UPDATED: Sales of one man indie game hit, Minecraft, have surpassed $250,000 per day.
According to data provided by developer, Mojang, one copy of the 9.95 ($13) game is currently being purchased every 3 seconds, representing sales of $15,000 per hour.
The world-building game has been in development for more than one year. It is largely a one man project of experienced Swedish game maker, Markus Persson (full credits here).
Minecraft drops the player into a vast, pristine, and hostile world in which they must build tools and find resources in order to survive. The focus is on gameplay, and graphics are deliberately crude. Both single player and multiplayer versions exist. In the multiplayer version, players are free to either collaborate or compete.
Minecraft had been selling more than 4,000 copies a day for several weeks, but sales spiked to new highs after a server meltdown prompted Mojang to offer the game for free over the weekend. Many of those who tried the game, which has been dubbed 'Minecrack' for its addictive quality, obviously liked it so much that they purchased it as soon as the servers came back online on Wednesday.
Indeed, Mojang has quite a habit of finding triumph in adversity: an earlier bump in sales was apparently triggered by publicity surrounding Paypal's decision to temporarily lock Persson's account because the amount of money flooding in was deemed 'suspicious'. Sales grew to over 6,000 a day during this period.
"It all feels unreal. I thought I could make a living from the game, but I did not expect to become rich", Persson said in an interview with IDG. Persson was courted by major games companies, including Valve and Bungie, during a recent visit to the US, but said he was not interested in job offers.
