There were nearly 1000 licenses sold in the first month. I don't know what sales Minecraft had after the first release, but given that there's little to do in Anteworld vs. the tech demo in its current state, I was actually surprised we have got that many. Because at the moment it's mostly about people supporting us and further development, rather than playing.
Comparison to Minecraft wouldn't be entirely fair in the long run. Initially, the hardware requirements decimate the possible crowd, but ultimately OT is mainly about the technology for many types of games and simulators.
Apart from the Anteworld we are working on several more fronts, and we'll be definitely expanding in the near future. I remember when I was a student at our technical university, browsing through various job offers on the notice boards; now is the time to head back there to return the paper stripes back
If I was back at school, I would be definitely attracted, but there are hardly any C++ programmers being produced these days. Even during my times there the usable programmers weren't so much coming from the CS department, but from departments like Automation where people were coding microcontrollers and had to be effective with the CPU time and memory. We'll see ...