To put it bluntly, Minecraft doesn't need to go free-to-play, given its success as a premium product. It's not like there are no other revenue streams available after the initial buy-in, either, as Minecraft has skins, texture packs, and other add-ons that players can buy to enrich the experience further.

Minecraft is massive; it's the best-selling game ever made and is even more popular in 2025 than it was back when it launched in 2011. But following Minecraft, the majority of hyper-popular game releases on that level have been free-to-play games like Fortnite,

Minecraft celebrated its 15th anniversary last year, but despite growing into those troublesome teenage years, it appears that developer Mojang has no plans to replace it with a sequel. On a recent trip to the Stockholm studio,