As brands and advertisers warm up to virtual worlds, Minecraft creators are feeling left out.
In recent years, brands have become an increasingly integral stakeholder in the ecosystems of user-generated gaming content platforms like Roblox and Fortnite. In 2025, advertisers have shifted their focus from fully owned and operated worlds to integrations into pre-existing popular experiences, creating more potential deals for UGC creators who are willing to place logos or branded assets inside their games on these platforms.
As other UGC platforms invite brands to play, Minecraft has declined to open its doors to advertisers in the same way. While platforms like Roblox and Fortnite allow creators to sign and execute their own third-party brand deals without explicit platform approval, Minecraft’s end-user license agreement explicitly forbids most unofficial brand integrations. As creators on Roblox and Fortnite generate thousands or even millions of dollars in brand deals, top Minecraft creators feel like they are watching a raucous party play out through an outside window. In the first two months of 2026, GamesBeat spoke to five prominent Minecraft creators who flagged brand deals as a key revenue stream they were looking to grow in the coming year.
Some Minecraft creators and creator studios like Soul Studios are actively looking to step up their work with brands in 2026. Officially formed in April 2023, Soul Studios is a collective of Minecraft creators that primarily builds high-end, professional experiences as a white-label service for IP holders and large creators. Over the past year, the company has tentatively dipped its toes into branded work with vendors like Medal, building an integration between the Pokémon-inspired Minecraft mod Cobblemon and the brand that included an official Medal guide rendered directly within a Minecraft menu.
“At this point now, where we’re having a lot of brand integration going on, that’s really where the market is at the moment,” said Soul Studios founder Andrew Tolesnikov in an interview with GamesBeat. “And I think there’s a missing gap in the Minecraft sphere of studios that are really focusing on that high-quality content.”
As entities like Soul Studios look to bring advertisers into the Minecraft ecosystem without stepping on Mojang’s toes, they have some reasons to believe the overlords of Minecraft might be opening up to a heightened brand presence on the platform.
For one thing, there’s “A Minecraft Movie,” which came out in April 2025. Not only did the success of the film spark a significant and sustained increase in Minecraft player activity, but it also gave Minecraft creators an unprecedented opportunity to integrate advertising content — in this case, ads for the movie itself — into their experiences. Although this activity did not result in a shift in Mojang’s broader approach to in-game ads inside Minecraft, it demonstrated both the advertising power of the platform and creators’ ability to execute on advertising campaigns and activations on Minecraft.
“I think that’s a preview of what could be,” said one Minecraft creator who agreed to an interview with GamesBeat on condition of anonymity in order to avoid damaging business relationships. “Every single brand had a collaboration with Minecraft during the movie, when they were promoting it.”
There’s also the fact that Mojang — and thus Minecraft — belongs to Microsoft, which has been quietly stepping up its in-game advertising offerings since acquiring Activision Blizzard in 2023. In recent years, Microsoft has successfully integrated brands into in-game inventory inside popular titles like “Candy Crush.” Although Microsoft has historically taken a largely hands-off approach with Mojang and Minecraft, in-game advertising is a point of increasing focus for game developers and publishers of all sizes as they search for new revenue streams.
Minecraft is the best-selling video game in history, and Microsoft does not need to crank up the advertising dials to generate revenue from the game. But if the company doesn’t change its policies to allow for more brand integrations, it could risk an exodus of the content creators who are the lifeblood of the Minecraft community. Just as some Fortnite studios have expanded into Roblox in recent years because they view the latter as more welcoming to creators, Minecraft creators are considering expanding or jumping entirely over to alternative platforms in order to secure their piece of the advertising pie.
“Minecraft is, in my eyes, just a platform where you can bring ideas to life, and we want to do that as much as possible in any medium,” Tolesnikov said. “What that means is, as we expand further in Minecraft, I could definitely see ourselves expanding further into Roblox — and I see ourselves becoming more of an indie game studio as well.”