And it has just been confirmed. Mojang has been bought by Microsoft. As Mojang revealed, Microsoft has bought them for 2.5 billion dollars. Obviously that’s a lot of money, however we find it ironic that Notch – the person that cancelled the Oculus Rift version of Minecraft the moment it has been bought by Facebook – has given the green light to such a thing. Or in other words, better watch out what you say because your own statements may come back to bite you.
As Mojang claimed:
“As you might already know, Notch is the creator of Minecraft and the majority shareholder at Mojang. He’s decided that he doesn’t want the responsibility of owning a company of such global significance. 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.”
From the looks of it, Notch will start another smaller company and continue developing indie titles. Or at least that’s our guess. Still, Mojang’s excuse sounds a lot like… you know… the typical PR stuff we hear from time to time.
Do not misunderstand us; Notch had every right to sell his company. Notch had every right to cancel the Oculus Rift version of his game as… it was his game. Notch has every right to take vacations and enjoy the “fruits” of his accomplishment.
However, imagine this hypothetical scenario. How would you feel if one day we sold DSOG (for a respectable amount of money) with the excuse of it getting relatively big? And what if we told you that afterwards we were going to create a new smaller one? Would you still trust us, and follow us? Or would you feel, somehow, betrayed?
For those interested, here are Notch’s thoughts.
Enjoy and stay tuned for more!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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I just hope they(Microsoft) don’t destroy this Franchise, like they did with their Fake XboX!
And keep it as Multi-Platform! And For Android I’d love to buy anytime.
RIP Minecraft!
Another developer ruined…. Microsoft is becoming the cancer of the gaming industry.
…becoming?
Microsoft has an obsession with squares. First Metro, now Minecraft. Next they’re going to purchase the rights to the Rubik’s Cube and Square-Enix, Foursquare, Square card reader, and trademark square and cube shapes.
And then finally they’ll change their name to Squaresoft
I would sell my own grandmother for $2.5 Billion so I am happy for Mojang.
He started this jokingly “2 bilion is my price ms, give me that an i will endorse your crap”
lol ms throws money around.
Anyway i also find it funny how facebook is scary but not ms with their nsa connections.
Minecraft was a big thing, it happened it was done. Thats it, i doubt he can make anything else that will be even remotely sucessfull.
What ms is gonna do make minecraft 2? Do they thing they gonna make those 2.5 billion back?
Thats like 50 million copies on xbone.
he took the money and left the industry, he’s set for life.
pretty much.http://ioneglobalgrind.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/mitt-romney-wife-laughing_0.jpg
Notch might have just exploited Facebook’s timely acquisition of Occulus Rift to safely get out of their non-binding partnership in building the VR device. Every new hardware would need a system seller, i.e. games, and Minecraft would be perfect for an XB1 exclusive VR system complemented with what’s left of the Kinect 2.0.
And we now wait for Notch to justify to us all how its ok to sell out to M$ but its not ok for Oculus to be bought by FB. Yeah, we all know its because of the $$$$ Notch there is really no point beating around the bush.
Personally I cant see how Microsoft could think that Mojang is worth that much money. Pretty much everyone who wants to own Minecraft own it by now and a new Minecraft game cant really offer any more than the infinite possibilities already possible on Minecraft for PC.
Notch was right to take the money because that studio is a one hit wonder anyway and without Notch I can see the original crew slowly falling apart. The only reason I can fathom for the buyout is simply to keep future MC content off of other console systems, but 2.5b seems a hell of a lot to pay for just a spiteful tactic.
Notch. Billionaire rockstar game developer? Life is weird.
At least now he has money to fund Psychonauts 2.
If someone already forgot, Notch offered Double Fine a couple of millions, but turned out that the budget of the first game was around 13 millions.
One one hand. Notch can eat a dick for what he pulled.
On the other hand. The absolute mad of the Sony fanboys is hilarious.
never played it, never understand it, watched videos and it was sh*t so i don’t care 😀
Yeah, It’s like digital Lego, I never really understood the fascination with it and it’s not my kind of thing.
Some are angry but to be honest no one is gonna say no to $2.5 Billion, he only earned a few million from MInecraft so it was the right move, still don’t see how Microsoft will earn back that money, there’s not enough Xbone’s to sell it on plus it’s already on other platforms so exclusivity is out of the question, shame PS4 users will soon start seeing the Microsoft logo popping up on their console
lol Microsoft
i see no way in which this will be profitable for ms. which is a good thing.
Feelings of betrayal, why would he owe us anything, my respect aint worth 2.5 billion US $, and anyone that think it is would be a megalomaniacal narcissist
I played Minecraft since the inDev build, I got my moneys worth.