Brick Universe

Brick Universe is a massively multiplayer sandbox game developed by Edmund Hansen going under the name "The Brickhouse"

Beginning
Brick Universe started as a college computer design project where people can build using the colored blocks provided, inspired by what he had accomplished and his love for MMO's resulted in what he first called Block Universe releasing on March 1st 1999.

1999-2005
At first, Block Universe was pretty small with only 50 active players by July of '99 however would begin to grow rapidly in the early 2000s with more stable internet speeds becoming avaliable, in 2001 they changed their name to Brick Universe as more users liked the name better, in 2004, the game officially surpassed 10 million users and would begin airing commercials on TV in the Eastern United States and Fletcher Republic (where Edmund Hansen lives)

2005-2010
In 2007 the first groups were added to the platform and would pull TV adverts due to the high costs causing Edmund Hansen's company, The Brickhouse, around the same time in 2008, they released Brick Universe DS for the Nintendo DS introducing a whole new generation of users to Brick Universe which increased their popularity in the general internet, in 2010, Brick Universe officially surpassed 50 Million users which includes the DS players.

2010-Present
In 2013, they discontinued the DS version due to the fact that the hardware was becoming unable to run more advanced games on the platform, two years later in 2015 they introduced a mobile version of Brick Universe which like the DS version attracted more players than before, this and the fact that Let's Players were picking up the game caused a surge in popularity with 200 Million users by 2016, the same year The Brickhouse officially launched Brick Universe for consoles like the Playstation 4, Xbox One, and later the Nintendo Switch in 2018, in 2020 due to circumstances the game hit another player boost soon reaching one billion players by July of 2020.

Reception
General Reception is very positive with many saying that compared to its many competitors, Brick Universe is one of the best mostly due to its free source nature and developer exchange rate being higher than other platforms.

Criticism
Despite its very positive reviews, some are not a fan of the seemingly hands-off attitude when it came to "violent games" with many news outlets criticising the platform on this statement alone usually suggesting Brick Universe's biggest competitor, Roblox.

Merchandise
The Brickhouse does not sell a lot of merchandise due to not wanting to seem corporate but they have partnered with Lego to bring construction toy sets of their most famous games.

Brick Bucks
Brick Bucks were added in 2000 as a currency that people can use in game to buy diffrent things, Brick Bucks can be earned by playing a game or for developers every one person who plays their game gains one Brick Buck, this is diffrent compared to other platforms like Roblox because users don't need to exchange money for Brick Bucks.