On Sunday it was announced that the video game Minecraft has passed 300 million copies sold, cementing its status as the best-selling game ever.

In a post to the Minecraft website, the Microsoft game's makers said it had recently "crossed 300 million copies sold."

"A milestone no-one could have dreamed of when we were all building our first dirt houses," it said.

Officially released in 2011, Minecraft was the brainchild of Swede Markus Persson who co-founded Mojang Studios to develop the project.

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Popular among many demographics, Minecraft allows players to explore a virtually infinite world where they can gather materials that can then be used to craft tools or build structures.

The game can be played in survival or creative mode depending on whether players aim to test their resilience or simply want to use their imaginations to build. For many, the game is used as an infinite virtual Lego set.

In 2014, Markus Persson sold Mojang to tech giant Microsoft for $2.5 billion after announcing that he had become exhausted running the company due to the massive media and public attention it was receiving.