Minecraft, the most-watched game on YouTube, passes 1 trillion views

Minecraft is now officially the most-watched game on YouTube with over 1 trillion views on the platform.

YouTube is celebrating the mind-boggling milestone in a couple of fun ways. There's the animated music video above, packed with references to the game's history and popular creators over the years, and then there's this dedicated webpage that gives some alarming context as to how much time 1,000,000,000,000 views really amounts to.

Apparently, if each view were just one second long - and realistically, the average view is certainly much more than that - it adds up to 30,000 years of Minecraft views on YouTube. Likewise, if each view was represented by a 12" x 12" Minecraft block, you could build a stack that towered up from the Earth all the way to the sun and back - and still have about seven million miles to spare. It's nearly incomprehensible.

YouTube's webpage also gives a historical breakdown of the game's most popular trends, videos, and creators year by year, and you can filter it by region. For example, 2013 was the year of mini-games and mods, while speedrunning dominated 2020. Youtube also reveals that, "in a world long dominated by male creators," this year saw the rise of female creator Aphmau, known for her episodic role-playing videos, to the number one spot of Minecraft's most-watched YouTubers.

YouTube says Minecraft's popularity on the platform is one of exponential growth, taking eight years to reach 500 billion views, and just two more years to double that and reach 1 trillion. By that reasoning, it shouldn't be long before it hits 2 trillion, and we don't even want to think about how big a block tower that translates to.

Minecraft The Wild update | Minecraft cheats | Best Minecraft servers | Minecraft Realms | Best Minecraft seeds | Best Minecraft mods | Best Minecraft shaders | Best Minecraft skins | Best Minecraft texture packs | Play Minecraft for free | Minecraft Forge | Minecraft download 

Jordan Gerblick

After scoring a degree in English from ASU, I worked as a copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. Now, as GamesRadar's west coast Staff Writer, I'm responsible for managing the site's western regional executive branch, AKA my apartment, and writing about whatever horror game I'm too afraid to finish.

Read more
Minecraft movie image of Jack Black as steve
Don't expect Minecraft to go free-to-play anytime soon, as Mojang says "It doesn't really work with the way we built it"
A screenshot shows Breath of the Wild's map recreated in Minecraft.
Minecraft experts dedicate 3 years to building Breath of the Wild's entire open-world map out of blocks: "I put everything else aside"
Minecraft Vibrant Visuals
16 years after Minecraft first released it's getting a modern visual upgrade with a retro lighting trick that Mojang hasn't seen "in any other game"
Terraria art showing a short-haired blond man sitting atop a grassy field in metal armor, colorful slimes on either side of him
Terraria is forever: look no further than its go-to mod tool, which just hit an all-time Steam peak ahead of surely, for real, definitely final update 1.4.5
Skyrim
Vanilla Skyrim reaches a whopping 2 billion mod downloads, surpassed only by Skyrim: Special Edition's 6.2 billion record
Minecraft Diamond Armor
OG Minecraft creator "basically announced Minecraft 2" in the oddest way, but he won't "sneakily infringe" on Mojang's work
Latest in Minecraft
Minecraft Vibrant Visuals
16 years after Minecraft first released it's getting a modern visual upgrade with a retro lighting trick that Mojang hasn't seen "in any other game"
Minecraft movie image of Jack Black as steve
Don't expect Minecraft to go free-to-play anytime soon, as Mojang says "It doesn't really work with the way we built it"
Minecraft Diamond Armor
Minecraft Pocket Edition got its name because one of its devs was a big "Nintendo nerd" who wanted to pay homage to the Game Boy Pocket
Minecraft key art showing Steve holding a pickaxe.
Minecraft modder uses "3 hours of my life that I'll never get back" to create a new mod that gives Steve Jack Black's voice
Minecraft Netherite Armor
A developer porting Minecraft to the Dreamcast is now able to "Blast through an existing world file at 2,800 km/h"
Minecraft Steve
Notch cancels the "Minecraft 2" he announced days prior because spiritual successors are "always kinda sad nostalgia dumps"
Latest in News
The T6 Power Armor
I'm about to spend over $400 on this iconic T60 Power Armor figurine because "Communism is the very definition of failure"
A large, muscly bloke eating noodles at a bar while two people point pistols at him from behind in Cyberpunk 2077.
The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 developer enters into partnership with Pokemon Go owner to create a new game "set within one of CD Projekt's IPs"
Owen Cooper in Adolescence
Sorry, Adolescence season 2 isn't happening, despite its 99% Rotten Tomatoes score and record-breaking Netflix audience
Daredevil: Born Again episode 6
Daredevil: Born Again's long-awaited moment has been called "pure cinema" featuring one of the "best lines in comic book movie history"
Daredevil looking mean and moody.
Daredevil: Born Again episode 5 just nodded to Thanos and the Avengers movies in the most obscure way
The Fantastic Four: First Steps cast assemble
Fantastic Four star says the Marvel movie "will go down in history" for rejuvenating the MCU, "in the same way the Guardians of the Galaxy and Black Panther hit"