It's not an exaggeration to say that Minecraft is literally responsible for establishing the reputations, careers and livelihoods of some of today's most prominent YouTube channels and personalities. Described by The Guardian as a "kind of digital LEGO without an instruction book", it's focus on exploration and discovery, coupled with its mass popularity among children and gamers looking for a way to relax and dream in a virtual space.

With that in mind, it's easy to understand why the game is such a hit on YouTube. It allows free-form personalities to flourish, stories to be told and friends to enjoy themselves in weird and unusual ways. That freedom, after all, has attracted over 100 million downloads, as Microsoft pointed out in their press release this week.

"Minecraft is one of the top PC games of all time, the most popular online game on Xbox, and the top paid app for iOS and Android in the US," Microsoft said. "The Minecraft community is among the most active and passionate in the industry, with more than 2 billion hours played on Xbox 360 alone in the past two years. Minecraft fans are loyal, with nearly 90 per cent of paid customers on the PC having signed in within the past 12 months."

So in honour of that loyalty, this week I'll be taking a look at some of the more memorable Minecraft moments online. We'll start with the community's penchant for recreation.

Of course, it'd be remiss at this point not to acknowledge The Simpsons own nod to Minecraft - although as some users pointed out, the Minecraft engine doesn't allow for blocks to be placed in such a free-form style.

Even with those limitations, it clearly hasn't impeded the ability of imaginations to flourish, as you can see in the following creations.

But one of the most important effects of Minecraft on the gaming community has been the way its popularity has allowed channels to grow and establish themselves.

One of the most famous groups has been the Yogscast, a group that took their initial popularity from their World of Warcraft videos to spawn a semi-improvised series (called Shadow of Israphel) about their attempts to survive the world of Minecraft.

The first video has over 15 million hits alone and has given its founders, Simon Lane and Lewis Brindley, a full-time career. That career has allowed them to establish a network that furthers the careers of many other commentators, as well as immense charity drives, where the group raised around 700,000 pounds last year with the support of the Humble Bundle team, and over 210,000 pounds the year prior for Oxfam.

Another gamer who's life has transformed into a personality through Minecraft is Joseph Garrett, a 23 year old from Portsmouth, England. His channel stampycat is only a couple of years old, but at the start of the year it was one of the most viewed channels in the world with 152 million monthly views as of January. The channel at the time of writing has over 3.752 million subscribers, with hundreds of thousands of viewers every day for his regular, TV-length Minecraft episodes.

Adam Dahlberg, owner of the SkyDoesMinecraft YouTube channel, is another to turn his passion for Minecraft into a career. The Washington-based gamer has over 10.4 million subscribers and makes an estimated US$479,600 to US$3.8 million a year after factoring in the 45 per cent cut YouTube collects from its channels' advertising revenue.

The list of people who have branched their careers out from Minecraft is a mile long. And yet that in and of itself is one of the game's great charms, the way it brings such a wide variety of people together and allows such a diversity of characters to flourish.

To paraphrase a friend: US$2.5 billion for digital LEGO might be the bargain of the century.

Alex Walker is the regular gaming columnist for ABC Tech + Games. You can follow him on Twitter at @thedippaeffect.