Mojang Releases Minecraft for the Raspberry Pi – For Free

As fun and flexible as the DIY Raspberry Pi is, it’s been missing something substantial up to this point: Minecraft – but no longer. Mojang has just released the first out-of-beta build for the platform, and the best part? It’s free. For the best experience, you’ll want to be running the official Raspbian “wheezy” distro equipped with XWindows. Playing is a simple matter of downloading the game, extracting it and then running it. No install necessary.

As simple as a game like Minecraft may appear on the surface, it can actually require a powerhouse PC to render some environments with playable framerates. That being the case, it should come as no surprise that some features have had to be lobbed off for this special RPi edition, although I couldn’t find mention anywhere of exactly which ones. If you’re a devout player, you’re likely to spot the differences pretty quickly.

For information surrounding the game, you can hit up its official site, and for those needing help with their RPi itself, the dedicated wiki is where you want to be.