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Markus Persson published the earliest public versions of Minecraft on May 17, 2009 and went on selling and updating it while it was still being built. Players spread it themselves, largely through video.
Paid early access moved from an oddity to an accepted way of funding development, and open-ended construction became a genre of its own. The game also demonstrated that video sharing had replaced advertising as the most powerful way for a game to find an audience.
Two years of paid public development ended with a version numbered as complete, announced on stage at a gathering of players. Updates never actually stopped, and ports carried the game onto nearly every screen.
Open-ended construction proved to have a vastly larger audience than the industry assumed, and selling a game during development became a legitimate business rather than a curiosity. The game also demonstrated that a title with no story, no levels and no ending could outsell every scripted blockbuster.
