MC Championship

MC Championship (MCC) is a Minecraft tournament organised by YouTuber Scott Major (known online as Smajor1995) and Minecraft collective Noxcrew. Ten teams of four compete in a series of Minecraft minigames. The tournament began its first season on November 17, 2019. Its fourth and current season began on May 4, 2024.

Gameplay
The event features ten teams of four players, each composed of a rotating cast of established content creators, competing in each iteration of the tournament. They face off in eight minigames that test a variety of core skills in Minecraft, such as combat, parkour, survival, and teamwork. Teams win coins for their performance in each minigame.

At the end of the event, the two teams with the most coins duel in Dodgebolt, a best-of-five archery game that determines the winner of the event.

Background
Noxcrew, the creative team behind MC Championship, was founded in 2011 by Stefan "Noxite" Panić. Noxcrew first organized on the sandbox game Garry's Mod, where members collaborated on various creative projects. They soon turned to Minecraft, another sandbox game, and their creative projects there became popular on Minecraft forums. The Noxcrew Gameshow, a spiritual ancestor to MCC in which content creators play classic game shows recreated in Minecraft, ran from 2012 to 2015. Noxcrew incorporated in 2017 and grew over time to include about 50 volunteer members in 2022; it had more than 30 staff in 2024.

Scott Major, a Scottish YouTuber also known as Smajor1995 or Dangthatsalongname, said he got the idea for MCC after playing in Minecraft Monday, a Minecraft team competition hosted by Keemstar. He said he liked the general format but found Keemstar hard to work with. When Minecraft Monday ended in late 2019, there was an opening for a new personality-driven Minecraft esports competition. Major said he approached Panić of Noxcrew for advice, and Panić volunteered to collaborate to produce a new event.

Debut and development
MC Championship was announced on Twitter and YouTube on 8 November 2019. The first event was held the next week on 17 November 2019. Events continue to be held about once a month. Most participants livestream their points of view on YouTube or Twitch. MCC's rise coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic. An estimated 500,000 concurrent viewers (including 100,000 for Dream) watched MCC 9 in September 2020, and MCC 15 peaked at 913,000 viewers in July 2021. MCC was "the biggest competitive Minecraft event" by early 2022; Major said earlier that was it was the world's "largest Minecraft streaming event". Viewership declined to an average of over 100,000 by the end of 2022.

MCC has evolved over the years with new maps, designs, and players. Development of new maps begins with a stage of prototyping called greyboxing in which key elements are laid out without consideration for décor. Existing games have occasionally been "remixed" to be played with different mechanics. Team composition is shuffled by Major each event for the sake of competitive balance as well as player preferences for profanity use and requests for one teammate. About three new players are admitted each event. A score-tracking website, MCC Live, launched in May 2021.

Non-canon events
Several special non-canon MCC events have taken place. A Pride-themed event in June 2021 raised more than US$300,000 for the nonprofit the Trevor Project. MCC Rising events have featured less established Minecraft content creators, while MCC All-Stars featured lineups of only past MCC winners. MCC Underdogs included only players who had not won any event up to that point. The concept of non-canon events were retired starting in season 4.

Fan engagement
MCC has invited fans to participate in several ways. Fans comprised two of the teams competing in MCC 10 in September 2020. A public Minecraft server called MCC Island, featuring a selection of MCC minigames, was announced on 29 May 2021. The server opened in closed beta on 20 August 2022. The server also gives MCC competitors a chance to practice the minigames between events. Noxcrew crowdsourced builds for the Big Sales at Build Mart minigame in April 2022.