From “web site design isn’t my strong side”
to “Pre-order now!”

The May 22, 2009 capture is the oldest homepage we found. It has a Username field, a Password field and a link: Register an account. Then a heading, Nothing here yet!, and a reason to sign up anyway: But you can register to claim your name.

The page points to two places. The alpha test is here, and here’s my blog. That’s the whole offer.

Everything else is the help-wanted note. It reads like a forum post. The job, in the page’s words, would include graphics, design, programming, database making stuff, and could go on for quite a while if the game gets popular. Nobody signs it with a company name. There is no logo either: the page’s code asks for an image called img/logo.gif, but we found no 2009 capture of that image, so we hid the spot instead of borrowing a later logo.

By February 3, 2010 the page has a logo: big gray letters made of cobblestone (this replay loads the oldest archived copy of the image, from June 2010). In the header, beside a small copy of the logo, one line keeps score: 211 servers, 110822 registered, 4239 purchases. A link says More stats. The menu has five items, and one of them is Development status.

The page gives two ways to play. Play survival mode: Single player test. Play creative mode: Single player | Multi player. Under News: the page says the game is nowhere near finished, but you’re free to try it. The plan for this version is blunt: there will be no more updates to the alpha version of the game until the game reaches beta.

The footer is a single line. It names the company as Mojang Specifications, and it gives the support address as a personal one.

Our June 2011 capture puts a trailer and a purchase panel on the dark background. A video player takes the left side (it plays nothing in the archive, just a black box), and on the right stand Steve, a pig and a sheep above an orange Buy Now! button. A smaller logo sits in the top left corner, cracked stone with a creeper face in the A.

The description is two sentences and a boast: It also has music by C418! Then the counter, moved into the text: So far 9,351,732 people have registered and 2,528,126 people bought the game. In a capture from January 2, 2011 the same sentence counted 927,942 buyers.

Two versions are stacked under the button. Play Minecraft Beta: In browser | Download, and below it the old one, still on offer: Play Minecraft Classic (Outdated, but free). The bottom of the page has three columns: Facebook, The Word of Notch and Twitter / notch. The footer now says Mojang AB.

June 2012 keeps the layout and swaps the columns. Notch’s blog gives way to Minecraft Update News, and the Twitter box belongs to @jeb_: Jeb is on the Twitter. You should follow him for all the fine inside scoops of Minecraft development. The counter reads 31,946,404 registered and 6,262,741 buyers. The page’s code ends each footer with a build stamp, here b_417 and a long revision hash.

By our June 2013 capture the description is longer and chattier. It’s pretty. Then: Brave players battle terrible things in The Nether, which is more scary than pretty. You can also visit a land of mushrooms if it sounds more like your cup of tea.

The counter changes its wording and counts only one version: So far 10,903,521 people bought the PC/Mac version of the game. Phew.

The sentence before it explains why: Pocket Edition is on iOS and Android, and there is a Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition.

Are you a Google+ kind of person? Here’s the button! In the page’s code that box sits between the Facebook box and Minecraft Update News. The trademark line now names Notch Development AB.

The June 2014 homepage looks the same at a glance. Look at the orange button: Buy Now! has become Get Minecraft. Under it a new line for returning players: Already bought the game? Download it here.

The list of editions now includes PlayStation 3, and the page admits what it doesn’t know: Minecraft is coming out for Playstation 4, Playstation Vita, and Xbox One soon, but we don’t have release dates for those versions yet. The counter: 15,634,371.

On September 15, 2014 Microsoft announced it would buy Mojang for $2.5 billion.^[1] The June 2015 capture doesn’t show it. Same dark page, same trailer box, same Phew. The list has grown to Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Windows Phone and Amazon Kindle Fire, and the trademark line is back to Mojang AB. The counter has reached 19,840,247 people who bought the PC/Mac version.

By January 1, 2016 a second button sits under the download link, with one line: Your Minecraft server in the cloud! In the page’s code its label reads Get Relms, one letter short of Realms. Visitors never saw the typo. The stylesheet pushes the text 10,000 pixels off the screen and shows an image instead, a file named get_realms.png.

That link led to minecraft.net/download, where buyers got the launcher. In September 2011 it starts with a promise: the stand-alone launcher will automatically update the game files with the latest version, and you can play offline if you’ve been online at least once. The page’s code lists Minecraft.exe for Windows at 270 KB and asks Linux players to please use Sun’s JVM. The rest is a Multiplayer Beta Server with a command to type.

By January 2016 Windows gets an installer, Minecraft.msi, with a line that mattered: You do not need Java installed to run either of these. The Linux note now says Oracle’s JVM. In January 2020 the page looks at your computer first. Our browser runs on Linux, so it got Download Minecraft: Java Edition for Linux and a terminal command, apt-get install Minecraft.deb. Our January 2025 capture is headed Download Minecraft Java & Bedrock Edition, with three green Linux download buttons and a creeper beside Need a different flavor?

The November 2016 capture is the first white homepage in this selection. The address has a language folder now, minecraft.net/en/. A drawn game world fills the top, with a green panel on the right: the cracked-stone logo, Buy Minecraft and Available for basically any device. The counter is gone, and so is the chatty description. The new one is plain: Minecraft is a game about placing blocks and going on adventures.

The menu reads Get Game, Store and Realms. Realms is a world you rent: Own an always-online Minecraft world. Invite nice people to join!

Further down, the page’s code holds a device picker for the editions it sold.

Desktops: Windows, Mac, Linux, Windows 10. Consoles: Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, Wii U. Devices: iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Kindle Fire and Gear VR. The PC version costs $26.95 and gets a short label: The classic. One edition’s name is misspelled once in the code, Windows 10 Editon Beta.

June 2017 stretches one big game scene across the screen, with a green button: Buy Minecraft for PC/Mac - available from $26.95. Under it three cards: Minecraft Realms, Add-Ons and Marketplace, Now available on Pocket and Windows 10. Then tabs for a news feed: All, Culture, Insider, Merch, News. While the feed loads, the page’s code shows a little joke: Block block block...

A post on the site in January 2017 explained the change: The new Minecraft.net has a wider perspective. It promised to cover everything from the YouTubers to the impractical creeper mugs.^[2] The footer in the page’s code says “Minecraft” is a trademark of Mojang Synergies AB, and a little further on © 2017 Microsoft.

December 2018 sells news in three cards: Update Aquatic (Minecraft’s oceans get their biggest update yet!), MINECON EARTH, and Minecraft: Dungeons, A new game from Mojang! The page is in English, but the price is in euros: €23.95. In October 2019 it’s back to $26.95, with Missed MINECON Live?, MINECON Exclusives! and Minecraft Earth.

In our June 2020 capture the homepage opens on one blue card: Welcome to Minecraft. The line under it is identical in our 2020–2023 captures: With new games, new updates, and new ways to play, join one of the biggest communities in gaming and start crafting today! Below it, Explore Minecraft Games, a row of box art. Minecraft is now one game among several.

By our June 2022 capture a smoother wordmark sits in the middle of a black bar. A thin strip at the very top reads Discover Minecraft Legends, our new game! The games menu in the page’s code lists four: Minecraft, Minecraft Dungeons, Minecraft Legends and Minecraft: Education Edition, described as supporting thousands of educators in over 100 countries!

Our November 2023 capture adds four words to the headline: Welcome to the official site of Minecraft. The games row becomes Explore Minecraft Games & Add Ons. Deeper in the page’s code, the year’s fan vote is over: Congratulations to the Armadillo, winner of the 2023 Mob Vote! On October 15, 2023 Mojang had announced that Minecraft crossed 300 million copies sold.^[4]

In June 2024 the blue card is gone. A carousel runs edge to edge, and its slide says Daring adventures! in a pixel font, about the trial chambers. A heading below says it in block letters: Discover Our Games.

In June 2025 the slide sells a movie tie-in, the How to Train Your Dragon add-on: Develop a bond with a dragon to take to the skies.

The games menu in the page’s code has an old friend again: Play Minecraft Classic. In 2011 Classic was Outdated, but free. By 2014 the homepage had dropped it. Then in May 2019, before the game’s tenth birthday, Mojang put it back in the browser, With just 32 blocks to build with and, as the announcement promised, all the original bugs.^[3]

In June 2026 the first slide is for Minecraft Dungeons II, a game still to come, with a bonus list for anyone who pre-orders: 2 hero skins, the Twisted cape, and the Twisted chicken pet! The menu across the top has five words: Games, Shop, Explore, Learn, Support.

2009 · Alpha2026 · Pre-order

◀ ▶

The 2009 page ended with a wink: You know where to find me. =) In 2010 you still did. Support was markus@mojang.com, one person’s inbox, printed under the counter.

The June 2026 page has a Support menu instead, the last of its five. And the browser tab that said Minecraft (alpha) in 2009 now reads Welcome to the Minecraft Official Site | Minecraft.