Minecraft has been out for almost 9 years now, but the number of people playing the popular game is continuing to soar through the fucking roof.
The Microsoft title’s new head, Helen Chiang, revealed that in December 2017, there were 74 million active Minecraft users – a new record. Think about that ridiculous number for a moment. That’s around three times the population of Australia, or a little under the entire population of Turkey.
Also note that these are active users, meaning they’re actually playing the game, not just owning it. In total, the title has sold over 144 million copies since its release.
“We just recently set a new record in December for monthly active users, so now we’re at 74 million monthly active users—and that’s really a testament to people coming back to the game, whether it’s through the game updates or bringing in new players from across the world,” Chiang said in an interview with PopSugar.
To put those numbers into perspective, Steam‘s current most-popular game, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, regularly attracts around three million concurrent players, with roughly 30 million people owning the game (including Xbox copies). Given PUBG’s raging success in such a short period of time, it wouldn’t surprise me if they hit similar numbers to Minecraft.
Of course, the game is insanely popular amongst younger gamers, which should definitely be a considered as a major factor in its success, but no matter which way you slice it, these numbers are absolutely fucking colossal.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – Minecraft is just the next evolutionary state of LEGO.
