Minecraft is a sandbox video game developed by the Swedish video game developer Mojang Studios in 2014. The game was created by Markus “Notch” Persson in the Java programming language. Following several early private testing versions, it was first made public in May 2009 before fully releasing in November 2011, with Jens Bergensten then taking over development.

#1 In November 2011, prior to the game’s full release, Minecraft beta surpassed 16 million registered users and 4 million purchases.

#2 In 2016, an educational version of the base game, designed specifically for use in educational establishments such as schools, Minecraft: Education Edition, was released.

# By April 2021, the number of active monthly users had climbed to 140 million.