Minecraft gets official release date

Such is the scale of the Minecraft phenomenon that it's easy to forget the game is still in beta. Well, developer Mojang has finally put a date on when the official 'finished' version will be available: 11th November 2011.

Creator Markus 'Notch' Persson made the announcement on his blog, explaining that the final game shouldn't differ too much from what you're playing now.

"It's a bit tricky to really do a release for Minecraft as we keep updating it all the time," he wrote.

"For one, the version we deem as the 'full version' won't be very different at all from what the game was like a week ago, and we'll keep adding features after the release as well, so it's really more of a milestone when we finally get rid of the beta label, and some kind of goal for us to work towards.

"The plan is to be open with this and try to get people to cheer us on as much as possible, but to be open with the fact that the game won't change much at the actual release day.

"It's the same date as a few other games and movies, and the one I'm the most excited about is Skyrim," he added, "so that will be a nice reward for me if we actually manage to hit that date!"

Notch certainly deserves a victory lap - earlier this week he revealed that the game has brought in around £20 million in revenue so far.