- - - - -. Minecraft Game Info. Minecraft is a game about placing blocks to build anything you can imagine. At night monsters come out, make sure to build a shelter before that happens. Minecraft was originally created by Markus Persson, who you might know as Notch. On November 19th, 2011, Jens Bergensten, who you might know as Jeb, took over creative control so Markus could concentrate on new things. - - - - -. Minecraft 1.9 Update Info. The Combat Update is the name for Minecraft version 1.9, a major update released on Monday, February 29th, 2016. This update overhauled the combat system, among other additions and changes. The official name for the update, the Combat Update, was discovered on April 1, 2015 by Reddit user 3dDeters (and several others in their own time) who found a QR code hidden in the snow falling pattern of the April Fools 15w14a snapshot. Development on the Combat Update began at least a month before the Bountiful Update was released. The development period was over twice as long as the development period for 1.8 at 576 days; 2015 became the first year where a major update to Minecraft was not released. Snapshots began the day after 1.8.8 was released. 56 development snapshots were released, from 15w31a to 16w07b, making it the update with the most snapshots so far. The time between releases of 1.8 and 1.9 represent the longest time span between major updates, at 545 days. Fifteen iterations of the launcher were released during this period, from 1.5.2 to 1.6.59. The development team called the release feature-complete by the end of October 2015, and started a lengthy period of gameplay balancing and bug-fixing. They later announced that 1.9 would not be released in 2015, as the developers "want to fix more bugs before release, and keep the game stable over the holidays". Mojang released the first pre-release on February 17, 2016. The date for this was hinted at by the image in the blog post that announced snapshot 16w06a. The data values of the wool in the image were (1, 7, 0, 2, 2, 0, 1, 6), having a possible (though never confirmed) interpretation of "17-02-2016", a date just one week from 16w06a. The second pre-release was released on February 18th, the third pre-release was released on February 24th, and the fourth pre-release was released on February 26th..