Mojang, the company responsible the open world builder hit Minecraft, is being bought by Microsoft, for the unimaginable sum of 2.5 billion dollars. The conformation came straight out of Mojang’s lips.
The reasons for the sale apparently comes down to founder Markus ‘Notch’ Persson’s dislike of running a big company. “He’s decided that he doesn’t want the responsibility of owning a company of such global significance,” the post reads. “Over the past few years he’s made attempts to work on smaller projects, but the pressure of owning Minecraft became too much for him to handle. The only option was to sell Mojang”. Notch, along with the other two founders Jakob Porsér and Carl Manneh are expected to leave the company once the deal is through.
Mojang promises that sales of the already released Minecraft will continue on all platforms. Regarding future projects however, such as Scrolls, they can only say “We don’t know yet. We’ll share any news as soon as we do”.
For the company who spent the fortune to buy a fortune, Microsoft, this seems like a pretty smart decision. Minecraft is a huge hit with an enormous community behind it, evolving the game with it. Microsoft is expecting to break even on the 2.5 Billion deal this fiscal year (which ends in June 2015), and that shows Microsoft’s faith in the franchise.
Following the announcement, Markus ‘Notch’ Persson wrote a letter explaining his decision, and frankly we can somewhat understand. As a programmer first and foremost, Notch just wants to make small games and experiments. “I don’t see myself as a real game developer. I make games because it’s fun, and because I love games and I love to program, but I don’t make games with the intention of them becoming huge hits, and I don’t try to change the world. Minecraft certainly became a huge hit, and people are telling me it’s changed games. I never meant for it to do either”.
Again, for Microsoft this is a smart decision, sure to boost their first party stable of developers and earn them quite a lot of cash. But for Markus ‘Notch’ Persson, “it’s not about the money. It’s about my sanity”.
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