Minecraft has 400M players in China alone, 600M globally

Minecraft has sold over 200 million copies, but it has 400 million registered players in China alone -- 600 million globally.

@anthony256

Published Nov 25, 2020 11:22 PM CST
Updated Dec 29, 2020 12:46 AM CST

44 seconds read time

Minecraft has crossed an incredible milestone in China, with over 400 million registered players in mainland China -- adding 100,000,000 new players this year -- the fastest growth at any point since it launched.

The news is coming from industry analyst Daniel Ahmad, who added: "Minecraft is F2P in China and is published on Mobile and PC by NetEase. The paid game has sold 200m units outside China". Why is Minecraft so massively popular in China? That would be because it's free.

Minecraft is free-to-play on both PC and mobile in China, published by NetEase. If you consider 1.4 billion people live in China, with 400 million registered players that means that around 28% of the population of China -- or around 1 in every 4 people -- play Minecraft.

Ahmad adds: "User Generated Content (UGC) has been key for the growth of Minecraft in China. There are now 12k devs creating content, such as skins, that are sold through the marketplace. These devs have earned RMB 100 million directly from the revenue share".

Minecraft has 400M players in China alone, 600M globally 01

Anthony Garreffa

Anthony joined the TweakTown team in 2010 and has since reviewed 100s of graphics cards. Anthony is a long time PC enthusiast with a passion of hate for games built around consoles. FPS gaming since the pre-Quake days, where you were insulted if you used a mouse to aim, he has been addicted to gaming and hardware ever since. Working in IT retail for 10 years gave him great experience with custom-built PCs. His addiction to GPU tech is unwavering and has recently taken a keen interest in artificial intelligence (AI) hardware.