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[phubans]

If you were making $250,000 a day how would you spend it? First thing I'd do is pay off my $100k debt to school. Then, I'd drop another $100k on opening my own entertainment studio, giving jobs to my talented friends. I would donate some money to charity for causes I care about, like animal and human rights, the environment, etc.

As for my fellow indies, I would personally contact people from the community who I've appreciated the work of and offer them jobs at my studio. In the future, we could hold contests for indie developers that would award them with the cash to also be successful. It wouldn't just be the same clique of faces, either, but the contests would seek to involve anyone/everyone who's passionate and interested in this kind of thing.

Then I'd just continue making even bigger, better games, among other interesting things. In the future, I'd like to invest in other cool stuff like a funhouse-type building that's open year-round and features a series of locked rooms that can only be passed by solving the puzzles in each one- basically an IRL game.

[kavs]

This is fantastic. With the money he's making, he'll be able to make more great games in the future.

This.

[LemonScented]

Been meaning to pick up a copy of this. Those sales figures are pretty mindblowing, my congratulations to Notch.

I don't know Notch so I don't know whether he'll use his new-found monetary gains for Good or for Evil, but it's kinda weird to see how knowing about his earnings seems to have changed some people's attitudes towards him. I'm of the opinion that fellow indies should be happy for him rather than jealous, and take this level of success to be a really encouraging sign that indie development can be a significant force in today's gaming landscape. Obviously this kind of level of success is rare and hard to come by (and probably involves a hefty amount of luck on top of the hard work, talent and business nouse)), but it proves that it can be done. Isn't that great?

[Razz]

That's ... a LOT of money

[Noyb]

Indie games has its own positive Black Swan. Awesome.

For a bit of perspective, read The Perception of $100,000, a blog post by the makers of Penumbra and Amnesia. Keeping a studio running for a few years is not a cheap endeavor.

Also keep in mind that it's not clear how close the market for Minecraft is to its saturation point. Since these are basically preorders, and the final version will be released an indeterminate time away, his income might start to slow down even as he adds new features.

That said, I was completely absorbed in a few sessions back when it was only a collaborative building game. Totally picking it up when I have the time.

[Brother Android]

I think it hardly matters whether his rate of income slows down or even stops entirely, given how much he has made. There have already been more copies sold than of any indie game I can think of, unless Braid or something like that.

[Melly]

Holy shit! Wouldn't this be kind of... the biggest indie game success story of the past 10 years?! (I guess not of EVER if we kind of count earlier videogame studios with smaller teams and less money as being part of this group... but if we dont, has there ever been anything like this before at all?)

I don't understand the few lukewarm comments I read here, shouldn't pretty much everyone here be ecstatic?! This is amazing! And in the current context where indie games are slowly starting to get some face time in the public world, its got a perfect timing. I hope it will grow to become more and more successful! I'm buying it immediately! Go Notch!

I guess most people just realize that it's probably unrealistic for them to expect to experience the same huge success as Notch. It's certainly only good news, as it gives more exposure to independent games built from a love of game design and experimentation and not from multi-million budgets and giant advertisement campaigns to rehash Halo, God of War or Modern Warfare. But I guess people here are thinking "Well, awesome for him, but I doubt I'll ever see money like that in my lifetime". But I might be being a little too pessimistic.

In another note, I heard that the spark that started Minecraft's meteoric rise was Valve themselves recommending Minecraft on TF2 servers. You can imagine how that could have helped.

[Gold Cray]

They also posted about it on their blog. If I remember correctly, that bumped it up to 1000 sales per day. After that, Bethesda posted about it and bumped it up to 2000 sales, then some popular youtube channel started posting videos and bumped it up to 4-5k up until the free weekend.

I would speculate that the free weekend generated massive exposure and addiction so that when the servers went back up, there were 25000 people waiting to buy.

[moi]

[Mipe]

Notch needs to provide digging advice for those Chileans.

[iffi]

He would be confounded by the absence of cubical stones.

[SelfTitled]

I love minecraft scary when I think I bought it back when it was just place and remove blocks don't think there was any lighting then either :s

well deserved great game

[Melly]

He would be confounded by the absence of cubical stones.

Are you telling me real caves have non-90-degree angles?

You sir are a madman.

[Iamthejuggler]

They also posted about it on their blog. If I remember correctly, that bumped it up to 1000 sales per day. After that, Bethesda posted about it and bumped it up to 2000 sales, then some popular youtube channel started posting videos and bumped it up to 4-5k up until the free weekend.

I would speculate that the free weekend generated massive exposure and addiction so that when the servers went back up, there were 25000 people waiting to buy.

And then penny arcade did two comics on it, and rock paper shotgun did a lets play kind of series of articles and a few days later the servers got hit so hard they were down for days causing the free weekend.

Each time he gets exposure on some big site the increase in sales seems to rise, i guess because each time it has been on increasingly popular/visited sites.

[OneMoreGo]

I think there's a tipping point for many people, the nth time they hear about minecraft they think "ok, I HAVE to try it". For me it was Penny Arcade even though i'd heard about it a number of times.

If notch really wanted to melt his servers (ok amazons cloud  ) he should get someone to do a farmville style youtube showing a fenced area with pigs and cows, wheat and a building a house, make it a facebook app (easy enough, use the iframe approach that facebook apps allow) and watch it go crazy via FB word of mouth. 

[Chris Whitman]

I think we all know it's necessary, but not sufficient, for an indie game to be really engaging to do well.

I think if there's anything to take away from this, it's that the fact that Minecraft did so well despite being so aggressively indie is a real indication that there is enough of a market for indie games, and that most people's lack of relative success is mostly just an issue of publicity.

$600,000, as much as it sounds like a lot of money in a big lump sum, is enough to pay a studio of six a reasonable wage for two years. You could get a couple of really high quality indie titles out of that. Notch isn't a rich man swimming in a pool of money; he's got what basically every indie I know is after, which is enough resources to back future projects without worrying about where the money is coming from.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

where are you getting the $600,000 figure from? from what i've heard, he's at least made a few million dollars with it. a single week's sales was $750,000 (which paypal withheld due to suspicion and then gave back to him, keeping 5% for safekeeping, like the horrible people paypal are).

if the game made $600,000 in a year it wouldn't be that big of an issue, nobody would be saying 'that's too much money for one man', because there are some doctors and surgeons who make that much. but $250,000 a day is a totally different ballgame.

[Chris Whitman]

Well, my numbers are probably out of date.

I don't know, keep in mind that Minecraft may saturate fairly quickly, and then it still has to pay for its own development, right? Most of the people who are going to buy the game may have already bought the game, and it still isn't even finished. It's sizable sales for an indie game, but small beans for a large game.

Anyway, I think this is just what happens when an indie game gets anything remotely approaching the press of a mainstream title.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i wouldn't say it's small beans for a large game. it outsold many games which the developers spent millions making.

compare minecraft's sales this week with this week's best-selling games and you'll get a good indication of just how high up there minecraft is: http://www.vgchartz.com/weekly.php

for reference, this last week minecraft sold about 50,000-60,000 copies according to its charts. meaning minecraft is currently the 13th best-selling game in the world of the last week. beating even games like starcraft 2 in weekly sales.

but yeah, i think the key thing we should be focusing on his getting more indie games to succeed like minecraft has, learning from its example.

[moi]

From his stats page he has sold >220,000 units, that makes him approx 2 million euros.
If he put it in a bank, with an interest rate of 5% that would bring him 100k/year, that's 8300 euros/month for the rest of his life. (even if the fiscal taxes take up to half of this, it's more than enough to live).
that's what I would do anyway, afterwards, he can continue doing indie games, or whatever he likes.