I bought the alpha for 10 euro when it was just one dude posting on a forum and I can tell you it was very much already Minecraft and going viral.

I have the same memories. Obviously we can never know for certain but if notch had decided not to hire anyone and continued to work on the game himself, I’m very confident it would have eventually made a billion. The core game hasn’t changed since 2010, and it was already absolutely captivating in those early days.