Gen Z’s Minecraft obsession is paying off

Colin McDonald was 13 when he became hooked on the world-building computer game Minecraft. He never imagined his childhood hobby would become a viable career.

Now 25, McDonald runs Moonsworth, a software development company that operates a popular Minecraft modpack and employs around 50 people — some of them fellow Minecraft devotees.” Almost every single person who’s ended up being a really good hire has been someone who was a kid playing Minecraft and wanted to teach themself how to program,” McDonald says — rather than someone with a traditional computer science education. “It’s just other kids who grew up and kept their passion for creating.”

Minecraft has been a cultural phenomenon since its release in 2011. It’s sold more than 350 million copies, making it the best-selling video game of all time. The game’s fan base helped rocket “A Minecraft Movie” to be a $950 million juggernaut when it was released this spring.

Now, as the Minecraft Generation comes of age, the game’s legions of Gen Z and Gen Alpha fans are cashing in, launching businesses — both inside and outside the Minecraft universe — and hiring peers with a similar background and skill set. Minecraft servers, which allow for multi-player gaming, and YouTube channels dedicated to the game have turned into lucrative businesses. The Minecraft Partner Program, which was set up in 2017, also allows selected creators to sell in-game features like skins, maps, and texture packs on the Minecraft Marketplace. As of 2022, the creator community has generated more than $500 million in revenue, while 43 of nearly 300 partners have earned over $1 million in payouts, a spokesman says.

Other Minecraft enthusiasts are building companies that are unrelated to the Minecraft universe, while still benefiting from the creative problem-solving, technical skills, and entrepreneurial zeal they developed over hours in the game’s sandbox.

“Minecraft has the perfect set of factors to find young creatives, motivate them to teach themselves technical and entrepreneurial skills, and provide monetization options when they’re ready to turn it into a career.”Colin McDonald, Moonsworth

In an era when aspiring founders are being counseled to ditch college, when climbing the corporate ladder is becoming ever-more precarious, and when many of the richest Zoomers are self-made, young people are looking for a competitive advantage wherever they can find one. For some, Minecraft is the hot new credential to take into a chaotic job market that rewards creativity and hustle.

“The surge of Minecraft entrepreneurs tells us something profound: the new economy doesn’t reward rigid credentials. We’re moving from a degree-based economy to a skills-based, portfolio-driven one,” says Jessica Lindl, the author of “The Career Game Loop: Learn to Earn in the New Economy,” who has witnessed the surge of Minecraft founders firsthand. “For young professionals, that means building, sharing, and iterating your way into opportunity — just like in your favorite sandbox game.”

Minecraft may have more in common with Lego than with other popular video games like Grand Theft Auto or Tetris. Open-ended and highly customizable, it offers an unlimited number of virtual worlds to build and explore.

The key difference, however, is that digital games can be scaled, and real-time collaboration and sharing can yield real profits. Anyone can create a Minecraft server, whether it’s a private hangout designed for a small group of friends or a public server that can host thousands of players. With modpacks, users can also add features and customize how the game looks.

Moreover, the oft-made criticism that video games encourage isolation can betray an outdated view of how games like Minecraft work. “When you look at how people are playing video games today, they’re very community-centered,” explains Lindl. “The whole trope of some kid in their basement is actually not what it’s like at all.”

You fail a lot in Minecraft, but you keep trying and improving. That mindset is huge when building a business from the ground up.Lauri Lifljandski, WiseHosting

Lauri Lifljandski, who’s 25, credits Minecraft with encouraging his passion for programming and making him more entrepreneurial. “Minecraft is basically a crash course in problem solving and creativity,” says Lifljandski, who lives in Spain and whose company, WiseHosting, employs a dozen people. “You learn to adapt and think outside the box.”

Like McDonald, Lifljandski was introduced to Minecraft as a kid in the game’s early days. As his play became more sophisticated, Lifljandski picked up ideas and improved his programming skills by watching tutorials on YouTube.

When he was 19, Lifljandski and his friend Robin Kase, then 18, launched their own channel for Minecraft tutorials. Lifljandski would get off of his warehouse job at 5pm, and then spend the next seven hours grinding out YouTube videos. “I was living like that for half a year, and it was really exhausting,” he says. At first, he wasn’t thinking of the channel as a career possibility; he just wanted people to watch his videos. But once they gained momentum, he quit to focus on it full time. Six years later, Lifljandski and Kase have uploaded over 400 videos to their channel, Shulkercraft, and brought in 2.3 million subscribers.

As the channel grew, an even bigger idea came to them. Increasingly frustrated by the server they were using, they saw an opportunity to build something better. “It wasn’t like we were looking for a product to make,” Lifljandski says. “It was more like the product came to us.”

Lifljandski and Kase hired two people to build a hosting provider from scratch and launched WiseHosting in April 2023. “We had hundreds of customers on the first day,” he says. “Within three months, we were profitable.” By the end of the year, they had made over $280,000, Lifljandski says.

“You fail a lot in Minecraft, but you keep trying and improving,” he says. “That mindset is huge when building a business from the ground up.”

McDonald’s opportunity to make money from Minecraft came just a few years after he started playing.

As a freshman in high school, he scored a part-time job programming for a Minecraft server. The work took up all his free time, but paid him around $500 a month.  ”For a freshman in high school, that was fantastic,” he says.

Unlike some other successful Minecraft entrepreneurs, McDonald went to college, majoring in computer science. While there, he and two former coworkers started their own Minecraft server. For the first two years, they made no money. Then the pandemic hit, the gaming industry saw a surge in popularity, and things took off.

When he graduated in 2022, McDonald says he turned down two “really, really good offers” and decided to work on Moonsworth full time. “ I, of course, did the crazy thing,” he says. “I was like, ‘No, I’m gonna keep working on Minecraft stuff.'”

The gambit appears to have been worth it for McDonald, who runs Moonsworth with his cofounders.

Moonsworth’s Lunar Client, which has a premium subscription service called Lunar+, is one of Minecraft’s most popular mod packs with over 2 million monthly users. Moonsworth has also launched successful partnerships with content creators.

Amir Davies, an 18-year-old in France, is another Minecraft superfan who embraced the game’s entrepreneurial aspect early on.

In fact, to the parents fretting about the number of hours their kids seem to be losing to Minecraft, Davies offers his own story as reassurance. His mother’s decision to buy the game for Davies, when he was around 11, “was probably one of the best decisions she ever made.”

“When you’re young and want to express yourself, it’s a magnificent game,” he says. “I’ve always been someone who wanted to create things, and Minecraft provided the perfect environment for that.”

Like other superfans, Davies used YouTube tutorials to learn the programming language Java so he could build custom plugins for his own server. By the time he was 15, Davies was especially focused on building hype around his server in order to boost its popularity.

To grow the server’s Discord community, he hosted invite contests with cash prizes and paid YouTubers to promote it. “I learned that word of mouth is the most powerful marketing channel,” he says. Within three weeks, he had brought in thousands of users for under $600. Some players volunteered to help moderate Davies’ servers, and at one point, he found himself managing 15 people. “At 15 years old, that felt really special,” he tells me.

Today, Davies has transformed the skills he learned from Minecraft into two software businesses: one helps teachers grade students and identify learning gaps, and the other is an AI-powered virtual employee for automating communication, sales, and support.

“At 18, I’m learning everything I need through hands-on experience and self-teaching,” Davies says. “The tech industry, especially AI, evolves so quickly that I find real-world practice more valuable than classroom theory right now.”

At least for now, he says he plans to skip college and focus on growing his businesses.

That decision is in line with advice that McDonald has also been doling out. “Minecraft has the perfect set of factors to find young creatives, motivate them to teach themselves technical and entrepreneurial skills, and provide monetization options when they’re ready to turn it into a career,” McDonald says.

As it turns out, spending hours playing Minecraft might be just the ticket to landing gainful employment.

Aimee Pearcy is a freelance journalist writing about technology and digital culture.