Share of Minecraft unit sales worldwide 2016, by region and platform
Minecraft sales and gaming worldwide – additional information
Minecraft is an independent game, designed in 2009 by Swedish programmer Markus Persson, otherwise known as Mojang, who put players in a virtual landscape where they can create their own structures and contraptions out of textured cubes. In multiple gameplay modes, players are allowed to do exploration, resource gathering, crafting and combat. Since the game’s launch, Minecraft has churned out sales with tens of millions of copies sold, especially after Microsoft’s purchase of the game in 2014. In fact, the game was Microsoft’s third most expensive acquisition since 2002, as it acquired Mojang for 2.5 billion U.S. dollars that year.
2014 also marked the year when the popularity of the game surged, as Minecraft was the second most mentioned video game, having appeared in approximately 38 thousand articles worldwide. The sandbox game that entered into the gaming world without the backing of a publisher and advertising, claimed the 8th spot on the most played PC games on gaming platform Raptr in 2015 and the fifth spot in a ranking of the leading games on Twitch that same year, in terms of number of hours viewed, standing behind popular games such as Hearthstone and DOTA 2.