Developers Mojang Studios recently announced that Minecraft now consumed more 300 million copies all around the world. It is the first video game to reach such a milestone, while its closest competitor Grand Theft Auto V is lagging behind with just 185 million copies (as of August 2023). Some other game franchises have higher total sales thanks to having more games in the same series (the Mario franchise is estimated to have sold over 800 million copies) and variations (Tetris has sold over 520 million copies). million copies, of which 425 million copies come from mobile devices), but no game has yet caught up with Minecraft.
“As we approach the game’s 15th anniversary, Minecraft remains one of the best-selling titles of all time, with more than 300 million copies sold,” said Mojang Studios head Helen Chiang. A milestone that no one could have dreamed of when everyone was laying down the first cubes.”
The news was revealed during a Minecraft Live stream, and an accompanying blog post shared an infographic with some interesting numbers from a day in the game: players traveled 915 kilometers on backs of pigs, 400,000 wolves were tamed, 15 million picks were crafted, 6.7 million diamonds were discovered, 15 million skeletons were killed, and 700,000 cakes were baked.
Minecraft first launched in May 2009, although it was only an early access version. More than 2 years later, the full release of the game officially arrived in November 2011. Minecraft was originally a solo product, coded in Java by Markus ‘Notch’ Persson. Persson passed the role of lead developer to Jens Bergensten before the main version of the game launched. The success of the game is so outstanding Microsoft bought Minecraft and Mojang for $2.5 billion in 2014.
Minecraft’s success depends on many factors, most of which do not come from the game’s content. Minecraft has become a cultural phenomenon and is one of the most popular games on streaming and video circulation platforms. The flexibility of the experience as well as the many community servers and diverse number of mods have helped the game become an endless treasure trove of experiences. Additionally, Microsoft has made gaming easily accessible on all platforms, even to competitors like PlayStation and Nintendo.
