Mojang getting bought by Microsoft (title edited)

[Granitehead]

Actually, by the way, he has written it was $2.5*10^9, not 2.

 

[EvilDragon]

Are you leaving us, ED?

Yes, of course.

 

[TrashyMG]

Are you leaving us, ED?

Yes, of course.

He's not on IRC at the moment, so be worried....

 

[fusion_power]

Are you leaving us, ED?

Yes, of course.

Only for 2.5 Billion Dollars I hope.

With that muchg money, there could be an even more awesome Handheld, I can imagine the wildest stuff.

 

[WizardStan]

"If I ever accidentally make something that seems to gain traction, I’ll probably abandon it immediately."

And that is one of the saddest things I've read. This is how jaded he's become from the whole experience, that he would rather destroy his own piece of popular art than let it become more popular.

I also think he is forgetting something important though: he is sad that Minecraft got so big, he just wanted to play around and experiment, but the only reason he is in a position to play around and experiment is because Minecraft got big. If it had failed to gain traction he wouldn't have made his first $30'000'000 and able to work on whatever he wanted, he'd be forced back into office labour working for other people's projects. I don't think his characterization is really fair to those of us that envy his position of escape.

 

[iprice]

 

[Askarus]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qEEd7J3DBo&list=PLeImKFecYFCzKacBAZGzcJEVm9OWN1PFZ&index=5

 

[Timstertoo]

Of course I realize it's Mojang and not Notch himself.

Then you should change your thread title if you realize that

But I must admit that I made the assumption that Notch has a majority stake in Mojang and thus it's pretty much him selling the company to Microsoft. If not I retract my statement.

Mojang is a company. Notch is an employee.They can buy Mojang but Notch can leave anytime.  

Seeing as Notch won't be moving over with the rest of the bunch to Microsoft I've edited the title.

 

[Night]

I wonder if things would become more interesting if Notch could just make Minecraft open source.

 

[ekianjo]

I wonder if things would become more interesting if Notch could just make Minecraft open source.

Why would he? 

 

[Nintendo]

I wouldn't.

 

[WizardStan]

I wonder if things would become more interesting if Notch could just make Minecraft open source.

Why would he?

Because he's always been a proponent of indie development and open source, and he said that was one of his goals, to eventually get Minecraft to a point where he was happy with it and then release the source code to see what others would do with it.

 

[ekianjo]

I wonder if things would become more interesting if Notch could just make Minecraft open source.

Why would he?

Because he's always been a proponent of indie development and open source, and he said that was one of his goals, to eventually get Minecraft to a point where he was happy with it and then release the source code to see what others would do with it.

Yeah, and he also said he would do  a Pandora version, we all know how that turned out. 

Of course I realize it's Mojang and not Notch himself.

Then you should change your thread title if you realize that

But I must admit that I made the assumption that Notch has a majority stake in Mojang and thus it's pretty much him selling the company to Microsoft. If not I retract my statement.

Mojang is a company. Notch is an employee.They can buy Mojang but Notch can leave anytime.  

Seeing as Notch won't be moving over with the rest of the bunch to Microsoft I've edited the title.

As I hinted in my first posts on the subject, this was very likely knowing Notch's position to big publishers. That's why I said you should correct it to Mojang instead of Notch, and guess what, that's exactly how it turned out. 

 

[Timstertoo]

I wonder if things would become more interesting if Notch could just make Minecraft open source.

Why would he?

Because he's always been a proponent of indie development and open source, and he said that was one of his goals, to eventually get Minecraft to a point where he was happy with it and then release the source code to see what others would do with it.

Yeah, and he also said he would do a Pandora version, we all know how that turned out.

Of course I realize it's Mojang and not Notch himself.

Then you should change your thread title if you realize that

But I must admit that I made the assumption that Notch has a majority stake in Mojang and thus it's pretty much him selling the company to Microsoft. If not I retract my statement.

Mojang is a company. Notch is an employee.They can buy Mojang but Notch can leave anytime.

Seeing as Notch won't be moving over with the rest of the bunch to Microsoft I've edited the title.

As I hinted in my first posts on the subject, this was very likely knowing Notch's position to big publishers. That's why I said you should correct it to Mojang instead of Notch, and guess what, that's exactly how it turned out.

And I did, as I said I would.

 

[Klumpen]

He wasn't involved in any Minecraft stuff for months. He was just CEO of the company, as Mojang told him he should stay there because he is part of the culture, so he stayed in but tried to work on his own small projects.

And that is totally understandable - Minecraft grew around him, so if he left the company, the community would've gone mad.

It's similar to the Pandora and myself, I guess. Imagine I had a small team that handled the Pandora, don't you think there would be an uproar if I just left the company?

So he agreed to stay within the company to keep the community happy, as the guy behind Minecraft, even though he really wasn't anymore.

But when people personally attacked him because of some EULA crap he didn't even have anything to do with, he decided it's time to sell and part the company.

You don't know yet whether he will donate the money or not, but I've seen him donating money into the Indie dev scene regularly, so I wouldn't say he won't do that.

Of course, keeping enough to himself to have a good life, which is understandable as well.

Maybe I can understand him because I'm similar. I'm happy to work with a community, but if things go to big, with all the legal mumbojumbo stuff, I'd probably hide away and do my own stuff as good as possible as well.

But I wouldn't want to disappoint the community, so if others my company would say I need to stay because it's important for the community, I would do that...

But why Microsoft? Why?

Why not someone else for a bit less money?

 

[thatgui]

But why Microsoft? Why?

Why not someone else for a bit less money?

Maybe he thought it was the lesser "evil" ?

 

[Nintendo]

Should've sold it to Sony or Google.

 

[Klumpen]

Mojang, whose three founders will leave the company, assured fans that "everything is going to be OK".

I can understand Notch, but think he should be more honest about the financial aspect of this decision.

I wouldn't have chosen MS.

 

[ekianjo]

I wouldn't have chosen MS.

Notch explained himself in a blog post, he wanted to get rid of Minecraft since it had become too big for him.

I think it just happened to be Microsoft spending the most money on this, it could have been anyone else but Sony is Low on cash, Nintendo does not get this kind of things, and other publishers are not doing so well they would consider any acquisition in the billion of dollars range.  

There's not too many companies out there who can spend 2.5 Billions on an acquisition. 

 

[Klumpen]

I wouldn't have chosen MS.

Notch explained himself in a blog post, he wanted to get rid of Minecraft since it had become too big for him.

I think it just happened to be Microsoft spending the most money on this, it could have been anyone else but Sony is Low on cash, Nintendo does not get this kind of things, and other publishers are not doing so well they would consider any acquisition in the billion of dollars range.  

There's not too many companies out there who can spend 2.5 Billions on an acquisition. 

Does it really have to be a billion dollars range...