23M Copies Later, ‘Minecraft’ Now Has A Death Match

When developer company “Mojang” released their most famous title to date, “Minecraft” was a phenomenal success, which is why “Microsoft” decided to buy ownership of the game in 2015 for 2.5 billion. By itself, the things that players can do in this sandbox game were endless, yet there still something missing. Recently, “Microsoft” corrected that by adding an official Death Match feature to the game.

There’s an emphasis on official there because players of the game could already technically kill each other if they wanted to. However, the practice was less-than stellar and score-keeping can be tedious. There were mods that players used to simulate what “Microsoft” is trying to do now as well and the results were decent. With this new addition though, player versus player matches are finally more formal and organized.

Not everyone is impressed with the update though since, as a Tech Crunch article notes, the move feels so profit-driven and artificial. It was like a committee just got together, tried to combine what makes “Minecraft” and “Call of Duty” popular, and this is what they came up with. This isn’t to say that the Death Match feature won’t lead to a lot of fun though, since the game’s battle system is just so simplistic that it will probably lead to more laughs than awes.  

According to the official counter for sold PC versions of the games, over 23 million copies have already been sold or downloaded. This means that at any given time, there could be more than 10 million players using the game simultaneously to build their own ideal versions of reality around the world.

With “Microsoft’s” recent announcement that they will also be releasing the PC versions of the game to the wider Chinese audience, the number of players is expected to grow even more. Specific details about the arrangement have not been released yet, but console versions of the game already exist in China.