Minecraft China has boosted player count by 150 million in barely a year

October 31, 2018 Minecraft player counts are rising dramatically thanks to China.

Minecraft player count continues to grow, and it’s seeing the biggest boosts to its popularity courtesy to a recent release in China. That version of the game alone now has over 150 million players - the original worldwide release had sold 144 million copies back in January. So what it took the original Minecraft nearly a decade to do, the Chinese version managed in little over a year. China’s edition of Minecraft has one big advantage for rapidly-increasing player counts: it’s free-to-play. That’s pretty standard for the Chinese market, but don’t dismiss the numbers because of the low barrier to entry. It's comparable to the biggest gaming success stories around. Fortnite player numbers reached a total of 125 million just one year after release, which gives a pretty good indicator of where Minecraft China ranks. China got the building game starting with various betas last year, and reached 100 million players by May 2018, as analyst Daniel Ahmad reports.