Minecraft content crosses 1,000,000,000,000 views on YouTube

Minecraft was released in 2011 and has since grown to become one of the most popular and best-selling games in the world, with over 140 million active users worldwide. On December 15, the game reached yet another milestone, maybe the most significant in the history of video games.

Minecraft existed long before the metaverse became the go-to destination for tech businesses and couples. It’s a platform that began as a video game about avoiding explosions from hissing cactus-shaped monsters and evolved into a blank canvas for millions of gamers to create, post, and generate trillions of views — literally. Today, YouTube, in conjunction with Minecraft developer Mojang, is celebrating the game’s unique and transformational history on the platform with an unprecedented trillionth view (trillion with a T).

On YouTube, the game has topped 1 trillion views. The total number of views of Minecraft content has topped 1,000,000,000,000. As a result, it is the most popular game content on the platform.

To celebrate the occasion, YouTube has replaced the YouTube logo with an animated Minecraft-style that says 1,000,000,000,000 on the homepage.

YouTube has also created a ‘YouTube Featured’ page dedicated to Minecraft content created by creators from various channels, as well as a video celebrating the 1 trillion views and counting milestone.

Lydia Winters, Minecraft’s lead storyteller, credits her team’s admiration for the many ways users utilise Minecraft to tell their tales for the game’s trillion views.

“We have people who are off on an adventure and people who are building and people who are playing together,” she tell. Her team’s mission as Minecraft’s main storyteller is to design and curate a world that users desire to play in. The game’s near-untouchable appeal is due to its ability to support various types of storytelling.

“The reason why Minecraft has been so successful on YouTube is because YouTube videos are a way to tell stories,” she explains. “So then when you have Minecraft, and you can tell any story you want in a Minecraft world, it’s a big reason why we have so many people creating Minecraft content.”

According to YouTube statistics, Minecraft has over 35,000 creators from over 150 countries. On YouTube, you can find everything from simple role-playing “Let’s Plays” to videos that don’t involve any Minecraft action at all.

Earnest Pettie, YouTube’s culture and trends insights head, is in charge of keeping track of all the strange and bizarre ways users use Minecraft on the platform. He’s particularly taken with one designer who employs the Minecraft look and is well-known in the Minecraft community despite never having played the game.

“Interestingly, one of the biggest trends on Minecraft is actually animation, and that’s animation either created with Minecraft or animation that is derived from the Minecraft aesthetic,” Petite says. “There’s this creator named Jake Fellman, who creates YouTube shorts. He’s created about 100 Minecraft-inspired shorts that are actually computer animation. He’s one of the most viewed Minecraft creators of this year.”

Fellman’s videos are 15-second bursts of hyper-realistic “What if Minecraft graphics were rendered with the Unreal Engine 5” shorts with charming interactions with monsters or sheep that have racked up over 1 million views each.

YouTube presents a fantastic summary of the game’s history on its platform over the last 11 years, complete with data, graphs, and statistics about how 1 trillion views were achieved.

It’s fascinating to watch how different Minecraft video genres evolve over time as they gain and lose popularity. Music video parodies by Minecraft popular names like CaptainSparklez were multi-million view smashes in Minecraft’s early years. Dream (who recently received a Game Award for content creator of the year) is currently dominating the charts with his Minecraft manhunt series, in which his pals attempt to stop Dream from completing the game by any means necessary.

Minecraft is the most popular YouTube game of all time. It received over 200 billion views in 2020, while the runner-up, Roblox, a sandbox-style game, received less than half that. Minecraft’s nature contributes to its seemingly inexhaustible popularity. In a manner that no other video game can match, it’s an open area ripe for all types of invention and iteration on that creation. The community, according to Pettie, is the other reason.

“One trillion views doesn’t happen without the creative ingenuity of all the creators who have uploaded Minecraft videos over the years,” he continues.

You can also acquire a free in-game YouTube Creator skin set featuring top Minecraft creators if you’re a Minecraft player.

YouTube has also designed an interactive page on its Culture & Trends website that shows the entire timeline of Minecraft content viewing. Users can also see how much they’ve contributed to the milestone on the dedicated page.