How many people play "Minecraft"? More than 112 million per month

A child plays "Minecraft".REUTERS / Matthew Tostevin

• Sorry, fans of "Fortnite" – "Minecraft" continues to dominate quietly, as it has done for years.
• Helen Chiang, head of the studio "Minecraft," told Business Insider in a phone interview this week. "In the last five years since the acquisition," Minecraft "continues to grow," she said.
• "Minecraft" is a rare case of playing with "long legs" – it continues to sell for years – in the area of ​​successful video games, where sales charts often look like hockey sticks.
• Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.

For over 10 years, the very popular game "Minecraft" is a heavyweight of culture.

Despite other great games sweeping away millions of players, like "Fortnite" and "Roblox", "Minecraft" continues to dominate quietly.

Starting this week, the game has now more than 112 million players each month.

This represents a leap of more than 20 million players since the last announcement made by Microsoft in October 2018 – an absolutely massive increase in the number of players, given that the game has been available for more than 10 years. The number includes players from all game consoles, computers, mobile devices and the game version focused on education.

Notably, "Minecraft" is not free on the Internet. a lot platforms, it is available on.

The tens of millions of new "Minecraft" players added last year all bought the game in one form or another, be it a direct purchase of a physical copy in a store or the service of subscription to success Digital Purchase Game Pass.

Read more: Why there will be no "Minecraft 2", according to officials of "Minecraft"

"Minecraft" is currently undergoing a major overhaul of its PC graphics, which uses a thriving graphics technology called "Ray Tracing". Microsoft is working with NVIDIA on the update, using NVIDIA RTX graphics cards.Nvidia / Microsoft

The first successes persisted

Gambling is a famous and explosive phenomenon since the beginning of his life; "Minecraft" started as a work-in-progress game, created by one man (Markus "Notch" Persson). There were rudimentary graphics and controls. This was only available on PC. It was broken, because it was an unfinished game created by one person.

And yet, millions of people have bought and used this first version of "Minecraft".

When Microsoft bought the game in 2014 for $ 2.5 billion, the tech world was surprised and confused by this purchase.

But it is clear that early successes have persisted under Microsoft's care over the past five years.

"What we're seeing is that players are coming back all the time," said Helen Chiang, head of studio "Minecraft," at Business Insider during a phone interview this week. "It may not always be the one who is in the foreground because there are a lot of great games that keep coming out, but it's a game they love to come back to."

Why 'Minecraft & # 39; was so successful

So, why is "Minecraft" so popular?

We are talking about a game that looks like this:

Microsoft / Mojang

Think of "Minecraft" as a virtual LEGO.

It's a system for assembling parts to create something – sometimes unbelievable some things – You're welcome. "Minecraft" provides endless building blocks and a blank canvas; it is up to you to create something amazing, idiotic, repository or whatever, using the tools provided. The tools are very user-friendly, as are the systems for using these tools.

With this in mind, it's easy to understand why "Minecraft" has been so successful.

The fact that it is graphically rudimentary and simple to play makes it all the more accessible to a large audience – more than 112 million people each month, apparently.