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I ran across an article form Boing Boing! about a guy called Laketide who was selling real life dirt blocks seen from the game Minecraft on Etsy. Naturally I had to check it out but what I did not expect was that the same seller really make Minecraft geek-ware in many shapes and forms.

Just a little while ago I wrote about the game Minecraft and how I see that it has changed the market for indie games. What I did not think of that time was that it has actually also the potential to change how we look at merchandise for a title or IP. Bigger companies and IPs are often secured and people trying to make money out of them are pushed back and stopped.

For an indie title this is perhaps not as harsh which then opens up the market for entrepreneurs to make money out of their ability to create merchandise which other like. Laketide is in this case a perfect example of my point since by looking at the Etsy profile there is more then one object for sale from the Minecraft world. Clearly the seller has put his entrepreneurship into action, trying to find ways to make a side business of this. For some this might look as something that could hurt an IP but for an indie title I believe that this is nothing else then next to free marketing. It can’t be free since you miss out on some income to an external part but since you do not have to risk any money during the process you are quite close to a zero margin risk.

Entrepreneurship is truly beautiful.