Following the August 13th release of update 1.21.20 for Minecraft: Bedrock Edition and 1.21.2 for Minecraft: Java Edition, various online services exclusive to Bedrock experienced issues. For most users, Realms were unable to connect, but for others, the in-game marketplace had limited usability.

    “We are aware of and have been working on ongoing Realms service connection errors,” Minecraft development team Mojang announced on Twitter/X, “A client hotfix will be on its way.”

    Realms is a subscription service available for people who have already purchased and own Minecraft. It offers a way to set up an “always online” server for up to ten people to join simultaneously on one of three saved worlds. Realms also backs up world data every thirty minutes, and every time a player logs off to preserve progress and reduce the impact of file corruption making the world unplayable.

    “You don’t need any technical knowledge to set up a Realm, or switch between active worlds – just a few button clicks,” Mojang wrote on the Minecraft.net Realms page.

  In an attempt to remedy the issue, the Minecraft development team Mojang released hotfix 1.21.21 and stated it should improve the reliability of connecting to realms. Instead, it left some users unable to launch into the main menu while for others the Realms button was missing, leading to the Realms team working day and night to patch what went wrong.

    “As a pretty valuable paid service, these downtimes don’t typically last more than twenty-four hours,” Minecraft YouTuber Phoenix SC said.

    After nearly 144 hours, almost a third of most users’ subscription time for the month, Realms had gone back online with an announcement from Mojang on their Mojang Status page for X.

    “You purchase a realm for a variety of reasons, the most important one is reliability,” Minecraft YouTuber KasaiSora said, “You want a server that will always be there when you want to play multiplayer Minecraft.”