Minecraft Realms have been facing significant challenges with downtime and connectivity issues for nearly a week, drawing the attention of its dedicated fanbase. Players attempting to access Realms have encountered prolonged loading times, connection errors, and various other disruptions since at least August 13. This wave of issues seems to have coincided with the rollout of Minecraft update 1.21.20, which introduced changes to Realms invite links alongside several bug fixes.
Ongoing Efforts to Resolve Issues
On August 15, Mojang took to Twitter to assure players that the Realms team was diligently working “around the clock” to address the service disruptions affecting Bedrock Realms. While they later announced that service had been restored, reports of connectivity problems persisted throughout the weekend.
In a follow-up tweet on August 17, Mojang provided an update, stating, “We are still hard at work to bring Realms back online for all players. As of now roughly 70% of players should have access.” They also noted that to facilitate these efforts, they had to restrict traffic to Realms on version 1.21.20 across all platforms except for the Nintendo Switch, pending a hotfix for that platform.
Minecraft Realms, a subscription-based service, offers players personal servers where they can “easily and safely play online with their friends in shared worlds across devices.” However, as of August 19, fans continued to report ongoing connectivity issues, a situation that has been reflected in a notable spike in reports on Downdetector.
Despite reaching out for further clarification, IGN has yet to receive a response from Mojang representatives regarding the current status of the Realms service.
Kat Bailey is IGN’s News Director as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.
