Microsoft really did buy Mojang

That is... surprising.

I guess I still don't get what MS wants with Minecraft...

I don't know how it can be monetized besides the initial sale, but I haven't been there in forever. Sure, it is really huge, but part of that is because it runs on everything. I don't see MS cutting off a lot of revenue, but I also don't think they would be too happy to support any version that is not Windows/360.

Hurl.

Why not use that money to make new games?! Why Minecraft? That was already available on every platform under the sun. It's a great game, but the only thing MS gains from this is more platform exclusivity. If not for Minecraft, then whatever they have Mojang do next (Minecraft Gaiden?).

That money could have been spent on some real, new games. Same thing goes for their freaking TV venture.

Seriously. MS gets backed into a corner and all they do is throw money at exclusives. Despicable. I know it was never all about games.. but they used to HAVE games at least. I remember a little game called Shadow Complex. I remember Rare, before they got turned into an abomination. I remember Lionhead, releasing flawed but entertaining games, instead of casual multiplayer garbage. Man, times have changed.

And I used to think competition was good for the industry. Well, not if fucking Microsoft is involved, that's for sure.

Edit: I completely get why Notch would do it. I would have done it. He's still a sellout though. The very definition of a sellout. A very rich one indeed :D

For the older members with kids, how much truth is there to the idea that Minecraft is becoming a formative part of many 8-10 year olds' experience with video game?

Good for Notch, dude seems like he was ready to eject from this reality.

The news really doesn't affect me at all but I am curious to see how Minecraft evolves in the future and where MS takes it.

Basically I don't blame Notch at all, anyone calling Notch a sell out on the greater web has no idea how life works and the fact that notch has apparently wanted to leave for quite some time. He has the chance to fade into obscurity as a rich man, that's a very exclusive club because being rich often comes with a very candid lifestyle.

@turambar: They're not my kids, but my brothers kids fall into that age category. He owns a PS3 and let them play some games on it. When they went to school and found out that Minecraft was console only on 360 (at the time it was) they begged and begged for a 360 so they could play it. Eventually I gave them my old 360 because I'd no need for it any more and they ran out to get Minecraft. They play it for hours with their friends every day to the point that they barely play other games and never ask for other games for it.

The most important thing to take away from all this is that there are people who identify themselves as mojangsta's.

Also on further reflection, for the sale not being about the money, they sure did pay 2.5 billion for it...Surely he would of had pretty good offers for ummm i dunno slightly less in this time he has been willing to let it go.

Also if you are here carrying on over whether he sold out or not, you are a moron. Of course he did and who gives a fuck anyway. ( O GOD OUR AMAZING COOL INDIE CHAMPION THAT WEARS A COOL HAT SOLD OUT. ITS TOO MUCH FOR MY COUNTER CULTURED HEART TO BEAR)

I think he deserves it since he pulled all Oculus support for Minecraft when they were bought by Facebook and called them sellouts.

I just want awesome stuff to exist that isn't eventually going to be owned by Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon or Facebook.

This is disgusting to me. Never in a million years would I have thought Notch would sell out like this.

@turambar said:

Not a parent, but my little cousin went from playing Wii games when he was little to playing Call of Duty, GTA, and Minecraft almost exclusively from 11-13 years old. Other kids seem much the same.

I tried showing Skyrim to him a year and ahalf ago or so and his reaction was basically "Wtf, I can't build stuff? Fuck this game."

I would really like to see how Microsoft intends on getting a return on their investment without ruining the franchise. I really don't think it's possible. Minecraft worth $2.5 billion...? Crazy shit.

Guess we'll get a master class in how to fuck up a "too big to fail" thing.

MS is a huge soulless void that pumps out software for people who wear ties.. Minecraft is a labor of love, that game is nothing but passion.

Shit goes bad, at least they can use the Minecraft brand to sell some copies of Project Spark.

All good ideas belong to our corporate overlords.

Uggghhhhhh, sorry for the multiple posts but this hits me really hard. For shame.

It just begs the question. Who has the integrity to say no to these billion dollar deals? How much integrity does that require?

If Notch was worried about his sanity HE SHOULD HAVE BOUGHT A DAMN CABIN IN THE WOODS AWAY FROM EVERYTHING! He could spend as much time as he wanted there to gain his composure!

This is just cowardly.

Hm. With everything that Persson has said about EA and the Oculus buyout I doubted this would actually happen. The only possible scenario where this makes sense is in which he leaves the company, which he did.

Which is confusing. First off, usually buyouts like these come with contracts for the leads to stay on for a certain amount of time. The fact that this one didn't means Microsoft doesn't care or believe in Persson himself, which is weird. I guess I'm happy for him that he got an even more ridiculous amount of money to do whatever, but the entire situation feels a bit awkward. I don't think MS will lock out other platforms out of Minecraft, but I don't know what they think they've bought.

Uses the 2.5 Billion to make Minecraft 2

@ch3burashka: more than likely the only way he was selling was if he could walk.

Morals are worth approx. 2.5 Billion dollars.

@ch3burashka: I agree, I think MS boned themselves a bit when they bought MC without Persson. At the same time, Persson hasn't actually been involved in minecraft for some time. I'm guessing the team that heads up the PC development stays intact?

Just hope MS knows what they've bought. I get the distinct impression that they don't..

Also, about the morals and the sale.. 2.5 bill dollars means you have to start flipping the moral question around. It is morally sketchy to say no thanks to 2.5 billion bucks for a piece of paper when you think of all the good you can do with that money. Money that would be spent on something either better or worse according to your moral compass.
Saying no to 2.5bn bucks isn't always the morally superior choice, no matter what your original stance.

if anyone itt was in Notch's position they would sell in a heartbeat for that much money

I would too, but during talks of selling his company he called other people who sold their company sellouts which is some asshole grade hypocrisy.

cool i guess?? i've played a ton of Minecraft on console so i dont really care who owns it. also he

I got the impression that Notch was trying to distance himself from Minecraft over the last few years. I'm not too surprised to see Mojang being sold, although I never would have imagined for 2.5 billion.

Hopefully they don't ruin the franchise by filling it with microtransactions or removing mods or something. I am pretty much done with Minecraft at this point but it would still be interesting to see a sequel running on a proper engine with all the resources Microsoft has available.

I'm sure we can expect Minecraft 2 to be available exclusively on Xbox One (with a PC version launching 6 months later), Holiday 2015.

I don't blame Notch for taking the money and running. Dude never seemed comfortable with fame.

I just don't... I can't even. What is video games? What is billion? I don't know anything today.

I'm calling BS on Notch "not wanting to handle it". He sits here and sells his brand for $2.5 billion yet then says he's leaving because he doesn't want the pressure of his brand? That's horse crap. He could have gotten out 2-3 years ago when it came to consoles if he really hated the pressure. He's taking his cut of the sale and saying "Have fun building this!" I don't care one way or another that Microsoft bought it, but Notch needs to suck it up and admit that he's leaving because he wants the money and not the stock in Mojang.

I wish him the best of luck with all his future endeavors. I don't think he understood what he had though. It's really sad to see all of these brilliant inventions being sold to the highest bidders.

It's like life dealt him a royal flush, he got to make something that inspired millions of people and promoted creativity, and he folded before seeing the river.

Also assuming that what Minecraft is is something other than the name when using business judo to keep competitors off balance. The core working of Minecraft are not 'ownable', they are sort of public domain like the concept of interlocking plastic blaocks, stackable wooden blocks, etc. That is the issue: Minecraft is a name not a methodology or unique own-able idea. Arguably, there already are better building block computer programs, they just don't have the name or the money steam coming in.

Minecraft in that way is nothing like Tetris or Pac-man, because Minecraft is a "certain low-res look" for textures on uniform blocks not certain shapes, not certain characters and certainly not certain gameplay. That is the key thing people must keep in mind...Minecraft is just a name brand that at best owns its own low-res textures on uniform square blocks. That is a very vulnerable, tenuous and low power grip to have on such a high pressure money hose. The best grip Mojang and Microsoft have now is tons of money and tons of lawyers.

Sad to say it but they answer to, "Why Microsoft?" Mojang had too loose a grip on its revenue steam staying strong without deep pockets and experienced nasty lawyers.

Man, to be a billionaire over night, that's crazy stuff. I think I'd go crazy if I had that much money.

I'd say at least 50% of the kids at my son's school would consider Minecraft to be their favourite passtime. Walmart is full of Minecraft clothing and Toys R Us has a huge Minecraft toy section.

There's a lot more to this deal, and the Minecraft brand, than just a block-building video game.

As someone that doesn't really care about (or for) Minecraft, this still just seems slightly strange. I know Minecraft has legs, but 2.5b? Fuhhhh . . . that's a whole lot of faith in a product a ton of people already own. Yeah, it made tons of money and continues to, but . . . everyone already plays. It's not a WoW thing of everyone plays and then expansions are put out, milking existing players. Minecraft (after the initial buy-in) is free. No updates have cost money. Unless microsoft just continues to keep re-releasing it on new platforms, or plans to put out a sequel, I don't understand this move. Maybe there are enough people out there that don't play (but might in the future) to make this worthwhile?

@evermoore: I'm not sure about the PC version, but there is plenty of paid DLC available for the console versions.

I never really liked Minecraft so I don't really have a stake in this. But I'm finding the reaction from the internet pretty hilarious.

I wonder if there was a way to just sell Minecraft off instead of Mojang. Or the alternative is just to just stop work on Minecraft and "sunset" it. Or maybe Notch really is fed up with all of the crap "video games" throws around.

@evermoore: I believe they have built into the game the option to rent a server.

That is very, very smart, then.

Also, very smart.

Tbh, I'm mostly viewing the whole thing through the lens of Minecraft being primarily a PC game. I never looked deeply into the other versions of the game, but that actually makes a lot more sense. If there are other ways to monetize minecraft than just "here's the game", yeah . . . they just bought a gold mine.

@extomar: I think Notch just doesn't want the responsibility of owning/operating a company and all of the headaches that entails. It's not about selling off Minecraft, but everything associated with it.

What? He just became a billionaire. He won. To say he folded is ludicrous. It's not his duty to promote creativity and inspire. He just happened to through doing what he loved.

The distance some people have to real life is amazing...

Very, and I mean very few people can handle the pressure of being in charge of a franchise as huge as minecraft. Notch is a programmer and not a trained business leader. Everybody that has been responsible for a big project can tell you how draining it can be to keep track of everything. I made that experience myself and if I were in his place I would have done the same.
With 2.5 billion you can pretty much do whatever you want. Trading that for the stress that comes with running business is the best deal you can make imho

Life isn't about money, especially when he already said he had more than he would ever need. He had something better than money.

It seems to me he had opposite of creative freedom, with the weight of literally millions of peoples expectations pushing down on him . I envy his position, he now has no one to answer too and the capital to invest his time into whatever makes him happy (which was not minecraft).

Would it be too crazy to ask that people wait to see what happens before they say MSFT ruined the franchise?

No? Ok...

While still a part of Mojang he was doing weird stuff. He made Cliffhorse so he was still doing weird things with creative freedom. I am not going to begin pretending like I know what he was going through. Whatever is best for the soul is what you need to do. I just can't believe that meant selling his miracle game and the company surrounding it to a multi-billion dollar corporation.

I'd almost argue that expectations are even higher for his next project now that he has the funds to do literally anything. The only thing it can't be is Minecraft 2. Which is sad.

"A $2.5 billion deal for Mojang, or about 8 times sales last year, is small change for Microsoft, which has $86 billion in cash and short-term investments. But it is relatively large and expensive for game company acquisitions.:

From Reuters. This is what interests me the most, is what could be next if this is the path that's being followed moving forward.

How exactly can a weaker console make the experience better?

I think this played a big part in this transaction. I think his soul was ready to move on, the 2+ bill just convinced him to pull the trigger.

I'd be very surprised if Notch hasn't seen more than his share of billion dollar bills dangled in front of his face. Just figgered he was ready to grab one.

I didn't know Minecraft needed bleeding edge technology to run. I thought it ran on phones...

@enuff: He has Microsoft now. There's nothing he would have to worry about with the brand. It isn't about a "connection to real life". It is about a guy who was adamently against selling his brand, that already had plenty of stress at the time, until a big fish offered his a lump of money he couldn't refuse. And now that he has world class marketing g and business development teams to handle the branding for him, he cites stress and leaves. The real world fact is that it isn't about stress. It is that he got a lot of money and doesn't have to work on it anymore. But he had to give some kind of reason to the gaming community so that's the best he found.

I don't play Minecraft, but I'm curious what they could do to expand it. New tilesets?

Even though I think he's a hypocrite I can't help but respect his decision. He's to real a person, even if he's a little naive if he thinks his life will ever be the same as it was 5 years ago. This alone keeps him from actually being grounded, though. The act of having that much money gives you a different social status, and on top of that he has millions of so called "fans." He'll never be in the same position he was 5 years ago again. Ever. It doesn't matter if he ignores the world or not- the world won't ignore him.

I wonder how the creator of "This is Phil Fish" feels knowing he caused Notch to sell his company. What a thought provoking thing. I know famous people are just people too, but it's not often you hear them making their momentous life decisions based on your cool youtube video.

I don't know I just found that interesting.

I'm pretty sure a huge company like Microsoft that probably goes through dozens of dozens of meetings before anything is actually decided, didn't just spend 2.5 billion dollars on something they didn't really understand.

They know it makes money. They have huge resources to throw at it now in order to make new content - an area in which the original game was stagnating. It would take a lot of effort on Microsofts part to screw this up, and despite the popular 14 year olds opinion on the GameSpot message boards, they're not that stupid.