Minecraft is a sandbox video game created by Swedish game designer Markus "Notch" Persson, later fully developed and published by Mojang, a company he founded. The creative and building aspects of Minecraft allow players to build with a variety of different cubes in a 3D procedurally generated world. Other activities in the game include exploration, resource gathering, crafting, and combat.
Multiple gameplay modes are available, including a survival mode where the player must acquire resources to build the world and maintain health, a creative mode where players have unlimited resources to build with and the ability to fly, an adventure mode where players can play custom maps created by other players, a spectator mode where players can freely move throughout a world without being affected by gravity or collisions, and a hardcore mode, where the player is only given one life. The PC version of the game is noted for its modding scene, where users create new gameplay mechanics, items, and assets for the game.
Minecraft received praise from critics and has won numerous awards and accolades. Social media, parodies, adaptations, merchandise, and the MineCon convention played large roles in popularizing the game. It has also been used in educational environments, especially in the realm of computing systems, as virtual computers and hardware devices have been built in it. By early 2018, over 144 million copies had been sold across all platforms, making it the second best- selling video game of all time. In September 2014, Microsoft announced a deal to buy Mojang and the Minecraft intellectual property for US$2.5 billion, with the acquisition completed two months later.