Weren’t they purchased for $2.5 billion?

Minecraft merch is massive as mentioned by the other commenters. They get a flat licensing fee, as well as likely a cut of sales. Minecraft branding is all over the place for kids.

They never cared about the money the game made, as it likely is a very small portion of the annual income for Mojang. The brand is what’s valuable to them

Absolutely.

It’s the same thing with Disney: it’s all in the merchandising. There are Minecraft Xbox consoles, Minecraft controllers, Minecraft books, plushies, t-shirts – all kinds of branded shit everywhere.

Bedrock edition, like you said, is monetized to hell and back again, but those official mods are actually pretty well designed and enjoyable. I think my favorite one was the Star Wars mod that came out around when Mando first starting airing, which had a few planets like Dagobah, Tatooine, and a bunch of other cool features.

There are also mods for Fallout and Halo - the Halo mod is a faithful recreation of the original installation in the first Halo game, and it’s really neat to fly around the place and recognize most of the levels.

You’re also forgetting merchandising, which is probably one of the biggest money makers. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have made it back already, but given that MC shows no signs of stopping anytime soon, they’re practically guaranteed to eventually

Mojang has made them two new games to expand on the current IP. This cash cow will still be providing milk when I’m dead. As other’s have said, I’ll state more boldly: Minecraft is Mickey Mouse.

I’ve sold a lot of Minecraft branded cakes with creeper figurines on them, so I have contributed to this.