Helen Chiang, Xbox's first-ever chief operating officer, has left Microsoft just three months after taking on the role. The news comes from a short internal memo by Microsoft Gaming CEO Asha Sharma, obtained by The Verge, which simply states that Chiang is leaving the company and thanks her for her years of service. No reason was given, and Xbox's VP of communications, Kari Perez, said the company doesn't discuss individual personnel matters. There's no successor yet either, so Chiang's duties will be split among other Xbox leaders for now, with Sharma promising more details on COO leadership once plans are finalized.

Chiang had been at Microsoft for around 21 years, starting in 2005 and moving to Xbox in 2007, where Sharma credits her with helping build Xbox Live. She later led Mojang and became corporate vice president of the Minecraft franchise in 2020. Sharma created the COO position in July as part of her reset of Xbox, and it came with end-to-end profit and loss responsibility across content, hardware, platform, and services. That same reset includes around 3,200 job cuts by the end of fiscal year 2027, with hundreds of jobs already gone. Losing the executive meant to hold the whole business together this early into the reset probably isn't the kind of stability Xbox was hoping for.

Update Oct 25th: A verified source familiar with the situation has told Eurogamer that Helen Chiang was "terminated for policy violations." This claim has not been independently verified.

Update Nov 3rd: Helen Chiang has since denied being "fired for a policy violation" in a recent LinkedIn post. She goes on to clarify more points about her departure. You can read her full post below.

Xbox has hired a social media product veteran to run Mojang. In a memo to staff on October 8, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma said Maria Angelidou-Smith, most recently chief product officer at Reddit, will join as CEO of Mojang and Minecraft. She starts on October 19 and reports directly to Sharma. Angelidou-Smith replaces Kayleen Walters, who moves over to lead XP, the new Xbox division for film, TV, merchandise, and live experiences. Walters had run Mojang since February 2025, and Xbox says Minecraft went from 350 million copies sold to more than 425 million in that time.

Angelidou-Smith's background is in community products, with no game studio role mentioned. According to the memo, she spent nearly a decade at Meta, where she led Facebook Groups along with Events, Creators, Search, Profile, and Monetization. She later led product and technology at HR software company Personio and joined Reddit in November 2025. Sharma wrote that Mojang already has an exceptional game development team, so Xbox went looking for someone who has "built products for communities at enormous scale" and understands how creators, technology, and monetization come together. Her first order of business, apparently, is to learn from the teams and the community.

Minecraft is getting its first new dimension in 15 years. Mojang revealed "The Sift" during its latest Minecraft Live showcase, joining the Overworld, the Nether, and the End, the last of which arrived with Minecraft's full 1.0 release back in 2011. A short clip shown at the event shows a bunny-like creature walking, rather than hopping, through pink grass under a turquoise sky. Mojang hasn't said much else about the Sift yet, though a new dimension should naturally bring its own mobs, blocks, and biomes with it. It's set to arrive in both Bedrock and Java editions sometime in 2027. It looks like players won't have to wait that long for a taste of it, though.

A version of the Sift is also coming to Minecraft Dungeons 2, which launches next week, and Mojang has shared more about that particular take on the dimension. According to Xbox Wire, this version features "shifting tides" that affect player characters, along with hazardous new blocks and both friendly and hostile mobs. Two of its biomes have also been named: Singer's Meadow, built around red sculk, and Carapace, a desert area dotted with strange blue walls and giant hollow fossils. However, Mojang has said the Dungeons 2 version of the Sift may differ quite a bit from what eventually arrives in the main game. Either way, going a decade and a half without a new dimension is a long stretch for a game that gets frequent content updates, and it will be interesting to see what Mojang has in store with the Sift.

Mojang has revealed that the Minecraft's annual mob vote (a feature that allows players to pick the next creature added to the game) tradition is coming to an end as part of a new game update structure, following TikTok war propaganda-inspired posters by players fed-up with the tradition.

On September 9, via a post on its blog, Mojang announced that its annual news livestream, Minecraft Live, is discarding the mob vote feature and is now being split up into several smaller, more-focused broadcasts, which will occur twice a year. Mojang also revealed that free content updates would be released more often, abandoning the traditional annual larger updates and sticking to smaller updates like this year's Armored Paws update.

Since launch, we—Mojang—have been working hard together with Blackbird Interactive to bring improvements and new features to Minecraft Legends based on your feedback. With Minecraft Legends, we took a completely new approach to gameplay, so much so that we had to make up a new genre for it (kind of): action strategy. Our community has always helped us shape our games and that's something we value greatly, especially when launching a completely new game. The latest title update brought the fearless frog, witches, clangers, air choppers and a host of enhancements to the game's mechanics, making the battles in Minecraft Legends even more intense. And, thanks to your input, we've made various tweaks to the gameplay and interface, from enhanced pathfinding to a more comprehensive Battle View UI.

A DEVELOPMENT UPDATE
Since launch, we've listened to community feedback and implemented a series of changes and tweaks to make the game better. With that complete, we're now going to take a step back from development. While we won't be releasing any new content (i.e. updates, Lost Legends, or Marketplace DLC) for Minecraft Legends, the fun doesn't stop here. We'll continue having a blast playing the game alongside our community because those rowdy piglins are showing no signs of slowing down. Plus, we're leaving you one last freebie: the Bright-Eyed Hero skin, which you can claim now on Minecraft Legends Marketplace. Illuminate your path forward and continue fighting the good fight!

A screaming goat once told me that October is the BEST month. Not just because it's full of pumpkins (yum!) or because all the skeletons in my save file finally fit in (aww!), but because Minecraft Live is back on October 15, and this year it's bigger and blockier than ever! If you've never watched our epic, once-a-year livestream before, then you are in for a treat. Not only do we spend an hour talking about Minecraft (our favorite topic), but we dive into news from Minecraft and Minecraft: Legends; share snippets of what you can expect in the future, and reveal the winner of the hotly anticipated mob vote!

Minecraft Live returns on October 15! Tune in at 1pm EDT for news, sneak peeks, the mob vote, and more! Once the mobs have been revealed, you'll be able to cast your vote via the Minecraft Launcher, Minecraft.net, or the special event server on Minecraft: Bedrock Edition from October 13. You can even challenge yourself to mob-tastic mini-games while you're there!

Yes, after 2.5 years in the making and over 4 million sales, Minecraft has finally gone gold. This is the game with the charmingly blocky graphics where the player builds their cartoon world out of blocks and must hide from monsters at night. It will be officially released at the inaugural MineCon event in Las Vegas this Friday. Developer Markus "Notch" Persson head of studio Mojang announced it had gone gold on Twitter:

So, yes. Minecraft has gone gold.