This week marks the 15th anniversary of Minecraft’s debut. On May 17, 2009, the first public alpha version of Minecraft, currently known as the Classic version, was released. Days before, Markus “Notch” Persson worked on some pre-alpha versions (some of which you can try with MultiMC if you’re curious), and he even uploaded a video on YouTube with tests of various aspects of the game in which he worked.

The first of these videos was uploaded to YouTube on May 13, 2009four days before the game’s public debut, it was called the Cave Game Tech Test, and as you can see in it, at that time the game only had two types of blocks and a single game mode, creative, even though At the time it didn’t even have an inventory (at least visible) or the traditional bar that appears in the lower middle of the screen and that allows us to choose which block or tool we want to use.

A few days later, on the 17th of that month, as we remember today, Notch released the first public version of the game, still in alpha, and also posted a commemorative message on the TIG Source forums announcing his creation. It was titled “Minecraft (Alpha)” and in it it “introduced” the game, saying it was in the early stages of development, and invited people to visit its blog to follow the progress of the project.

The reception was quite positive from the first momentand a few hours later, Notch posted a second message showing his roadmap for Minecraft and announcing that he had already advanced some key aspects, such as that the map was procedurally generated and that he intended it to have multiple game modes. games, including a creative mode and a survival mode, even questioning whether the latter should have any purpose. It also proposed two others, team survivability and strength, which ultimately did not make it into the game. And at the same time, she also published a version of the browser, which is no longer available, but its traces can be found in the Archive.

Notch didn’t have the necessary budget to promote Minecraft, which was still very green, but due to a twist of fate The game started to spread quite quicklyand the creator himself, aware of the potential of this way of communication, encouraged the creation and uploading of videos on YouTube, a platform responsible for the growing popularity of the game and at the same time reflecting the evolution of the experience project, which until now was the work of a single person.

If you are curious to try Minecraft Classic, this article will explain how to do it online.

That was just the beginning It would be another two and a half years before version 1.0 was released., on November 18, 2011, although it also made the jump to Android before that date, with a Pocket Edition version that would also make the jump to iOS shortly after. And of course, during those two and a half years, quite a few alphas and betas were released, which were also made available to all interested players.

So, By the time of its “official launch”, Minecraft had already gained quite a lot of popularity, thanks in part to the development work behind it, but also very much to the popularity it gained thanks to the then fledgling ecosystem of content creators who found the game a sensational tool for creating videos to upload to YouTube . This, coupled with Notch’s active listening policy, made a huge difference. So while it was still in beta, it had already passed an exceptional milestone for an indie game, surpassing four million units sold.

What came next, while things were already looking high at the time, is something that probably nobody even remotely imagined in the game’s early days. The gaming community began to grow like foamThanks to the involvement of the modding community, the possibilities of the game have grown exponentially. Additionally, the multiplayer mode (present since the first public alphas) ​​provided a multiplayer experience that was also key to its colossal success.

Already in the middle of 2012 We’ve seen data as surprising as Minecraft already playing as much as Call of Duty on Xbox 360not to mention that a few months earlier it was already among the ten best-selling games in history with 5.3 million units in March 2012. Moreover, and to maximize this success, we quickly started to see how they develop new versions for other platforms, from the Nintendo Wii after Raspberry Pi.

Two years later, when the success story was already indisputable, The bombshell has arrived, Notch sold Mojang to Microsoft for $2.5 billion, despite the fact that he has been quite critical of those from Redmond in the past. With the sale, she distanced herself from active Minecraft development, though it’s true that she maintained some connection for a while, until Notch put her foot in a few pools and Microsoft decided it was better to distance herself from her completely. game creator.

Microsoft’s first big step was to release a specific version for Windows 10 a year later, a precedent for the current Minecraft Bedrock, and which represented a major fork between the PC version of Java and the version currently available for other platforms. If you don’t know the differences between Bedrock and Java, we will explain them in this article. Personally, as a Minecraft player since its inception, I appreciate the positives of both, but if I had to choose one, I’d go with Java.

In the chart in blue, you can see the Google search volume for Minecraft compared to “Spotify”, “Taylor Swift” and “Microsoft”.

In 2016, it has already slipped into the top five best-selling games in history, an unstoppable progress that, after so many years since its launch, reached the top of this table a few years ago and currently continues to surpass sales milestones, showing that it is still a very current proposition and of interest to many users. So, for example, it’s rare not to find it in the top ten most watched games on Twitch, where many games continue to take place. gameplayboth solo and in multiplayer events that are highly celebrated by the community.

Microsoft has been around for a while, yes trying to “push” the Minecraft Java community to the Bedrock versionthough they are aware of the vast majority that the former represents and the horribly negative impact that ending its development by focusing solely on Bedrock would have.

Minecraft’s history includes both successes and failuresand there are those in the community who think the game has gotten worse since Notch stopped being responsible for it. At this point, I realize that I’m quite a fan of the work done by Agnes Larsson, who is currently the head of Mojang. Under his leadership, we’ve seen tremendous growth in the game, with some updates that stick out like the huge Nether update in 1.16, or the accumulation of new features from 1.17, 1.18, and 1.19 that made up the Cliffs & Caves Update.

Do we have Minecraft long? All indications are that yes. There have obviously been several attempts to “replace” it, but none have been remotely up to par. At this time, only one project came up that made us think it might be at risk. I’m talking about Hytale, of course, but years after it was first announced, we’re still waiting and there’s no indication that’s going to change in the near term.