Minecraft is a sandbox video game developed and published by the Swedish company Mojang Studios. Following its initial public alpha release as an early access title on 17 May 2009, it was formally released on 18 November 2011 for personal computers. The game has since been ported to numerous platforms, including mobile devices and various video game consoles.
In Minecraft, players explore a procedurally generated world with virtually infinite terrain made up of three-dimensional blocks represented as voxels. They can discover and extract raw materials, craft tools and items, build structures, fight hostile mobs, and cooperate with or compete against other players in multiplayer. In addition, the game's large community offers a wide variety of user-generated content, such as modifications, servers, player skins, texture packs, and custom maps, which add new game mechanics and possibilities.
Originally created by Markus "Notch" Persson using the Java programming language, Jens "Jeb" Bergensten was handed control over the game's development following its full release. In November 2014, Mojang and the Minecraft intellectual property were purchased by Microsoft for billion; Xbox Game Studios holds the publishing rights for the Bedrock Edition, the unified cross-platform version which evolved from the Pocket Edition codebase and replaced the legacy console versions. Bedrock is updated concurrently with Mojang's original Java Edition, although with numerous, generally small, differences.
Minecraft is the best-selling video game of all time with over 400 million copies sold. It has received critical acclaim, winning several awards and being cited as one of the best video games ever made. Social media, parodies, adaptations, merchandise, and annual Minecon conventions have played prominent roles in popularizing it. A film adaptation, titled A Minecraft Movie, was released in 2025 and became the second highest-grossing video game film at the time of its release.
Gameplay Minecraft is a three-dimensional (3D) sandbox video game played in discrete, persistent instances called "worlds". These worlds are composed of rough 3D objects—mainly cubes, referred to as blocks—arranged in a voxel grid and representing various materials, such as dirt, stone, ores, logs, water, and lava. The core gameplay revolves around picking up and placing these blocks: players can move freely around the world, breaking, or mining, blocks and then placing them elsewhere to build structures. Most blocks are not affected by gravity, instead maintaining their voxel position in the air. Minecraft has no required goals to accomplish, giving players a large amount of freedom in choosing how to play the game, though an optional achievement system is included. Gameplay is in the first-person perspective by default, but players have the option of third-person perspectives (back and front).
Players can craft a wide variety of items, including armor, which mitigates damage from attacks; weapons—such as swords or bows and arrows—which make it easier to kill monsters and animals; and tools—such as pickaxes or shovels—which break certain types of blocks more quickly. Some items have multiple tiers based on the material used to craft them, with higher-tier items being more effective and durable. Players may also craft functional blocks, such as furnaces, which cook food and smelt ores, and torches, which produce light. Additionally, players can trade with villagers (NPCs), exchanging emeralds for various goods. The game has an inventory system, allowing players to carry a limited number of items. The game's time system follows a day and night cycle, with one full cycle lasting 20 real-time minutes. The game also features a material called redstone, which can be used to build primitive mechanical devices, electrical circuits, and logic gates, enabling the construction of complex systems.
New players are given a randomly selected default character skin out of nine possibilities, including Steve or Alex, but are able to create and upload their own skins. Players encounter various mobs (mobile entities) including animals, villagers, and hostile creatures. Passive mobs, such as cows, pigs, and chickens, spawn during the daytime and can be hunted for food and crafting materials, while hostile mobs—including large spiders, witches, skeletons, and zombies—spawn during nighttime or in dark places such as caves. Other creatures unique to Minecraft include the creeper (an exploding creature that sneaks up on the player) and the enderman (a creature with the ability to teleport as well as pick up and place blocks). There are also variants of mobs that spawn in different conditions; for example, zombies have husk and drowned variants that spawn in deserts and oceans, respectively.
Generation The Minecraft environment is procedurally generated as players explore it using a map seed that is randomly chosen at the time of world creation (or manually specified by the player). Divided into biomes representing different environments with unique resources and structures, worlds are designed to be effectively infinite in traditional gameplay, though technical limits on the player have existed throughout development, both intentionally and not.
Implementation of horizontally infinite generation initially resulted in a glitch termed the "Far Lands" at over 12 million blocks away from the world center, where terrain generated as wall-like, fissured patterns. The Far Lands and associated glitches were considered the effective edge of the world until they were resolved, with the current horizontal limit instead being a special impassable barrier located 30 million blocks away in each direction. Vertical space is comparatively limited, with an unbreakable bedrock layer at the bottom and a building limit several hundred blocks into the sky.
Dimensions Minecraft features three independent dimensions accessible through portals and providing alternate game environments. The Overworld is the starting dimension and represents the real world, with a terrestrial surface setting that includes plains, mountains, forests, oceans, caves, and small sources of lava.
The Nether is a hell-like underworld dimension accessed via an obsidian portal and composed mainly of lava. Mobs that populate the Nether include shrieking, fireball-shooting ghasts, alongside anthropomorphic pigs called piglins and their zombified counterparts. Piglins have a bartering system, allowing players to trade gold ingots for various items. Structures called Nether fortresses generate in the Nether, containing mobs such as wither skeletons and blazes; blazes can drop blaze rods, which are needed to access the End dimension. Players can also choose to summon an optional boss mob known as the Wither, using a Nether block called "soul sand" and skulls obtained from wither skeletons.
The End can be reached through an End portal, which consists of twelve end portal frames. End portals are found in underground structures in the Overworld called strongholds. To locate a stronghold, players must craft eyes of ender from an ender pearl (the loot the enderman drops upon death) and blaze powder; when thrown, an eye of ender travels toward the nearest stronghold. Once there, the player activates the end portal by placing eyes of ender into each of its frames. The End itself consists of islands floating in a dark, bottomless void, with a boss enemy called the Ender Dragon guarding the largest, central island. Killing the dragon opens an exit portal; entering it triggers the game's ending credits, followed by the End Poem—a roughly 1,500-word text written by Irish novelist Julian Gough that takes about nine minutes to scroll past. It is the game's only narrative text and the only text of significant length directed at the player. After the credits finish, the player is returned to their respawn point and may continue playing indefinitely.
In September 2026, it was announced that a new dimension named "The Sift" is coming to Java and Bedrock Edition in 2027.
Game modes Survival mode
In Survival mode, players gather natural resources such as wood and stone to craft blocks and items. Depending on the difficulty setting, monsters spawn in darker areas outside a radius of the character, requiring players to build shelter to survive at night. The mode has a health bar that depletes from mob attacks, falls, drowning, burning, suffocation, starvation, and other hazards, while a hunger bar must be periodically refilled by eating unless playing on peaceful difficulty. At 6 units or lower on the hunger bar, players can no longer sprint, at zero they starve, and at 18 or higher, health passively regenerates.
Losing all health kills the player, dropping their inventory items unless the game is reconfigured otherwise, and respawning them at their spawn point, which is, by default, set at the place where players first spawn in the world, but which can be changed by sleeping in a bed, using a respawn anchor, or via commands. Dropped items can be recovered within five minutes before they despawn. Players earn experience points ("xp" or "exp") by killing mobs, mining, smelting ores, breeding animals, and cooking, which can be spent on enchanting tools, armor, and weapons for added power, durability, or special effects.
Two related modes build on Survival: Hardcore mode locks the difficulty setting to "Hard" and adds permadeath, forcing players to delete the world or continue as a spectator after dying. Adventure mode, added in a post-launch update, prevents players from modifying the world directly and was designed for custom maps, letting designers control how players experience them.
Creative mode In Creative mode, players have access to an infinite number of almost all resources and items in the game through the inventory menu and can place or mine them instantly. Players can toggle the ability to fly freely around the game world at will, and their characters usually do not take any damage nor are affected by hunger. The game mode helps players focus on building and creating projects of any size without disturbance.
Multiplayer
Multiplayer in Minecraft enables multiple players to interact and communicate with each other on a single world. It is available through direct game-to-game multiplayer, local area network (LAN) play, local split screen (console-only), and servers (player-hosted and business-hosted). Players can run their own server by making a realm, using a host provider, hosting one themselves or, connecting directly to another player's game via Xbox Live, PlayStation Network or Nintendo Switch Online. Single-player worlds have LAN support, allowing players to join a world on locally interconnected computers without a server setup. Minecraft multiplayer servers are guided by server operators, who have access to server commands such as setting the time of day and teleporting players. Operators can also set up restrictions concerning which usernames or IP addresses are allowed or disallowed to enter the server. Multiplayer servers have a wide range of activities, with some servers having their own unique rules and customs. The largest and most popular server is Hypixel, which has been visited by over 14 million unique players. Player versus player combat (PvP) can be disabled to prevent fighting between players.
Minecraft Realms