Minecraft sales surpass 100 million worldwide, now the second best-selling game of all time

Nearly two years after Microsoft's acquisition of game developer Mojang, the companies have announced that popular world-building game Minecraft has sold more than 106 million copies so far. Showing no signs of slowing down, the game has sold an average of 53,000 copies per day since the beginning of 2016, Mojang said on 2 June.

Since its debut in 2011, the voxel-based game has skyrocketed in popularity, allowing players to express their creativity and build their own unique worlds and constructions out of textured blocks. TIME reports that Minecraft is now the second-highest selling video game of all time, behind Tetris which sold around 70 million boxed copies of the game, 420 million copies on mobile platforms and another 35 million on the original Game Boy as of 2014.

According to an infographic released by Mojang, there are Minecraft players in every country and territory across the globe. Four copies of the open-world game were even sold to people in Antarctica. The company also reports that the game boasts an average of over 40 million unique players across all platforms every month.

While the distribution between the PC (29%), console (39%) and mobile (36%) versions usage is pretty even in Europe, gamers in North America prefer the pocket editions (41%) and console (40%) versions of the game to its PC counterpart (19%).

When Microsoft purchased the Sweden-based company for $2.5bn in 2014, the game had sold more than 50 million copies. Since the acquisition, the tech giant reported a $367m increase in first-party video games revenue "mainly due to sales of Minecraft" in its fourth quarter 2015 financial earnings report.

Microsoft has also been expanding its investment beyond the world of gaming.

In January, the company acquired MinecraftEdu and plans to launch a new version of Minecraft for classrooms called "Minecraft Education Edition", which will launch as a free trial this month. Microsoft researchers have also allowed artificial intelligence (AI) computer scientists to use the game to train and improve AI computers and programmes as well.

The news also follows Mojang's announcement to adjust its commercial usage guidelines and bar companies, non-profits and politicians from creating advertising and promotional campaigns in the game. In May, the company revealed plans to launch a specially tailored version of Minecraft in China.

Minecraft will also be getting a death match-style Battle mode in June for free on console versions as well.