Minecraft Mods Have Become a Business Worth Hundreds of Millions
Selling mods for Minecraft turned out to be a very lucrative business. The amounts and numbers obtained in the official store are very impressive.
Microsoft has published a report with financial results. It revealed extremely interesting information about Minecraft. It turns out that fans have already generated more than $350 million in revenue by selling mods, add-ons and other virtual items related to this game.
To date, players have purchased more than one billion modifications. These impressive numbers were achieved in four years, since the official store, allowing such transactions (the so-called Minecraft Marketplace/Minecraft Marketplace), was launched in April 2017. In reality, then, the results of sales of mods for this title are even higher, as the figures cited by Microsoft do not take into account unofficial projects distributed through other channels.
It is not known exactly how much of the $350 million in revenue went directly into the pockets of the creators. We know that Microsoft pays them more than 50% of the amount obtained from the sale of mods in the store, but that's the end of our knowledge in this regard.
The Redmond giant is very pleased with how the official mod store for Minecraft works and wants it to become a model for similar solutions in other games. They have already been applied in Microsoft Flight Simulator, and in the future they will also appear in other games from the company.
It is worth noting that the amount of 350 million dollars makes Minecraft one of the leading games in the so-called creator economy. This type of solution enables users to earn money on content created for other services. The most common in this category are videos created for websites such as YouTube or Twitch, but increasingly it is also possible in video games. The biggest success of this type is Roblox, whose developers only last year paid more than 250 million dollars to the creative fans. Core, which debuted in early access two weeks ago, also wants to compete for the same market.
