Mojang's recently quantified the success of its indie hit Minecraft, noting that the popular world-building title has earned more than $80 million since the company's official founding in October 2010.
There's no doubt that the indie hit Minecraft has evolved into a flat-out phenomenon. Developer Mojang recently quantified its success, noting that the game brought in pre-tax revenues of $80 million (540 million Swedish krona) in the 15 months following Mojang's official debut in October 2010, reports Swedish tech site NyTeknik. Thus far, Minecraft has seen more than 25 million downloads, and earlier this month Mojang revealed the PC version of the game has sold more than 5 million unique copies. Alongside that announcement, Mojang founder Markus "Notch" Persson distributed his notable personal dividends of $3 million to the rest of his Mojang team. Given the game's financial success thus far, Mojang told the Financial Times that it has seen no shortage of interest from other parties looking to capitalize on its popularity. "We've been approached by a number of high-profile Hollywood producers and asked to do TV shows,” said Mojang chief executive Carl Manneh. "We may do that. It's hard when you don’t have any experience and someone comes to throw these ideas around… But if the right idea comes along and the right people that we’d want to work with, we'd say why not?" Manneh added that entrepreneur Sean Parker, former Facebook president and Napster co-founder, also took interest in the company, and -- living up to his reputation -- he took the team on his private jet to party in London and hopefully strike up a business deal. In the end, Mojang rejected his offer, and Manneh explained, "Generally we didn’t want to raise capital at the time and we still don't." Currently, Minecraft is available on PC, Android, and iOS, with an XBLA version set to launch later this year.
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