Minecraft developer Mojang is releasing a special map in tandem with a Microsoft press release today.

Last year, in January, Microsoft made a pledge to become carbon negative by 2030. What this means is, it wants to capture more carbon from the atmosphere than it emits. This was part of a longer term goal to actually remove the equivalent of all the carbon it has released since 1975, the year it was founded.

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As part of Microsoft's pledge, it has released a Sustainability Report which has reiterated its goals, and outlined how it plans to achieve them. As a part of its report, it has included a special free Minecraft map. Called Sustainability City, the map will allow player to explore the company's goals and the reasoning behind them.

It's an impressive map, though perhaps not as impressive as the Minecraft houses expert builders can make. Players can download this map for free in the Minecraft Marketplace “Education Collection,” as well as in Minecraft Education Edition. The Minecraft Education Edition version comes with six new lessons which aim to "to give students a sense of stewardship for the planet, from responsible forestry to waste management, learning about the components of a sustainable home, exploring alternative electricity, and more."

Back in 2014, Microsoft purchased Minecraft developer Mojang from Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson. Since then, Minecraft has been a staple of the Microsoft brands, and it has expanded it and used it for promotion. It has created spinoffs like the Minecraft Education Edition especially for use in classrooms, and Minecraft Earth, which is its take on Pokemon GO.

This is arguably an excellent thing Microsoft is doing. It's great that it's focusing on minimizing its harm to the environment; something that the world needs right now. Beyond that, this Minecraft map is an excellent resource for students, teachers, and others hoping to learn about sustainability and preserving the environment. Something that's of vital importance if people want to have real world polar bears to tame like players do in Minecraft.

Of course, it could be argued that this still isn't enough. Microsoft's plans for capturing carbon currently largely involve reforestation projects. But those have drawn criticism because investigations show they aren't a real life Minecraft cheat; that they are not effective at capturing carbon dioxide permanently. Likewise, a Bloomberg investigation has shown that the company Microsoft is funding the reforestation projects through, the Nature Conservancy, lied about the forests it was claiming to protect; claiming they were threatened when they were not. Meaning Microsoft wasn't actually shrinking its carbon footprint like it claimed.

Minecraft is available now on Mobile, PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.

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Source: Microsoft