Minecraft is a huge success, earns $37 million in revenue

Markus Persson, the creator of the indie game Minecraft is visibly happy. His game just made him phenomenally rich, and deservedly so. He revealed everything in a Reddit thread and we have to admire his Modesty. The game sold 800,000 copies in alpha stage at $16 each, which must have netted his studio a lot of revenue.

That’s not enough; when the game reached beta stage at a higher price point, the game sold around a million copies.

Persson wrote, “It all ends up in an account somewhere, and I try not to look at it. I get a normal salary these days for day to day stuff, but there’s a big pile somewhere. Paypal takes a cut, there are taxes, and such, but it’s still a huge wad of money.”

When most games in the alpha stages are just free demos to help the developers fix bugs, Notch has found a way to make money out of it. He also says that it wont work for all types of games.

“I think it’s a great way for a small studio to do game development. It might not make sense for all types of games, though. I’d definitely want to release future games in the same way. Developing in the dark is scary and probably wrong.”