Minecraft wiki entry for Development_versions, associated text: Pre-releases were originally named as version number Pre-release x, where x was either blank or a revision number; this format was used during development of Beta 1.8 (e.g., Beta 1.8 Pre-release 2). Pre-releases for 1.0.0 removed the hyphen in the word "Pre-release" (e.g., Beta 1.9 Prerelease 3). Pre-release versions until 1.7.4 were released as full versions and incremented the minor version number for each pre-release (for example, 1.4 and 1.4.1 were both pre-releases for 1.4.2, and the pre-release for 1.4.7 is identical to the full release of 1.4.7). From 1.7.6 to 1.13.2, pre-releases had the format version number-prex, where x is the revision number (e.g., 1.12-pre2). 1.14 started naming pre-releases as version number Pre-Release x (where the word "release" may or may not be capitalized, starting from Java Edition 1.15 Pre-release 1), where x is the revision number (e.g., 1.14.1 Pre-Release 2).