The Combat Update is the name for Minecraft version 1.9, an upcoming major update with no set release date.Development on the Combat Update began at least a month before the Bountiful Update was released.Therefore, this made the development period over twice as long as the development period for 1.8, currently at 517 days and counting.Snapshots began the day after 1.8.8 was released.Currently, the time between releases of 1.8 and 1.9 represent the longest time span between major updates, at 486 days and counting.So far, twelve iterations of the launcher have also been released, from 1.5.2 to 1.6.48. The official name for the update, the Combat Update, was discovered on April 1, 2015 by Reddit user 3d Deters who found a QR code hidden in the snow falling pattern of the April Fools 15w14a snapshot.