Minecraft is turning 15, so they're giving away some Character Creator items

rockpapershotgun.com:

Minecraft is turning fifteen years-old and to celebrate Mojang are running fifteen days of giveaways from May 15th until May 29th. Apparently each day will offer up "a new free Character Creator item representing a different year of Minecraft history."

This also means I've been playing Minecraft for nearly fifteen years. Do I care for Character Creator items? No. Will I be signing in each day on my son's account to get him the free thing? Absolutely.

Here's a trailer announcing the anniversary shenanigans, which also promises other elements to the celebration:

Notch shared the first playable build of Minecraft via the TIGSource forum on May 17th, 2009. It was 49 minutes and 25 seconds before someone shares the first screenshot of something they've built. The screenshot is broken now, but it was of a one-block wide bridge.

Fifteen years later, I pay a monthly Realms Plus subscription so I can adminstrate a server for my kid and I to play on, and so I can access some Marketplace mods in the Bedrock version of the game. (I also pay separately for individual mods not included in the subscription as-and-when). I then pay a second, separate Marketplace subscription so my kid can access a bunch of skins on the Switch version of the game. The Switch version of the game crashes constantly, fails to connect to Microsoft's account system and thus denies him access to his owned items, and the Marketplace is riddled with paid-for mods that simply no longer work. Its near-total technical inadequacy has, on several occasions, reduced my son to tears of despair and frustration. I hope Game Pass fails and Microsoft sinks into the ocean.

Minecraft, the game itself, remains this pure, wondrous thing, seemingly able to infinitely repel the attempts to sully it by its owners or creator. My son and I go on adventures, we roleplay, we build things. Minecraft is a toybox, a dressing-up box, a pencil case of colouring pens, and sometimes just a sunny hill. I played it in 2009 and I