The Swedish game celebrated its 15th anniversary a few days ago. A worldwide success, which cannot be denied, and which is not about to stop.
Break, place, harvest, assemble. This is the concept that allowed Minecraft to become the best-selling video game in the world in 2019 – apart from the Tetris license -, ahead of Grand Theft Auto (GTA) V by more than 100 million copies. A true revolution in the video game category “Sandbox”artists and adventurers at heart find what they’re looking for, the game offering a mode “creative” And “survival”. And this success does not seem to be stopping any time soon: over the last 30 days, it has accumulated more than 170 million connections. Le Figaro takes stock of the key figures for multigenerational success.
In October 2023, Minecraft passed the milestone of 300 million copies sold worldwide, according to Zone Bourse. It is “a step that no one could have dreamed of back when we were all building our first mud houses”, then said Hélène Chiang, the head of Minecraft at Microsoft. Dizzying figures: there are almost as many copies of Minecraft sold as there are inhabitants in the United States!
However, if the project developed by Mojang Studios was bought by Microsoft in 2014 for the impressive sum of 2.5 billion dollars, this cubic world first saw the light of day on May 17, 2009, from the garage of the Swedish Markus Persson – alias “Notch” -, then an independent developer, having benefited from no financing at the time. The man will also leave the Mojang studio, which he co-founded, when it was bought by the American giant. The Java version of the game will be released to the public in November 2011, and will be an immediate success.
Over a trillion views on YouTube
1000 billion. Here’s how many views the cult game achieved on YouTube in 2021 across all videos, after the studio looked at 12 years of downloads and views from creators and viewers. “If each of those trillion views lasted just one second, that would be over 30,000 years. If each view was a 12-inch Minecraft block, you could build a stack going from Earth to the sun and back — with about seven million miles to go. the game developers took for comparison, in a message addressed to the community.
A colossal number, as Gaming generated more than 2 trillion views on YouTube in 2022, the platform tells us. Platform on which some have dedicated their channel to the cult game such as the YouTuber Dream who has 31.9 million subscribers thanks to his videos of him playing Minecraft.
Same observation on the Twitch streaming platform, on which live streams dedicated to Minecraft have accumulated more than 7 million hours of viewing over the last 7 days, according to TwitchTracker.com.
Over 170 million monthly players
The number of monthly players has not fallen below 100 million since 2020. And over the last 30 days, more than 170 million users have connected at least once to Minecraft, according to several sites listing these data. Figures which show that the phenomenon is not running out of steam. And for good reason, since numerous updates are regularly carried out, thus maintaining the game and its community. In 2016, the newspaper The New York Times even spoke of a “Minecraft generation”, alluding to the popularity of the game among young people. Minecraft was notably elected winner of the “Kids’ Choice Award for Favorite Video Game” Many times.
Another factor contributing to the maintenance and expansion of this large family, the game remains relatively affordable, and costs around twenty euros on average. It is accessible on various media: it is possible to play on your computer, on your PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo but also on your phone.
A film planned for 2025
To mark its 15th anniversary, promotion of the Minecraft film, scheduled for early April 2025, began. It should notably feature “the adventures of a teenage girl and her friends on a mission to save the world of blocks from destruction”, according to Tech&Co. The film, which has already started filming, will be directed by Jared Hess in collaboration with Warner Bros, and is headlined by Jack Black in the role of Steve, – the main avatar of the game -, as well as Jason Momoa, the dark Aquaman.
You will have understood it, in the same way as the Mario license and “Super Mario Bros. the film”this release could also amplify the Minecraft phenomenon which has lasted for 15 years, of which the community never tires.
