Minecraft’s Official Release Date Set for 11/11/11

Being that Minecraft has been purchased nearly 2,000,000 times since its initial release over two years ago, and also the fact that the game enjoys very regular updates, many fans would consider the game to be in a “complete” state right now. But as stable as the game has been, it still carries a “Beta” tag, and only recently lost its “Alpha” one.

While Minecraft started out as a hobby, it literally exploded, and today, Notch’s company Mojang is a well-organized business, and a self-funded one, too. The goal of any game developer is to release a “final” game, so to help with that, Notch has announced November 11, 2011 as the official launch date for Minecraft. Does 11/11/11 look familiar? Perhaps Skyrim rings a bell?

Releasing Minecraft on the same day as another blockbuster is an interesting move, and it’s a bit difficult to understand the reasoning behind it. But, in the end, it doesn’t much matter, because fans of Minecraft have been playing the game for a while, and since it receives rolling updates, the launch on 11/11/11 isn’t going to feel that major. It’ll just feel more official.

If you’re on the fence about giving Minecraft a go, the classic version can still be played for free, and if you are ready to purchase, Mojang is still offering a 25% discount up until the final release.

It’s a bit tricky to really do a release for Minecraft as we keep updating it all the time. For one, the version we deem as the “full version” won’t be very different at all from what the game was like a week ago, and we’ll keep adding features after the release as well, so it’s really more of a milestone when we finally get rid of the Beta label, and some kind of goal for us to work towards. The plan is to be open with this and try to get people to cheer us on as much as possible, but to be open with the fact that the game won’t change much at the actual release day.