More than 15 million Minecrafts raised in captivity have now been successfully introduced into the wild, Notch announced this morning. Some of them were wide-open sandboxes when purchased half a decade ago, filled with potential and not much else. Others found their owners just this weekend, as fully-featured platforms for unbounded creativity and horse-riding.
Minecraft joins an exclusive list of game series’ to reach the 15 million marker – including Metroid, Burnout, and the Barbie games published by Activision.
Minecraft has now sold more copies than Myst ever did, or Worms, or Raving Rabbids.
“I want a screenshot of Notch’s Paypal,” said one fan on Twitter.
“There’s like three dollars in there,” replied the Mojang mogul.
Minecraft entered beta on December 20, 2010. Jeb took over development duties on November 19, 2011, so that Notch could focus on his new (and now defunct) programming-in-space project, 0x10c. A major customisation update for the game’s random terrain generator is its next stop.
At what point in Minecraft’s journey did you pick it up? I wasn’t interested until Survival mode provided a darkness to push against, to be honest.