Minecraft 1.0 Release Candidate Now Available

At long last, Minecraft 1.0 is now ready for download—or at least the release candidate of it is. Given that players are currently playing version 1.9, the not-quite retail version of the game will reset Minecraft to 1.0.

According to Notch, who announced the release on his active Twitter account, game reviewers can play with RC2, which is said to be representative of the official release of Minecraft. Notch said that there might be "very minor tweaks" to the release version that comes out this Friday.

"So, yes, Minecraft has gone gold," wrote Notch.

The Minecraft 1.0 RC2 client can be downloaded from here. Players who host their own servers should grab the server version here. It might be a good idea for most players to simply wait until Friday, however.