Locked chest

The Locked chest (also known as Steve Co. Supply Crate) was a naturally generated block used as the premise of Notch's 2011 April Fool's Day joke. Locked chests are a reference to the Mann Co. Supply Crates from Team Fortress 2, where a key must be purchased for $2.49 in the in-game shop called Mann Co. Store in order to open the crate.

On April 5, they were made to disappear from worlds and as such are no longer obtainable legitimately. Since then locked chests have been stripped of their texture and are now a placeholder block.

On the Xbox 360 edition, the locked chest is available through inventory mods and with cheats on /give (player) 95 (amount) and emits a strong light. It also has the same texture as other chests in the game (as of the first update) and remains unopenable, however it is destructible once placed and can be picked up and re-placed.

Now, since the 1.5 version came out, if a chest is placed in an anvil, it is possible to rename it and receive a locked chest as a result.

Functionality
Every chunk generated between April 1 and April 5, 2011 had a small chance of having a locked chest in it. The chest emitted a light level 15 and, before their removal from natural generation, was indestructible by hand or with a tool, but could be removed by explosions (which had a chance to drop them as an item, allowing them to be picked up).

Notch planned to remove them at midnight April 1, but didn't due to illness. Instead they were removed in the Beta 1.4_01 patch on April 5th. They were not removed from the game entirely; instead code was added for locked chests in the world to disappear, causing them to decay in a fashion similar to leaves. If locked chests are stored in the inventory, they remain until they are placed in the world. As of snapshot 12w21a, the original chest textures were removed from the game.

Locked Chests could be used as fuel for Furnaces and lasted as long as a normal chest in a furnace.

Interface


Clicking on the chest would bring up a screen, and clicking on the "Go to Store" button would forward you to the "Minecraft Store". Originally it linked to "https://minecraft.net/store/loop.jsp", but got changed to "https://minecraft.net/store" because the original page was removed. Various items were "sold" in the Minecraft Store (see below). Clicking on the proceed to checkout button triggered a screamer in which a Velociraptor from the movie Jurassic Park growled loudly and flew across the screen. It was possible to "buy" the three items at the bottom of the page, although they were labelled "Coming Soon!"

Entering items totaling over $10,000 into the cart causes a window pop-up asking if you are prone to seizures. Entering OK makes the screen start flashing. When first released, there was no seizure warning label, Notch later implemented it to avoid lawsuits and posts on the forum.

On April 2nd (the day following April Fools), the store had the addition of a multicolored banner which read '♥ April Fools! ♥', accompanied by a midi instrumental of Rick Astley's 'Never Gonna Give You Up'. Tobias Mollstam stated that this was "the best script he's written to date. "

The store page used the font tf2build.ttf from Team Fortress 2 which is downloadable from here.

Items "sold"


Twelve "items" were "available":
 * Steve Co. Supply Crate Key ($3)
 * Steve Co. Supply Crate Key 5-Pack ($18)
 * Miner's Helmet ($21)
 * Name Change ($99)
 * Creeper Saddle ($42)
 * Secret Griefer Identity ($155)
 * Enlargement Pill ($2)
 * Response From Support ($494)
 * Three "Coming Soon" items (Priced at $75, $7, and $1499)
 * "Regular Padlock" for $8.

Trivia

 * This may have been what Notch was talking about in his Twitter post about a "silly secret project. "
 * Locked chests could generate in mid air or in the tops of trees.
 * When placed on ice, locked chests act like torches and melt the ice around them. When placed in groups, they will "melt" each other until each chest resides on its own block of ice separated from others.
 * Locked chests could be placed next to each other to form a 2 block long chest like normal chests do. These two chests are still however "locked".
 * Any locked chests previously loaded (naturally) will be gone. This means that if you found a chest after Beta 1.4, but before Beta 1.4_01, it will be gone. Any locked chests that were placed by players have no function, other than providing light, and will just despawn.
 * The server console outputted "added a chest!" each time a chest was generated.
 * The 5-key pack is actually $3 more than 5 single keys.
 * The archived page is available in reduced functionality here.