Minecraft and modding have a symbiotic relationship. Modders can learn to code more effectively using a platform that is designed to allow programmers to learn how to code and see their creations in action, whilst the game itself gets more content from a seemingly infinite well of creativity.

There was a point early in the game’s development where Mojang was concerned about the modding community’s effect on the game, but ultimately let the community thrive, much to the benefit of an entire generation of coders.

However, the concern of Mojang’s development team may have come from the rise and sudden demise of Minecraft’s main inspiration.

The game Infiniminer was created in 2009 as a competitive team-based multiplayer game where teams dig into a mining complex and excavate precious metals, similar to the later fully cooperative game Deep Rock Galactic.

The aim was to dig into the mines and under the surface, extract precious metals and return them to the surface to get points. However, this is not how the game ultimately would be played.

Players, inspired by the voxel blocks and potential for creation, would build their own structures and buildings instead of competing with other teams. This would form the inspiration for Minecraft, particularly in the very early stages of its development.

However, whilst Minecraft thrived with mods, a case can be made that modding ultimately ended the development of Infiniminer.

The source code was leaked less than a month after it was released, extracted from the game’s binaries and used to make mods of the game.

Some of these added new features, whilst others would take advantage of the early release of the game to more sinister ends, but in both cases, they created incompatibilities that caused the loyal but ultimately fairly small user base to fragrant in such a way that it hurt the game.

As it was being developed in Mr Barth’s spare time, he dropped the project less than a month after starting it, and not long after this was when Mojang began to develop Minecraft.