Mojang Joins Microsoft; Founders Notch, Carl, Jakob Leaving

[CardinalPiggles]

RIP in peace Mojang, to the grinder you go.

And yeah, Notch is an absolute genius. "It's not about the money" *sells Mojang for 2.5 billion*.

Now I wanna see what will happen to the trillions of YouTube channels dedicated to Minecraft videos.

 

[Olrod]

It could be worse. It could have been bought by EA or Ubisoft.

Every cloud has a tin foil lining.

 

[Adultratedhydra]

"I don?t see myself as a real game developer."

It's ok Notch, Neither does anyone else.

 

[Silverbane7]

dont forget the you tube monetization. certain very famous people make millions a year from their minecraft videos there...
so while im sure MS want to go for that sweet spot and start chewing through the neck to get to the sweet sweet cashflow.... if they go for it, they will loose the thing they want most.

see, if they actualy mess with 1.8, only a few die hard 360 fans will keep making streams and lets plays and so forth.
without the modpacks, there wont be any mod spotlights.
the only ones that would continue to get shown are map packs and redstone and the ocasional pvp map or monument or something spectacular done in redstone and command blocks.

with no vids, you cant make monetization for it being your new product.

if they DO want to monetize, the best way is things for their new windows phone stuff. maybe a skin uploader for WP app version of 2.0
sure, make apps for the iOS and Apple versions and android.
i would (personaly) still like to see a version with nintendo skins/ texture packs / mash ups like the halo and skyrim ones for a WiiU version (because come on.....think....WiiU's all over japan sitting un-minecrafted....small homes where you can only choose one that *everyone* in the famly will play, most often get the nintendo hardware becasue its small and cheap and even your kids / gran wont mind..its a totaly un-tapped cash pool.)
maybe a mobile version of the NEWnew3ds XL lol

maybe they will cease updating the non microsoft stuff once it reaches 1.8 level, and to be honest, i dont feel thats bad. maybe a bit unfair but hey, so long as the non Xbox1 stuff even GETS to 1.8 it would be worth what people paid for it on their console / handheld / phone / pad ect.

then there is the minecraft 2.0 for windows 8app, windows phone and Xbox1! hey, nice and new. (whatever)
but so long as they realize its dumbness of massive proportions to actualy cut off the current stuff (which they would still be making money from) to make a quick cash grab.
be smart, people at MS. 1.8 (on pc/mac/linux) gets frozen and then you can charge players to buy a new account for 2.0 if they want new stuff. (or migrate your old account to the new version provided you remember you cant use it to play outdated version..for free. casue then they can charge you for new content casue its not minecraft (1.8) its NewMinecraft2.0 we made it its our's remember)

 

[FPLOON]

So how long until Minecraft: Nuts and Bolts is released?

Probably right after releasing Minecraft: Live & Reloaded...

OT: Well, hopefully those future Minecraft kinect games and the like become worth it in the long run... especially the Minecraft version of Dance Central...

 

[Atmos Duality]

Internet fame scares good people from innovating more than once.

That's what the headline should be.

Some people don't have more than one in them anyway.
Good on him to cash out when he did.

Though right now, I'm damn glad I stuck with Terraria. I'd expect some unpleasant changes and/or concessions being made of Minecraft fans in the next couple of years, as I doubt even Microsoft wants to keep that $2.5 billion hole for long.

 

[CriticalMiss]

RIP Mojang, we hardly knew ye. Except for the whole Minecraft thing. We know ye a lot because of that.

 

[Living Contradiction]

What is up with Microsoft buying Scandinavian companies lately. First Nokia now Mojang.

That stumped me too after I read about the deal. Apparently Microsoft has gotten tired of having ten billion bucks burning a hole in its pocket and bought Nokia, patents and all, for $7.2 billion cash. Now with the leftover money, Mojang slips into Microsoft's stable.

Question: What would prompt one of the world's largest software companies effectively blow all of their on-hand cash? /conspiracytheory off.

As far as Mojang goes, I tip my hat to the shareholders on their profit. And to Notch, for improving his holdings from 42 percent to seventy percent in two years (yep, somebody sold to him before all this happened), I quote a bit of Dave Chappelle: "You can become famous but you can't become unfamous. You can become infamous but not unfamous."

 

[BabySinclair]

The smart move for getting more people to buy Minecraft, put a Minecraft: lite (creative only pre-redstone) on every Windows PC sold, possibly tablets as well, that is not a limited use demo. Would beat the normal solitare and chess that comes with Windows and a useful game to let parents get their kids to play (vs shooters or Farmville) without them having to look for something to let their kids play. From there it's just getting them to upgrade to the full version without forcing them to do so.

 

[RicoADF]

Watching the reaction to this topic is almost at Xbone levels of entertainment.
#BringThePopcorn

OT: Smart move by Notch and co, seriously if someone offered me $2.5 Billion for a mod or game project I had made I'd grab the nearest pen faster than Garfield finds lasagna lol.

 

[michael87cn]

couldn't have sold it to a worse company. minecraft gonna be ruined by this. just like activision screwed up blizzard.

 

[Veylon]

On the bright side Notch is gone.
Maybe some competent developer will now fix Minecraft to run normally and add actual features rather than taking mods and badly implementing them in the game.

Uh.. As stated in many places before, Notch has had nothing to do with Minecraft development for a long time.
That's one of the reasons he's selling, he is fed up with having to take abuse from people about stuff he has nothing to do with.

Notch is the owner of Minecraft. It's his name and his company's name on the title screen. He's the one collecting the profits. The team working on it works for him. He can say, "Put this in there / don't put that in there," and it will be done. It's his responsibility to see that his product is of high quality.

Or it was. Everything from here on out can be blamed on Microsoft.

Notch didn't own 100% of the company; he shared ownership with at least two other people. He just somehow became the public face of it, possibly because of his appearance in Indie Game: The Movie. He could - and did - step away to do other things and leave all decisions regarding development to the others.

He wrote the first game for the company, a game that the company was built around, that provided and provides the very basis of it's existence. I'll grant that other people deserve some praise/blame for the direction that Minecraft has gone lately, but it's still mostly his baby and he's still far and away the most important person at the company that owns it.

Though I have to give him a lot of credit for turning his Infiniminer-clone experiment into multiple billions of dollars.

 

[SamTheNewb]

Not only do I not blame Notch. I applaud him for having the fortitude to engage in a 2.5Bln dollar deal. I'm betting the discrepancy between the 2B and the 2.5Bln figures is Notch's negotiating team. Can you imagine being offered 2Bln, then going, oh... I need to make a counteroffer. Maybe I need to hire an appraiser, a negotiator, and a couple or lawyers or ten.

Microsoft can buy the community (for a while), but they can't buy the community's loyalty and they will never have the right or authority to keep it. Nobody can own a community, so it can't be sold. It has no cash value, and saying there is value in a products community is simply fluff and marketing to makes such unwieldy acquisitions easier to swallow.

Good job Notch. Bleed as much blood as you can get from Microsoft. It is your duty, as an newly minted entrepreneur, and as the creator you are.

For the community. It is not about the game, but how the game was played. Individual games may be unique, but like commodities they can be bought and sold. One may think that uniqueness makes something irreplaceable. In truth, it can be replicated, just like any other genre defining game in the industry.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

2 billion dollars... Whhhhhhhyyyyyy, Microsoft? I'm insanely curious now. Why the heck... Why that much?

 

[themilo504]

Despite notch claims I do think that the main reason why he sold his company is the money, and considering how 2.5 billion dollars is enough to buy a African country I don?t blame him, stress might have played a part in getting him to sell it but I doubt it?s the main reason.

 

[Jake Martinez]

My crystal ball tells me that everyone should be prepared for the explosion in Minecraft related toys and the new Minecraft TV show/cartoon.

All kidding aside (I'm not really kidding), I think the first thing Microsoft is going to do is double down on Minecraft Realms.

For people who don't know it's Mojang's own Minecraft hosting solution. Currently it's not the go to hosting solution for most diehard minecraft fans because it doesn't support modding content. If Microsoft adds that, then they can obviously leverage the Mojang brand and platform to put all the small Minecraft hosting providers out of business and take their customers.

The revenue stream here if they do it right could gross upwards in the hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Despite notch claims I do think that the main reason why he sold his company is the money, and considering how 2.5 billion dollars is enough to buy a African country I don?t blame him, stress might have played a part in getting him to sell it but I doubt it?s the main reason.

Yeah, I can see where you're getting this from. Notch has never been all that enamored with his creation and he hasn't been actively involved in not only the development, but the direction of the game for years. Most of that has been left to Jeb and Dinnerbone. He certainly doesn't come across as someone who loves Minecraft as much as his fans do, since he handed it off to other people rather early on in it's release.

To be completely honest about it - the modders that create stuff like IC2, GregTech, Thaumcraft, Bloodmagic, Thermal Expansion, Build Craft, etc have really added the content to Minecraft that makes it capable of holding anyone's interest past a week. The actual stuff that Mojang puts out is... really lame in comparison. Plus, from actually looking at the code - It's not really great (It's okay, but not great). Granted, some of it is kind of old, but the way Notch abused openGL should be a crime The modding community has actually fixed many of the problems that Mojang keeps introducing...

Anyway, my point being - I don't think Notch is emotionally invested in Minecraft or has ever been. I don't even think he gets why his game is popular, which is kind of funny if you ask me. So - I think that he's been looking to get "out" of Mojang for a while now and do other stuff and Microsoft just walked up with 2.5 billion reasons to do so.

 

[DayDark]

I really have to say good luck to him, I hope he somehow manages to make what he wants to make.

I hope what ever he makes from now on becomes famous enough for me to see it, but not so famous as to make him drop it.

 

[smithy_2045]

Ok, Notch, Ok. Sure this is about the stress of running a company you seem to really enjoy. And not at all about the fact that Microsoft offered you so much money, that its weight in thousand dollar bills could crush you.

Haha. I don't blame him at all. And you can't just come out and say, "Well, it came down to running a game company or having enough money to declare myself king of a small nation."

Word is Notch sought the deal with Microsoft, rather than Microsoft going to Notch.

 

[kaocrat]

Here's hoping that someone builds a suitable Minecraft replacement. I'm sure the core Minecraft experience will remain intact for a long time, even with Microsoft at the helm, but my expectation is that one of the first casualties of the acquisition is going to be the openness and customizability of the PC version. I've grown pretty bored with vanilla minecraft, but I'm a huge fan of heavily modded packs such as BloodNBones and Magic Farm. Was really looking forward to the modAPI, which I have to assume is not going to happen since Microsoft does not like to allow that sort of thing. It's a shame because each of the successive version updates seemed to be bringing the game closer to having a decent framework for running mods.

 

[Drops a Sweet Katana]

This seems like a distinctly poor move for Microsoft and just plain bad for everyone who plays Minecraft. They've just spent two and a half billion on a company that has produced ONE product of any real note, meaning they'll probably have to try to make as much money as humanly possible from Minecraft alone to make it worth all that money. Normally I wouldn't think this would be a problem since it sells like hotcakes, but its sales have been declining since everyone and their gut biota already has it. Because of this, I foresee Microsoft adding some less savoury additions to the game to try and make up the difference, those leading many to abandon it.