I bought it about a week after it stopped being free lol, got it for about $5 iirc. I'm constantly surprised that a company like Microsoft is continuing to support a game I paid $5 like a jillion years ago lol, one of the few "wins" a guy can get these days.
Same; I was one of the first buyers. Got a few people interested in the game. It’s wild to imagine now, but at that time nobody had heard of it, obviously. Which meant it was an uphill battle to get them to play it, because ‘the graphics sucked’.
I put thousands of hours into it. It’s still the best value for money game, ever.
I still remember the feeling of finding this game and being absolutely stunned by it. But as you say, nobody else seemed to care when I showed it to them, haha. It's nice sometimes to have vindication.
Minecraft in its early days also had the issue of not really having much in the way of actual gameplay and purpose. It was and generally is still very much a self-guided and self-motivated experience.
Me, I enjoy exploring, building a settlement, refining my base with nice architecture and design… I don’t need a particular mission to enjoy it. Other people don’t really dig that - they’re looking for a more linear, guided experience.
Minecraft is what I like to call a podcast game: I’ll put on a two hour podcast and just go and explore or build without a set goal in mind. I’ve spent entire weekends just digging out vast underground networks. It’s relaxing.
Even back in those early days I could see it had potential and would appeal to people like myself who want a nice, open sandbox to play in. But I never would’ve expected it to be this much of a hit.
Back in the early days, I played the hell out of games like Superscape Do3D, so when Minecraft hit the scene I was like... this is the ultimate version of that style of game. I was in heaven lol.
Tried looking the receipt up out of curiosity, but it was before 2010, so it would have been on my old hotmail account. Managed to get logged into that, but Microsoft has deleted all my old emails, so that's unfortunate.
As far as looking online, I see a few places where people are having this exact same $5 / $10 debate, but neither side seems to have proof.
At this point, I'm just gonna say you're probably right, lol.