70 Awards, a Peabody, and 11 Cannes Lions — All From Building in Minecraft

Blockworks has won more marketing awards than most actual advertising agencies. Seventy of them. Including a Peabody and eleven Cannes Lions — the most prestigious awards in advertising. Their creative medium isn't film, print, or digital. It's Minecraft blocks.

That cognitive dissonance is the entire story. A company that builds things in a video game — the same video game where nine-year-olds build dirt houses — has a client list that includes Warner Bros., PepsiCo, the United Nations, the V&A Museum, and the University of Cambridge. They've created The Uncensored Library with Reporters Without Borders, a Minecraft build designed to bypass censorship in countries that restrict press freedom. They've partnered with Block by Block, a UN-Habitat program that uses Minecraft to design real urban spaces in developing countries.

And on the Minecraft Marketplace, they have 40 products with 778,016 total player ratings — and their most popular items are completely free.

The Uncensored Library: Journalism Inside a Video Game

In 2020, Blockworks partnered with Reporters Without Borders to build The Uncensored Library — a massive neoclassical library built entirely in Minecraft, containing books that are censored or banned in their countries of origin.

The premise is brilliantly simple: many countries that censor journalism don't block Minecraft. So Reporters Without Borders and Blockworks created a Minecraft server where anyone can walk into the library and read censored articles from journalists in countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia, Vietnam, Egypt, and Mexico. The articles are embedded in Minecraft books, accessible to anyone who can load the game.

It's a clever end-run around censorship, and it earned international press coverage, multiple awards, and genuine real-world impact. The project demonstrated something that's easy to forget in discussions about Minecraft Marketplace skins and worlds: the game's building system is a genuine creative medium, not just a toy.

Warner Bros., PepsiCo, the UN, and Cambridge University Walk Into a Minecraft Server

Blockworks' client list reads like a corporate name-dropping exercise, except it's all real:

• Warner Bros. — branded Minecraft experiences for film and media properties
• PepsiCo — marketing campaigns built inside Minecraft worlds
• The United Nations — urban planning and educational experiences through the Block by Block program
• V&A Museum (London) — cultural and artistic exhibitions recreated in blocks
• University of Cambridge — educational content leveraging Minecraft as a learning platform
• Expo 2020 Dubai — the World Expo recreated in Minecraft (with 19,957 player ratings on the Marketplace)

These aren't casual collaborations. Each of these required Blockworks to understand both the client's brand requirements and Minecraft's technical constraints, then deliver something that works as both marketing and actual gameplay. The 70+ awards suggest they consistently nail that balance.

From Cambridge Architecture to Minecraft Blocks

Blockworks was founded by James Delaney, a Cambridge Architecture graduate who saw Minecraft's building system as more than a game mechanic. Architecture and Minecraft share a fundamental overlap: both are about designing spaces that people move through, experience, and inhabit. Delaney's architectural training — spatial thinking, environmental design, user experience — translates directly to building in Minecraft.

Beyond Blockworks, Delaney chairs the Block by Block nonprofit, which partners with UN-Habitat to use Minecraft as an urban design tool. Communities in developing countries use the game to collaboratively design public spaces — parks, plazas, waterfronts — that are then built in the real world. It's Minecraft as participatory urban planning, and it's been deployed in over 80 projects across 40+ countries.

The progression from architecture student to award-winning Minecraft studio founder to UN-affiliated nonprofit chair is unusual, but it makes perfect sense when you think of Minecraft as what it actually is: a spatial design tool with the world's largest user base.

What Their Marketplace Products Actually Look Like

Here's where it gets interesting. Blockworks' prestige work — the Cannes Lions, the Peabody, the corporate clients — is separate from their Minecraft Marketplace presence. Their most popular Marketplace products are their free educational worlds — and those free items dominate the top of their catalog by downloads:

• Worlds: 29 items
• Skin Packs: 22 items
• Resource Packs: 5 items
• Behavior Packs: 4 items

12 out of 40 products are free — and those free items are their most popular by far. The free educational worlds (often funded by corporate clients) drive massive download numbers, while their paid content rounds out the catalog. It's a model where prestige clients fund the creation, and Minecraft players get the result for free.

Their most-downloaded products:

The Gap (and Connection) Between Awards and Marketplace Downloads

"10 Years of Minecraft" — their single most popular Marketplace product — has 203,821 ratings at 4.5/5. That's more engagement than most paid Marketplace products ever achieve, and it was free.

This reveals Blockworks' actual business model. They don't make money from Marketplace sales — they make money from corporate clients who pay for Minecraft experiences, and then distribute those experiences for free on the Marketplace. The Marketplace is their distribution channel, not their revenue source.

It's the exact opposite of how most Marketplace creators operate. Razzleberries has 1,000+ paid products. CupcakeBrianna has 594 skin packs. Blockworks has 115 products where the most popular ones are free worlds funded by PepsiCo, the UN, and Cambridge University.

Both models work. They're just optimizing for completely different things.

The Bottom Line

Blockworks proves that Minecraft building is a legitimate creative profession — one that can win Peabodys, attract Fortune 500 clients, and make real-world impact through urban planning nonprofits. It's easy to dismiss Minecraft as a kids' game, and Blockworks' existence makes that dismissal look increasingly foolish.

Their Marketplace presence is a side effect of their real business, not the business itself. But the free educational worlds represent millions of players who experienced something made by a company that treats Minecraft blocks with the same seriousness that architects treat steel and glass.

Explore their full catalog on our Blockworks creator page, browse the full Marketplace, or read more creator spotlight articles to discover the stories behind the studios shaping Minecraft content.