Grand Theft Auto V and Skyrim get a lot of flak for the number of times they’ve been released but these titles don’t touch Minecraft‘s numbers. Make no mistake, GTA V is popular. But it’s not 300 million copies sold popular.
That’s the number of units Microsoft’s blocky building title has managed to shift since it first turned up way back in 2009. A ‘proper’ version was launched in 2011 and then Microsoft took over the reins in 2014 after giving the game’s creator $2.5 billion. With a ‘b’. Obviously, someone in acquisitions knew what they were doing. Hell, even Tetris has only managed 100 million units.
Mine arts and Minecrafts
Since then the game has gone on to host all manner of strange activities. Most recently, it was used to host replicas of NASA’s Artemis missions but it’s done loads more than that. Mojang, during a recent online event, detailed just how far Minecraft has come. Part of that is the 300 million units sold (rather than just downloaded so the original freeware version of the game isn’t being counted) but the scale of play is also outlined by just how much players are doing on a daily basis.
Players clock in some serious numbers daily. These interactions would not disgrace the monthly (okay, weekly) stats of almost any other video game. At least fifteen million skeletons meet their doom each day, nearly seven million diamonds are yanked out of virtual mines, and we don’t actually want to know how many players meet their end to the sound of hissing and a colossal boom every 24 hours.
Minecraft is due to turn 15 next year. Regular DLC, like upcoming Star Wars and Planet Earth packages, continues to evolve what players can do in the open-ended sandbox. The Star Wars: Path of the Jedi DLC, which lands on 7 November, sees players training with Mace Windu during the Clone Wars era. If that sentence doesn’t make sense, all you need to know is that Mace Windu is basically just Samuel L. Jackson in Jedi format.