs. He eventually joined full-time as a news writer, before moving to the magazine to review immersive sims, RPGs and Hitman games. Now he leads PC Gamer's UK team, but still sometimes finds the time to write about his ongoing obsessions with Destiny 2, GTA Online and Apex Legends. When he's not levelling up battle passes, he's checking out the latest tactics game or dipping back into Guild Wars 2. He's largely responsible for the whole Tub Geralt thing, but still isn't sorry.