Minecraft is in full swing, finishing off with an amazing 2020. But the year isn’t over just yet, and there’s plenty of big news from this week in Minecraft.

So take your eyes off of Minecraft 1.17 Caves and Cliffs coming in 2021, and let’s go over what happened this week first.

Minecraft Leads the Charge in Youtube’s Biggest Gaming Year

Youtube is an incredibly popular destination for gamers from all kinds of genres - and with COVID-19 lockdown, Youtube has set new records for its watch time on gaming content.

In 2020 alone, there have been 100 Billion watch time hours on Youtube gaming content! It’s hard to even comprehend this massive figure.

And with this huge growth in Youtube gaming content, from tons of up and coming channels, all the way to massive figures for different games - Minecraft is at the very top of the charts.

Minecraft is responsible for 201 billion Youtube views in 2020, more than double the next biggest game, Roblox, at 75 billion.

DON’T MISS IT: Minecraft 1.17 Caves and Cliffs Blocks

This growth could, in part, be attributed to a new developing scene in the Minecraft community - Minecraft speedrunning.

With massive Twitch streamers like xQc and Forsen turning up the competition levels in the Minecraft speedrunning community in front of their huge audiences, there is plenty of new interest in the game.

DON’T MISS IT: Minecraft - 7 Tricks You Need for your Next Run

This new exposure on Twitch means Minecraft is having continuously huge impacts on both of the biggest entertainment platforms for the gaming audience - Youtube and Twitch.

Minecraft RTX Launches - Ray Tracing Moves On From Beta

RTX has had massive hype in Minecraft ever since it entered its beta phase.

In the beta, there were several test maps created for players to see RTX graphics in action in Minecraft, including elaborate setups of light, mirrors, and water to demonstrate its realistic lighting and more.

DON’T MISS IT: Minecraft 1.17 Caves and Cliffs Biomes

That beta testing has come to fruition with the full-scale launch of Minecraft RTX, which arrived to Windows 10 and more in a new update this week.

You can now see Minecraft RTX quality for yourself if you have the applicable hardware.

Dream’s World Record Minecraft Speedruns Are Called Into Question

One of the more surprising stories from Minecraft this week involved several of its World Record speedruns, completed by popular content creator Dream.

After significant investigation into Dream’s World Record runs, including analysis of RNG for several important elements key to securing their run times, some results have been published.

You can watch the analysis done by the Minecraft Java Speedrunning Team and posted by Geosquare on Youtube: here.

DON’T MISS IT: Minecraft Server Hosting: The Disadvantages of Hosting a Home Server

These results call Dream’s World Record Minecraft speed runs into question - declaring them as illegitimate. Despite Dream claiming otherwise, the analysis has now meant that they have officially been removed from the leaderboards.