Mojang and Microsoft have introduced a pause menu to Minecraft: Bedrock Edition, which means that if you’re playing the game on your own, you no longer have to worry about being unceremoniously murdered if you need to go and answer the door.
Per a new post on the official Minecraft website, you can now pause Bedrock Edition when opening the menu or switching windows on PC. The pause function was already a feature of Bedrock Edition‘s sibling Java Edition, so this update is really just bringing the former up to parity.
Of course, you’ll need to be playing in single-player mode to pause Minecraft: Bedrock Edition; opening the pause menu in multiplayer still won’t freeze the game for obvious reasons.
Additionally, if your game is paused and a friend joins while you’re in the pause menu, it’ll automatically unpause, so make sure you know who’s hopping into your game and when or the consequences for your inventory could be catastrophic.
As well as the new pause function, Mojang has also introduced two major new social features to Minecraft: Bedrock Edition in this update. The first is a profile page that shows your achievements, in-game stats, and more.
This page will be visible to your friends, so everyone can see how many times you’ve lost your inventory to attacking Creepers. Yikes.
The second new feature introduced as part of this update is the ability to display four of your favorite screenshots as part of your profile page, and to facilitate that, new screenshot hotkeys have also been introduced.
Minecraft probably needs no introduction; it is, after all, the single best-selling video game of all time. It’s spawned an upcoming movie and a Netflix TV show, as well as a number of other spinoffs and ancillary media projects.
Original creator Markus “Notch” Persson hasn’t been involved with the game for some time; he departed Mojang after its sale to Microsoft in 2014, and subsequent comments he made saw Mojang distance itself from him in the years to follow.
He is, however, apparently currently working on a spiritual successor to Minecraft which he’s referred to as “basically…Minecraft 2“, although it remains to be seen whether Notch’s project can pick up the traction Minecraft has managed to maintain.
