👕 Custom Geometry Skins
On March 30th 2020, Microsoft introduced new technical and policy changes to (custom) skins in Minecraft multiplayer. This affects players that use skins with custom geometry, sometimes called "4D Skins" in the community.
Marketplace Skins, Hive Costumes and regular Alex/Steve retextures are NOT affected by these changes. We continue to apply Hive-side filters to all skins - this may block some extra small or big skins that are allowed on different servers.
Players who attempt to use custom geometry will appear to be wearing one of our Marketplace skins.
These changes do not affect capes.
🎽 Persona (Character Creator) Skins
As of January 2021, Persona (Character Creator) skins are disabled on The Hive. These changes were made to improve performance and reduce lag for our players.
Players who join The Hive wearing a Persona skin will appear to be wearing one of our Marketplace skins.
We hope to re-enable Persona skins in the future, once the performance issues on Minecraft's side have been resolved.
🦸 Player Capes
Player capes are allowed on The Hive.
As of September 2025, player capes worn by players other than yourself are hidden by default. This change was made because recent versions of Minecraft have a performance issue where encountering other players with capes can lead to excessive frame rate stuttering or freezing.
If you wish, you can re-enable them using the Show Other Players Capes toggle in the /toggles menu, but we caution against this as it will bring back these issues. You'll always see your own cape.
We expect this to be resolved in a future version of Minecraft, at which point we will re-enable capes and remove the toggle.