Minecraft‘s popularity has been steadily growing during this current pandemic, starting back in May topping 200 million in sales and having a steady active monthly player base of 126 million. Those stats alone make Minecraft a massive success, but by July, the player base had gotten close to 130 million active monthly players.
This could be due to various reasons, but one reason is for sure, the current pandemic and lockdown have led to an increase in the active monthly player base.
This can be due to many graduates and students using the ease of building that Minecraft offers to recreate their campus or recreate a popular hangout spot.
This has been done countless times; some students even used these recreations to host their graduation celebration or a social gathering, which they may have been unable to do during the current pandemic and lockdown.
One example of students recreating their campus is how the MIT undergrads recreated their campus to get the feeling of walking around their campus and trying to get some sense of normalcy.
These creations alongside the Marketplace item called The Graduation Celebration, and this marketplace item is perfect for Minecraft players that didn’t get to experience walking across the stage. Many have utilized this free Marketplace to feel some of the same experience.
Since Minecraft Live showcased the long-requested and long-awaited update to the cave systems that have remained largely the same, this stagnation in the cave system has led many players to ignore them unless absolutely needed.
Another factor that could be a leading contributor to Minecraft’s growth is that Steve is now in another vastly popular game of Super Smash Bros. This has led many Super Smash Bros players to look up Minecraft and enjoy the plethora of content currently available for Minecraft.
These factors have impressively led to Minecraft having a monthly active player base of 131 million; that number alone is increasingly impressive, which should lead to more opportunities for Minecraft-affiliated games/properties.
Mojang Studios in a press release stated, “Since the start of the pandemic, we’ve seen an increase of nearly 90% in multiplayer sessions, and our community has grown to nearly 132 million players each month.”
Besides this incredible number of active monthly users, Minecraft has seen a 90% increase in just Multiplayer sessions since the pandemic has started. This increase has led to more overall players and more interest in the Minecraft community as a whole.