‘Minecraft’ Passes 100 Million Sold, Puts Limits On Third-Party Advertising

Will Minecraft’s popularity ever slow down? It doesn’t look like it will be anytime soon as Mojang announced Thursday the open-world sandbox game has sold more than 100 million copies across the PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Wii U, and mobile devices. At the same time, Microsoft and the developer have updated the game’s guidelines concerning third parties building promotions into the game.

The total number of Minecraft copies sold topped 106,859,714 as of June 1, 2016, with an average of 40 million people playing the game every month. According to Mojang, this would make Minecraft owners the 12th largest country in the world if they all decided to build their own land and government led by Steve.

Amazingly, there is still room for plenty of growth, and Mojang is making sure it makes the most of the opportunity. The company announced a deal with NetEase last month to distribute Minecraft: Pocket Edition and the PC version to the Chinese market. The game will undergo some modifications to make it past Chinese censors and better appeal to the market of more than 700 million Chinese internet users.

Mojang and Minecraft were purchased by Microsoft in 2014 for $2.5 billion. The maker of Windows and Xbox quickly extended the use of the game brand to the Windows 10 platform with a Windows 10 Edition that works with Pocket Edition and has used it as a test bed for the Hololens Augmented Reality (AR) device.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is expanding the use of Minecraft for educational purchases. An Education Edition is being released this summer. It builds off the MinecraftEdu originally created by Teacher Gaming LLC in 2011 and has been used in more than 7,000 classrooms across 40 countries during that time.

This doesn’t even include the Minecraft: Story Mode spin-off from Telltale Games or the LEGO toys, plush toys, and more being sold. There’s even a Minecraft Movie still in pre-production.

So, yes, Minecraft is the conquering video game property of the latest generation of gamers. It also leaves the title ripe for exploitation by others, which is why Mojang updated the guidelines on third parties using it to promote their products or even politicians.

The changes are targeted towards advertising agencies and corporations who have been using Minecraft to “advertise unrelated products or for organizations to promote their causes.” For example, cell phone carrier Verizon partnered with an advertising agency and YouTube content creator CaptainSparklez to build a working cell phone inside the game (via CNET) to promote its services.

The new guidelines also prevent the production of movie trailers through Minecraft gameplay to market a movie or build anything to promote a company’s movie or TV show. At the same time, existing Minecraft video makers, mod makers, and servers can continue to do what they are doing today.

“We want to empower our community to make money from their creativity, but we’re not happy when the selling of an unrelated product becomes the purpose of a Minecraft mod or server,” Mojang’s Owen Hill explained. “That doesn’t feel right, or more importantly, fun. The new rules are an attempt to stop these things from happening.”

Here are the new guidelines on building promotions within Minecraft with a high level overview from Hill below.

“If you are an ad agency, corporation, non-profit, or politician, you can’t do these kinds of things or hire someone to do them:

Build a Minecraft mod or server that promotes unrelated products in playable form; e.g., if you are a restaurant chain, you can’t market your restaurant by releasing a mod that includes your restaurant built out of Minecraft blocks.

Build a Minecraft map or mod that markets a movie or TV show; e.g., if you’re a movie studio, you can’t make a map that uses Minecraft blocks to build out the fictional world of the movie or its characters, and you can’t make an official movie trailer out of gameplay footage from that map or mod.

It’s worth mentioning that fans of a particular restaurant, movie, or some other thing are still free to build things in Minecraft that represent or celebrate it so long as the goal or focus is not to promote or sell that stuff. The new rules only apply to companies or organisations that are using Minecraft to sell their products or promote their causes.”

[Image via Mojang]