Minecraft player numbers cross 126 million amid pandemic

Minecraft player numbers have skyrocketed amid the Coronavirus pandemic as Microsoft’s child friendly survival game reaches 126 million players. 

The eleven-year-old crafting game may be one of the most popular games ever created, but the COVID-19 outbreak has only increased the game’s popularity despite its age.

Microsoft revealed that Minecraft player numbers increased 25% in new players which is extremely impressive for an eleven-year-old game with over 200 million units sold. However, the total increase in Minecraft player numbers was a staggering 40% increase.

“In these extraordinary times, we’re reminded more than ever before of the important role games like Minecraft can play in providing an escape from the day-to-day and fostering social connections between friends and families,” said Microsoft’s head of Mojang Studios, Helen Chiang.

While the Coronavirus pandemic has influenced the video game industry in various different ways, player counts and player numbers have seen huge increases on popular games and services. For example, Microsoft’s Xbox Live services have seen a huge increase in concurrent users.

In fact, Minecraft has been vital to education throughout the Coronavirus pandemic since Microsoft made the game’s Education Edition free for teachers to use. For more hardcore gamers, the iconic survival crafting game recently received a gorgeous ray-tracing update for Nvidia RTX GPUs.