Though it’s been a decade since Minecraft’s 2009 release, the wildly popular sandbox game has only continued to grow in terms of user base. Last year, it was reported that Minecraft had 91 million monthly players in October 2018. Now, according to studio head Helen Chiang, Minecraft has reached 112 million monthly players, a new milestone for the franchise.
This statistic counts players from the many platforms Minecraft is available on, across home consoles, PC, mobile, and others. It’s also worth noting that Minecraft isn’t free-to-play, meaning its many users have all purchased the game in one form or another—including the 20 million that have become active monthly players since last October. Minecraft has been available for both digital and physical purchase across its platforms, and was added to the Xbox Game Pass earlier this year in April.
Its wide availability has no doubt contributed to its massive user growth over the past ten years. Chiang also described Minecraft as “a game that players keep coming back to” in a phone interview with Business Insider this week, believing Minecraft’s ability to draw players back in again and again over time is its strength.
Minecraft’s popularity can be gauged further when comparing its numbers to other popular massive multiplayer online games right now. Fortnite had 78.3 million monthly players as of August 2018, while Roblox reached 100 million monthly active users last month.
This isn’t Minecraft’s first milestone this year, either. Back in May, creative director Saxs Persson revealed that Minecraft had reached 176 million sales worldwide, surpassing Tetris for the bestselling video game of all time.
As a franchise, Minecraft has new projects on the horizon. The next new title within the franchise, Minecraft Earth, an exclusively augmented reality (AR) version of Minecraft, is set to release later this year on iOS and Android devices that have AR capabilities.