Players are mourning the loss of the Minecraft grass block as the sandbox game‘s launcher icon, just as the Minecraft 1.20 release date has arrived. As it turns out, tens of thousands of players (at least over the last day) have made it known that they prefer the simple elegance of the Minecraft grass block over the face of a Creeper for the game’s PC launcher, and I couldn’t agree more.
As it turns out, one of the most vocal corners of the Minecraft fandom comes from PC launcher stans, as one of the biggest recent threads on the Minecraft subreddit doesn’t come from anything to do with the features of 1.20 or any new Minecraft servers, but rather the picture Mojang and Microsoft use for your PC icon.
As of the time of writing, almost 18,000 people have upvoted a post about the Minecraft launcher’s desktop image which laments the loss of the dirt block in favor of a Creeper face, of all things.
“Who at Mojang and Microsoft thought this logo change was a good idea,” Snackable1 says, unaware of what they’re about to unleash. “I want my dirt cube back. The same one I’ve seen for the last 15 years of my life!”
For me, while the Creeper face might be more easily recognizable considering no one walks around with Minecraft grass block hoodies, there’s just something about the elegant simplicity of the Minecraft grass block I find more appealing. Sure, it’s not a marketing magnet or expressive in literally any way, but it’s the most important Minecraft block, in my opinion – you can even see how everyone changes it up in Minecraft texture packs, which is always fun.
Here’s where things start to get complicated and weird though, as when you open the Minecraft launcher itself (as I did through PC Game Pass) both the Windows and Java editions of the game use the grass block, and the latest release dropdown for Minecraft 1.20 still uses a grass block too.
To top it off, the subreddit post has been in debate as to which version of the launcher image you get depending on either when you downloaded the game or what edition you have. I’ve not been able to decipher if you get a different launcher icon from playing a specific edition or if it’s from when you first downloaded the launcher from the website, but one constant remains; the grass block is dead.
There is a way to resurrect the iconic block though, as pointed out by user TropicalIslandAlpaca: “Pro tip: If you’re using the legacy launcher, you can download a png of the old grass block icon, convert it to ico, then set it as the icon of your launcher shortcut.”
If you want even more Minecraft after getting the grass block back, we’ve got breakdowns of the best Minecraft seeds, most game-changing Minecraft mods, and even the best Minecraft skins as well. If you want something else entirely though, you should check out our look at all the games like Minecraft worth your time.
