Minecraft's Developer Making $350,000 $100,000 Per Day [Updated]
from the um.-wow. dept
We've been writing a few stories about Minecraft lately, kicking off with a discussion about how developer Markus Persson doesn't worry about "piracy," because he feels it's better to focus on giving people a reason to buy than caring about what others are doing. More recently, there was a big discussion around the simple coolness of a guy in Minecraft building a working computer within the game itself. Both were neat stories.Now Jay sends in some news that continues to build on the legend of Minecraft, pointing to a story claiming that Persson is making $350,000 per day (see the update below). With alpha software, and without going after "pirates" who are supposedly destroying the industry. Yeah. Apparently, he's selling a copy every 3 seconds. And he's done all this with no distribution. No retail deals. Just creating a really good game, getting people interested in it, not treating them like criminals, and giving them a reason to buy.
Whatever happened to "pirates" killing the gaming market, huh?
Update: There's some discussion in the comments about this, and I hadn't realized that Persson posts sales stats publicly. From that, it looks like the $350k per day claim was a bit exaggerated -- though, there was one such day. It looks like a more typical day is closer to $100,000. Still seems like a pretty damn good success story.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: business models, indie games, markus persson, minecraft, revenue
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Though, he may not be treating his customers as criminals -- PayPal thought he was for awhile.
I still find it amazing that one company can spend hundreds of millions of dollars to make a polished game while an individual can produce such a success in the Alpha stage -- without even having a studio to work out of. Talk about ROI!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
He got my money Friday and I've already put way more then $13 into it. I've got a tower that's probably 500ft high with a mine shaft that drops probably over a thousand feet down. I have a beach front house where the second floor is entirely glass.
It's a fun way to be creative while otherwise you would just be watching TV.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Glass houses
My latest is a glass pyramid at the cloud level. Drop a bucket of water over the top to spread out down the sides and fall in a giant wave. Lava is even more fun, but I keep killing myself experimenting with it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
beautiful graphics + shitty controls = shitty game.
shitty graphics + awesome fun = awesome game.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Please
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Please
[citation needed]
Also, who says Minecraft is a "massive abberation(sp)"? What about the Humble Indie Bundle? What about sites like Kongregate which feature flash games by independent studios?
I think people like you read a post like this and then try to analyze it in isolation. There have been many other posts about video games, piracy, and methods for making money on games - why do you insist on commenting on this post as though it's a stand alone treatise on file sharing in the video game market?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Please
However, one guy making $350,000/day (a figure which is in dispute as others have already pointed out) and the success of the Humble Indie Bundle (a bunch of games that didn't sell nearly as well until the price was heavily discounted and which were still pirated to Hell and back) is not a sign that piracy is a non-issue and that just "make a good game" isn't the universal answer. Many also agree that Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a fantastic game as well but the developer is on record as saying it was still heavily pirated and despite selling well, hasn't been enough to give them the stability they need.
You guys are so determined to prove that piracy is a non-issue that you will glom on to any success story (and the ones you cited are true but still the vast minority of cases) and say "See, it's not a problem if you just make good games!" Making good product is essential but to insinuate that it's all that is needed to guarantee success is ludicrous.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Please
Hint: The developer of Minecraft didn't just make Minecraft then sit around hoping people would support him by purchasing it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Please
Have seen and been a part of different game releases under roughly equal conditions (the same studio/publisher). Of course there are wide difference between the results generated from lame games and games that the developers themselves are not embarrassed of.
If someone outside of EA is having trouble selling their games then they have more reason to blame EA than random pirates. Buying up all the end caps in Best Buy really means more than a bunch of people swapping pirated games.
Perhaps more of the industry should acknowledge all of their competitors and stop making excuses.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Please
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Please
Also, your 3 examples couldn't be more perfect examples of the problems with the game industry. You are correct that all 3 got great reviews, know what else they had in common?
There were a lot of forces at work and just blaming "piracy" is the easy way out.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Please
"Not only about making a good game"
and
"Not being hindered by piracy"
Both at the same time?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Please
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Please
The real problem is not piracy is the price, you can charge $50 and have almost no one buy it or you can reduce that price to $5 dollars or my preferred price point $0.005 cents and have millions buying it and re-buying.
We live in an organic society and it haves is natural laws the 20/80 being one of them, only 20% will buy anything at any given moment in a good day if the conditions are right, but when they are not people won't buy it at all they will find alternatives one being piracy.
"System Shock 2, Psychonauts, the Freedom Force games" about that if they failed in the market how are they success?
Pacman I heard of and people still talk about it, Mario Bros is huge, Sonic, Medal of Honor, Halo but those games you cited I don't know them and never heard of them, how much success can they have had it when not everyone heard about those things?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Please
Tell that to System Shock 2, Psychonauts, the Freedom Force games and any other numbers of critically and player acclaimed commercial failures over the years.
The thing is these two statements are not mutually exclusive. Many people did pay money for all the game mentioned, and that is exactly what the first statement says. Just because something is a commercial/financial failure does not mean there were not sales or that the product wasn't good.
What the first statement does not say is that your company will be a financial success because of the sales you have. That depends on a lot more then just sales. In particular the cost side of the equation. Just because you can create a great game does NOT mean that you know how to run a profitable company. There are dozens of examples of this over the past three decades.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Please
Remember the basic purpose of all IP: it is to support production so the public will get enough supply. That is the standard orthodox view. It means the determinant of whether there is a problem is whether the public is getting enough of the particular good. The purpose is not to ensure that all companies can survive, or that all can make comfortable money, or that any, some, or all are rich.
So, the question to ask is: are sufficient games produced? And the answer should be clear even to casual inspection: there are absolutely loads of games being produced. There are most likely more being produced now, of more variety, than ever before. There are plenty; there is, if anything, a surfeit.
In which case, by the standard definition of IP, there really does not appear to be a problem in piracy. In fact, since piracy is higher than ever before, yet production is also higher, we are led to rather the opposite conclusion. Piracy -- or really, freer communication -- is beneficial. IP is actually now malfunctional in the current technological context and the de facto weakening of it by piracy is *good*.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Please
It means that any problem is a business model issue, not one of blaming users. If you put together a good product, combined with a good business model, then piracy is not a problem.
Sure, if you're a bad business person, then perhaps piracy can "limit" your growth. But the real problem is that you're a bad business person.
There are plenty of universally renowned games that no one bought and that this guy is (deservedly) succeeding in this very unique way is not a sign of any kind of trend.
No one said all you needed was a good game.
And no one said this is a trend. But it does prove that if you put things together right, piracy is no problem at all.
Are thieves everything that's wrong with the game industry?
Ah, you're someone who thinks infringement is theft. Well, then that's your first problem. Once you understand why that's not true, perhaps you'll understand the rest.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Please
Getting customers to pay is actually a far, far easier problem to solve than stopping thieves from stealing. There is no control over how thieves will steal, but there's 100% control over how customers can and will pay. You just have to provide that opportunity.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Please
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Sounds off
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Sounds off
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Sounds off
http://minecraft.net/stats.jsp
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
penny arcade effect
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/9/17/
granted, one of the many reasons it did is probably because it's indie friendly.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: penny arcade effect
The computer-in-the-game was cool, but so was the Enterprise-D, and the guy accidentally burning down his house during a fireplace tutorial, and lots of other things.
Internet sensations snowball quick. I'd love to see an analysis of propagation across various social sites correlated with minecraft's sales.
I'd try it myself but I'm still up to my nose in civ5.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
"...I mean 0.27%. Doesn’t sound too bad, does it? Well, that was 140 accounts!"
By my mental math that puts this at around 52,000 units sold as of a week ago. If we assume everyone of these accounts paid the current going rate of €9.99 that is a total of ~€519.5K (~$712K USD.
Of course, the game did make have another viral plug recently when someone revealed a 1:1 reproduction of the USS Enterprise.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/09/the-true-story-behind-the-amazing-minecraf t-enterprise-d.ars
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
bb
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Totals
http://www.minecraft.net/stats.jsp
332759 (30.26%) have bought the game.
http://www.minecraft.net/prepurchase.jsp
If you pre-purchase now during alpha, you pay just €9.95!
4,580,037.14 US dollars. Not bad.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Why is this a success?
If he can cover his costs at $351,000 per day and salt something away, that's great. That's a fine. But it doesn't mean anything about whether DRM is bad or piracy is not a problem.
This really is rhetorical sloppiness. By the same token, some inner city school district can be a success because one kid went to Harvard. Some police department can be considered a success if one tourist manages to escape unmugged.
Plus, I think your definition of DRM is a bit bogus. He may not use the letters DRM to describe what he's doing, but he's consciously adding features that have exactly the same effect. By forcing people to log into the central server to access many features, he gets all of the benefits:
He's just better at PR. It's clear that the cool thing is to claim you're not doing DRM while tracking everyone's usage and violating their privacy. As long as you just claim that it's not DRM and call the existing game companies stupid, people in this blog's echo chamber will just believe the hype and not look any deeper.
I think the big game now will be to dream up more acronyms that are practically the same as DRM while just being different in spelling. How about RTB?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Why is this a success?
You're using a game created by a big name studio published by mother f***ing Microsoft as the success bar? What the hell have you been smoking. Halo: Reach is the sixth(?) game in a vary well selling series, $200 million is expected.
I do not see a mention of DRM in this article so you may have to point that out to me.
While online mode is a form of DRM (kinda, but not really), he's not corrupting pirates games. Hell he isn't even bothering with them. Just imagine how much of that $200mill went to DRM and fighting piracy (shit, how much went to the publisher alone).
As for the "echo chamber" remark, you're not one to talk. You and others like you just keep spouting the same exact thing over and over and over again despite any evidence to the contrary. I know it's rare where you are (especially in that echo chamber you call a head), but we work on logic here. When logic points in one direction only then that's the direction it points, we don't argue with it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Why is this a success?
Again, he's just better a PR. Imagine he said, "If I detect piracy or even suspect it, I disable some of the most important features." Everyone here would be squalking. Everyone here would be up in arms, pouting and saying, "He doesn't respect us as customers."
But he's smart, smarter than I may ever be. He just claims that some crippled demoware is the real game and the extra features are just RTB. Because he used Mike's favorite TLA not his least favorite, Mike thinks this is all great.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Why is this a success?
We've never said you can make a good game, treat your customers like shit, and still make money hand over fist.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Why is this a success?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Why is this a success?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Why is this a success?
Potential Customer: "I like this demo/game I pirated, if only there was some way to expand on what I am able to do with it..."
Game Developer: "Well if you pay me money you can unlock all of these additional features."
Potential Customer: "I think I will do that! You just gave me a reason to give you my money."
Is it really that hard to understand?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Why is this a success?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Why is this a success?
Infinity Ward only turned that way when the two CEOs wouldn't play ball to Kotick's ways of thinking.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Why is this a success?
It's certainly more convenient to buy and sign up, but it's fairly easy to get around (I did buy).
Most importantly the DRM that it lacks are the types of things that root my machine, require an always on internet connection, install additional non-game software, require some random magic token to get started, etc...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Why is this a success?
Uh, wow did you ever miss the point.
Halo did that with how many developers? And what budget? And how much spent on marketing? And how many retail partners?
Right. That's the point.
On a per person basis, which do you think made more?
If he can cover his costs at $351,000 per day and salt something away, that's great
I love the implication that someone cannot cover their costs at $351,000 per day.
But it doesn't mean anything about whether DRM is bad or piracy is not a problem.
Er, actually, it does. It shows that you don't need DRM and you can succeed incredibly well without worrying about "pirates."
Plus, I think your definition of DRM is a bit bogus. He may not use the letters DRM to describe what he's doing, but he's consciously adding features that have exactly the same effect. By forcing people to log into the central server to access many features, he gets all of the benefits:
Hello Bob, someone just discovered a reason to buy.
It's not DRM.
Besides, as others point out, he makes the code available for others to do stuff as well.
He's just better at PR.
Indeed. And that's important. Who said otherwise?
It's clear that the cool thing is to claim you're not doing DRM while tracking everyone's usage and violating their privacy.
Whose privacy was violated?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I'm surprised because it's such a crappy game
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Updated
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Updated
Yeah, that would really suck.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Fools...
This is a really big deal. This is just like the notion that anyone can grow up to be president, anyone can grow up and make 100,000 a day without the help of big studios or investing money. This guy is great. I hope he donates some of it, cause thats just too much money.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I suppose by the same reasoning every blizzard disproves global warming.
That kind of logic shows the value of a college education has been in steep decline for much longer than I thought.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
That kind of logic shows the value of a college education has been in steep decline for much longer than I thought.
Logic fail! Very different situations. One involves a situation in which individuals have control over the situation, and the other does not.
What this example shows is that *if* you do things right, "piracy" is not a problem. It's a conditional. There is no conditional with the Blizzard. It's just a data point. And before you say that this success is just a datapoint too, look at what we're disproving. The claim is that piracy makes it difficult to impossible to make money with video games. With such a claim, you only need a single data point to disprove it. With a trend like global warming, you need a lot more than a single datapoint.
And, in the meantime, you might refrain on the insults when you're flat out wrong. I taught logic in college. I didn't get it wrong here.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
@#11 Parallax Abstractio
And realistically, in this day and age, Mike is correct too.
But which of you is "right"? I tend to favor your side, than Mike's. Unlike Mike, I'm not cool with people stealing software.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: @#11 Parallax Abstractio
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: @#11 Parallax Abstractio
It's like I go into a grocery store. I browse around then decide I don't want anything and leave. All the ads in the world mean nothing to me unless I need to purchase (Example) milk. Well, then I need bread and cereal... Suddenly, you need more.
So which is it? Worry about pirates? Or care for customers?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
But he's put in anti-piracy measures!
Looks to me like Persson doesn't *now* worry about piracy because he's *already* worried about it and put in anti-piracy measures that cripple pirated copies. HOW does this prove your view that piracy can be ignored?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: But he's put in anti-piracy measures!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: But he's put in anti-piracy measures!
Although, notably unlike Blizzard, the Minecraft guy doesn't care if you choose to run private servers instead of paying for access to the official ones.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
You whippersnappers!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: You whippersnappers!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: But he's put in anti-piracy measures!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: But he's put in anti-piracy measures!
"Looks to me like Persson doesn't *now* worry about piracy because he's *already* worried about it and put in anti-piracy measures that cripple pirated copies. HOW does this prove your view that piracy can be ignored? "
EXACTLY! Persson DOES have DRM. It's called a client-server and it's not open source code. As of yet, no one has been able to break this "DRM".
He also mentions he will not release the source until after sales slow down. If he was truly not worried about piracy, then he'd release the source right now. But he won't because he's afraid it will hurt his bottom line since it'd make it easy for others to copy his work...just like the big boys.
I hate DRM too. The DRM solutions that have been pushed are invasive and often very broken (and in many cases, breaks things around it). But to pretend that DRM isn't useful or that a business if fundamentally broken is willful stupidity (yes, I mean stupid).
Again, the only thing that separates Minecraft from the big boys is that pirates have, as of yet, not found a way to break his form DRM.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
What DRM ?
Play online once so that the game downloads its assets, then you can play Minecraft offline, with no internet connexion whatsoever, for as long as you wish.
You can also ZIP the game, put it on any other computer and play.
No tokens, no expiration, no connexion required to play, no hardware verification.
Even if Mojan Specification and its website are nuked into oblivion, I will be able to play this game in my grave provided that it's still compatible with the latest Java runtime.
No, there are no DRM in Minecraft. Just incentives to update online to get new goodies (and you get lifetime upgrades once you've bought the game).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Pre: Pirates of Minecrack
http://cool.storyb.ro
And i skimmed enuff of the comments to understand that someone is butthurt about Minecrack's Pirates.
What Pirates?
You have to understand:
Copy 1: Free
Copy 2: Pay for Account
Source Code: POSTED FOR ALL TO SEE.
you want something to complain about? Simple: your "so-called" Pirates are "borrowing" code the same way as rappers make music. People are just lazy.
63% of all statisics are wrong, yet 43% of people believe them whether they're true or not.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I must be bad
If i don't like them, i don't buy them and i don't play them anymore...
Now not every person is like me, who purches games after downloading a pirate copy.... but i know i am not the only one who does it, and a lot of my friends really like what i do as they enjoy my opinions and they thank me for it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
wow
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
please make minecraft pocket edition more fun
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
please make minecraft pocket edition more fun
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Genius!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]