Minecraft wiki entry for Infiniminer, associated text: Infiniminer is commonly associated with Minecraft for giving Notch the idea for where to go with Minecraft, and is often regarded as a direct forerunner. It was developed by Zach Barth of Zachtronics Industries with the help of his friend Chris Gengler in their spare time,[4] and released in steps of incremental updates during April and May of 2009. It quickly garnered a following on message boards around the internet, and inspired Notch to start working on Minecraft several weeks after it was discontinued.