Minecraft has been trucking away since its first release back in 2009, delighting fans and inspiring developers ever since. Now, Mojang Studios has announced that the voxel-based survival game has now surpassed 300 million copies sold.
The announcement was made at Minecraft Live 2023, with Mojang announcing the milestone as the game approaches its 15th anniversary. Minecraft over the course of its life has now crossed the sales threshold, becoming the first video game to ever cross the 300 million sold mark.
Via the events blog post:
"It might feel like Minecraft’s blocky biomes have been around since the beginning of time, but Minecraft Live reminded us all that Minecraft is turning 15 next year! Together we’ve been crafting pickaxes (15 million of them!) discovering diamonds (6.7 million!), and slaying 15 million skeletons.Just recently we also crossed 300 million copies sold, a milestone no-one could have dreamed of when we were all building our first dirt houses! I hope there’ll be cake to celebrate our wonderful community, and our soon-to-be fifteen years mining, crafting, and respawning together. Perhaps it'll even be a creeper cake? Best check back here at Minecraft.net to find out!"
The milestone is huge as Minecraft has now become the first single title to cross the sales threshold. Series like Super Mario Bros. and others have crossed it when you add up all the releases over the years, but no single game has hit the 300 million mark until now. The closest is Grand Theft Auto V, which as of August, is sitting around 185 million units.
Originally launched in 2009, Minecraft has been a cultural phenomenon, helping to catapult gaming formats such as streaming and Let's Plays over the course of its life. The product was originally coded by Markus 'Notch' Persson, and Minecraft's developer Mojang Studios was bought by Microsoft for $2.5 billion back in 2014 - the banner-bearer of what is not a pattern by the Xbox maker to acquire talent over the next decade.
