Two and a half billion dollars. That is the amount of money that Microsoft will pay to buy out indie game developing company Mojang, creator of the wildly popular world building game Minecraft.
On Sept. 15, Mojang announced on its blog that it would be selling to Microsoft. As big of a change as this may be, it shouldn’t come as a surprise. Markus “Notch” Persson, creator of Minecraft and founder of Mojang, has expressed his frustrations with Minecraft for months. According to his blog, Notch never intended for Minecraft to become as hugely popular as it did, and the stress of developing the game seemed to be too much for Notch to handle.
In June of this year, Notch tweeted, “Anyone want to buy my share of Mojang so I can move on with my life? Getting hate for trying to do the right thing is not my gig.”
Notch removed himself from day-to-day operations at Mojang long before this buyout was announced, but the “Minecraft” community still places blame on Notch whenever anything bad happens to the game.
“I don’t want to be a symbol, responsible for something huge that I don’t understand,” Notch stated on his blog in September.
Now free from Minecraft, Notch can continue to work on smaller projects, doing what he enjoys. Notch even said on Twitter that if any of his new projects begin to get popular, he will “probably abandon it immediately.”
But what of Minecraft? It is more than just a sandbox survival game. It is a game that has sparked the creativity of a whole new generation of gamers. In an era dominated by mindless mobile gaming, Minecraft gives players the opportunity to let their creativity run wild and create nearly anything they can imagine: from towering castles and massive dragons to working calculators and flourishing farms.
The possibilities are endless, but players are concerned that the wonderful charm of the game will be clouded by what Microsoft has planned.
The video gaming world is no stranger to having beloved games sullied because some big company wanted to make extra money. Since Microsoft has not yet announced what it plans to do with Minecraft, tensions are high.
It is entirely possible that the massive recourses Microsoft has will be used to enrich the game. Hopefully Microsoft will continue to listen to the community, like Mojang always had in the past and build the game based on what the community wants.
Unfortunately, it is also entirely possible that Microsoft will use the popularity of the game to milk every last cent out of the cash cow. Players could very well start to see in game micro-transactions instead of community created add-ons and paid expansion packs instead of free game updates.
Only time will tell what will happen to Minecraft with Microsoft at the helm, but hopefully players won’t be needing to pay $2.99 for greener grass.
