Poll of the Day > Is Minecraft really a 2009 game though?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I know it was made available to the public in 2009, but that was a pre-Alpha build. I thought that 2011 was considered the official release year.

It doesn't matter today since 2009 should easily beat 1979 regardless, but I think it's potentially an interesting point of contention for later in the contest. I mean, I know it's just a stupid contest so who really cares, but if it were up to me I'd probably put it as 2011.

Seeing that you bought the alpha builds, it was more of a release.
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I thought the pre-release builds were free. Or did they only become free when the Release builds came out and the older version became known as "classic"?

Anyways, I'm going off this for the versioning:

http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Version_history

I guess maybe because it go popular during it's alpha? it probably shouldn't be considered '09 anyway since if you're counting things like alphas and pre-realsae builds of tons of games are usually made many months and even years before the release dates.
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Yeah, but a lot of those games don't become widely available in those stages or are only available for a limited time, if at all. It makes sense why they'd list Minecraft that way and not other games, but I think it would make even more sense if Minecraft was put under 2011.

They even have separate entries for browser Minecraft and PC/Linux/Mac in the database here, but they still have the browser version release date listed for PC/Linux/Mac. The pre-release versions were all browser-based, no? Or am I mistaken on that? Because the way they have separate entries for the others with 2009 release dates would imply that there were also executables back then, but I think that's just wrong.

Edit: I guess I was wrong, apparently they did have a launcher before the "Release" versions, and even were charging for the game by that point.

I know there was a free build on the website in 2010
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