14 ms·

The Story of Microsoft's Minecraft Buyout

161 points by jsnell 11y ago

rilita 11y ago
Interesting, but this is just a huge advertisement for a book. Also; it says nothing about what Microsoft is doing with Minecraft in the last year. There is no new news here in this blurb as far as I can tell. Move along.
- gtCameron 11y ago
  Some people read things simply because they are interesting, even if they do not contain any "new news"
- Finster 11y ago
  Who cares? I love reading some of these book exceprts. Got me to buy and read the history of Marvel. This stuff is pretty interesting.
- VLM 11y ago
  "Also; it says nothing about what Microsoft is doing with Minecraft in the last year." That is accurate. Nothing so far. At least in public. When the news of the purchase went out there was a lot of theory about how they will get rid of all console ports but the msphone/xbox ports, get rid of the osx and linux port, somehow find a way to make it un-runnable on anything but windows 8 which I'm sure with effort is technically possible, or monetize the heck out of it like buy diamonds for real world cash or whatever. I'm not sure if they're wisely waiting for things to quiet and calm, or if they're actually making no progress. The modding community is busy enough. I don't think its possible for one human to keep up with absolutely everything in the FTB DW20 pack, for example. It would just take more wall clock time to gain expertise than there is wall clock time between new releases and new mods.
  - rilita 11y ago
    There was a lot of hoopla from the community right when it happened. The head of forge quite, leaving the guy under him to make the next forge version. The one guy in bukkit sunk the whole project due to it also. I would like to know what if anything Microsoft has done to help Forge to keep the community strong. My guess: nothing as you say. If they have done something that would be news. There is speculation that nearly all Minecraft mods right now are illegal due to reverse engineering of the obfuscated core.
MrZongle2 11y ago
Several items from the article jumped out at me, such as: "Everyone at Mojang was made the same offer: whoever stayed on board for at least six months after the sale would be rewarded with two million Swedish crowns, approximately three hundred thousand dollars, after taxes." While it pales in comparison to the payday Mojang's founders received, I'd be happy to get that much. Especially if: "The three founders were yet to make anyone else a shareholder in the company, not even those who had been with Mojang from the start. This meant that the massive profits generated by Minecraft still went straight into their pockets, even though Markus himself hadn’t done any actual work on Minecraft for over two years now. ... Many no longer regarded Markus, Carl, and Jakob as their equals, as part of the team, but simply as management. Mojang had long since ceased to be anything but a workplace." Sounds like if you were a working stiff at Mojang, your options were simply "find a new job" or "enjoy a $300,000 bonus after 6 months of continued employment". Compared to what had been happening, this sounds like an improvement. I can't blame Mojang's founders for selling the company; hell, I'd do the same when offered that much money. Markus (Notch) can spend the rest of his life quietly making games mostly to amuse himself. That sounds like a dream. But when I read something like this: "When Microsoft sent a delegation for its first official visit to Mojang in Stockholm, Markus wasn’t around. Few if any of his employees knew for sure, but it was rumored that he’d just returned from a few days in Vegas with Jakob. Either way, he was either too tired or too uninterested to show up in person. The task of representing Mojang to its new owners fell on Carl." and: "The day before, Markus had put in his last day at work. Several others were in the office as he stood up to leave. He hesitated, not sure how to say goodbye. So he decided not to." ...I can't help but think, "geez, what an ass." You've got your big payday, but you can't even be bothered to see the thing through or say goodbye to some of the people who helped make your big payday happen? This is only one side of the story, of course, and as rilita notes elsewhere in this thread this is largely a promotion for a book. After reading this and having watched Minecraft's lack of progress over the last year (compared to its previous 2), I think that perhaps the acquisition by Microsoft may be the best thing that happened to the game.
- mpdehaan2 11y ago
  There is this article about Notch sharing $3M with employees previously - can't imagine there being that many employees, and don't know how equal the sharing was. http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-03-02-notch-shares-USD3m-dividend-with-employees http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-03-02-notch-share... Which strikes me as pretty awesome, because with that much money you don't really know what to do with it -- except maybe outbid Beyonce for a very very expensive house (which strikes me as excessive and better used elsewhere).
sageabilly 11y ago
After reading this story I'm struck by a bit of a parallel between Notch and Tarn Adams, the guy who writes Dwarf Fotress. Both are to be extremely passionate about the simple but massively playable games that they make, but Dwarf Fortress has a niche following and Minecraft has EXPLODED in popularity. I can see Notch riding the leviathan for a while but at some point that's got to be extremely tiring and every day's growth would take him further and further from the "I just want to sit in the basement and make fun games" that got him in the industry in the first place. Regardless of intent, at some point if someone comes along and says "hey we'll give you $2B to walk away from this and go back to making fun games in the basement and never having to worry about money ever again" it will be a more attractive offer than trying to deal with the headache that comes with running a large company (which would be compounded by never desiring to have a large company in the first place).
- baldfat 11y ago
  > Both are to be extremely passionate about the simple but massively playable games. Have you ever even looked at Dwarf Fortress? It is the most complex non-trival game I have ever layed my eyes on. It takes over 100 hours just to understand the ascii art. Quoting: "Dwarf Fortress is one of the most complex computer games in the history of computer games. How complex? In the game's discussion forum, one player asserts that after 120 failed games, he can finally "get into the swing of things." [http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/02/dwarf-fortress-ten-hours-with-the-most-inscrutable-video-game-of-all-time/ http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/02/dwarf-fortress-ten-hou...]
  - GuiA 11y ago
    That's a bit of a dramatic exaggeration for theatrical effect. The ASCII art definitely does not take 100 hours to understand. If you use a beginner's guide, you can get the basics in a couple hours - after that, you start having fun but of course it takes a very long time to learn and understand all of the subtleties of the game (but that's true of any good strategy game). O'reilly has published a book about the game, I highly recommend it. You can start really grokking the game within an afternoon.
phn 11y ago
The other side of the story is that notch contacted Microsoft about the sale in the first place, and he was pretty transparent about the reason why, after it was done: http://notch.net/2014/09/im-leaving-mojang/ http://notch.net/2014/09/im-leaving-mojang/
- sageabilly 11y ago
  Ah, I had forgotten about this posting when I posted my earlier comment. He says flat out that it's gotten too big for him to deal with and that it's not fun anymore. It's kinda the double edged sword of making something awesome- on the one hand, you've made something awesome. On the other hand, now you're in charge of your awesome thing that's way too big for one person to handle alone, so the bigger it gets the more people you have to bring in to run it, and the further and further away from being directly involved in the day to day. Unless you're Steve Jobs, but not everyone can be or wants to be that way.
- adventured 11y ago
  Notch didn't contact Microsoft, they contacted him. “Anyone want to buy my share of Mojang so I can move on with my life?” he asked. “Getting hate for trying to do the right thing is not my gig.” "Mojang CEO Carl Manneh was sitting at home with his family when he first saw the tweet. Within 30 seconds of his reading it, his phone rang. A Microsoft executive who coordinated with Mojang wanted to know if Persson was serious. “I’m not sure–let me talk to him,” said Manneh. "While Persson originally wrote the message as a half-joke, the realization that he could disassociate from Mojang took hold. The man who once publicly pledged that he would not sell out to evil corporations now had his head turned. "In the week that followed, Manneh’s phone rang constantly with interest from Microsoft, Electronic Arts, Activision Blizzard and others. Talks with Activision petered out. Persson, cryptically, won’t discuss what happened with EA but says that Mojang ruled out potential buyers “who did game play in a way we didn’t like.” Microsoft, however, apparently passed muster." http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2015/03/03/minecraft-markus-persson-life-after-microsoft-sale/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2015/03/03/minecraft-mar...
  - phn 11y ago
boroboro 11y ago
It's always an opportunity to sell to someone how is desperate and has deep pockets, especially when you're currently looking for an exit. Minecraft, Wunderlist, ...
DrTung 11y ago
Always thought he'd opensource Minecraft and then sell it to Unicef (or Unesco) for 1 dollar. But alas it was not to be :-(
johnyzee 11y ago
It's interesting to me how entitled the employees come across as. Minecraft was making millions, but they were only getting a regular salary. (Aside from luxury trips to Monaco with their families, and an extremely laid back and pleasant work environment.) I remember that Notch was doing Minecraft development all alone for the longest time, even after it had become hugely popular, and users had been begging him to hire people to speed up development. So these employees join as regular employees, getting a regular salary, taking none of the risks of the founders, yet they are pissed off because they don't own shares of the company. I suspect this is very common in successful startups, and in a way I understand it: They see the founders, guys their age, rolling in the dough, on the back of their work. I've felt the same way as an employee, when stuff I come up with and implement ends up making the company a lot of money and the most I get, if I'm lucky, is a pat on the back. But, as a founder? Where the fuck do you get off expecting to take a piece of my company, that I have literally sacrificed blood, sweat and tears for, taken time away from my life and my family, risked huge amounts of money, relationships and years of my life, without any guarantee that I would ever succeed. And you take an interview, walk in the door from nine to five and do your job, which you get fairly compensated for, and would not be paid anymore for anywhere else, you can, and probably will, leave whenever you feel like it with no stress or loss. Yet because the company succeeds, somehow you are entitled to own parts of it for simply being there and doing your job?
- aaron_m04 11y ago
  In my experience, early employees at startups don't usually just work from nine to five. They usually _do_ make large time sacrifices. I would say that early employees generally _are_ entitled to a fraction of the profits.
  - devbug 11y ago
    In Minecraft's unusual case, it was already seriously de-risked when the first few employees were hired. The additions however, did keep the momentum going, and deserve a cut for that. Jeb immediately comes to mind.
    - 11y ago
adventured 11y ago
"Everyone else had to do with a normal salary, plus whatever perks or bonuses Markus decided to throw their way when he felt generous." To say that Markus had been generous with employees, would be an understatement. https://twitter.com/notch/status/175174949277941760 https://twitter.com/notch/status/175174949277941760
- paulornothing 11y ago
  It certainly seems like for some reason (I assume the success of the game) that employees think they are entitled to more than a reasonable salary. I've worked plenty of jobs where I've received a decent salary and no perks. The one company I worked for was doing really well, I received a good salary and we received perks. No trips anywhere but catered lunches or desert bars or other things about every other month or so. Things like that show that you are appreciated, not sure where the entitlement comes from.
  - adventured 11y ago
    It sounds like nothing more than run-of-the-mill envy and fear of change. Someone else is getting rich. I don't think people anywhere - Sweden or otherwise - are immune to it. I believe it's an extraordinarily common human attribute. I think the culture at Mojang amplified, perhaps even was responsible for, the sense the employees had that it was their baby. I inherited a business with a dozen employees when my parents died at a young age. The tenure of the employees was long, averaging ten or so years. The employees believed the business belonged to them (they had never been promised ownership, they didn't own it in any regard), that their jobs were perpetual, and that their roles were to never change. For the next year, they were fond of quoting that "well, I was told that my job was x y z by the previous owners." I've never met more entitled people in my life, and this was at a small business that didn't make tons of money. That extreme atmosphere of entitlement, in that case, came from how the former ownership had, basically, allowed the inmates to run the asylum and never have to deal with change. It became, as the years went by, an increasingly entrenched mindset that it was their business, and they were all very afraid of change at their ages (average age of 45).
frik 11y ago
Yesterday, LEGO launched Minecraft's competitor LEGO Worlds: http://videogames.lego.com/en-us/lego-worlds/about/screenshots http://videogames.lego.com/en-us/lego-worlds/about/screensho...
- somedangedname 11y ago
  What a terrible launch page. Video not front and centre, video trailer doesn't load and the 'more info' button displays copyright information. Because that's what grabs kid's attention these days - a wordy rights statement asserting WB's ownership of '...the Brick and the Knob configurations'.
pcunite 11y ago
Any story about Minecraft needs to mention Zachary Barth.
andyidsinga 11y ago
this really shocked me. He must have been filled with all sorts of mixed emotions to not even say goodbye to the team. (or he did, and for whatever reason that's not public ..). >> The day before, Markus had put in his last day at work. Several others were in the office as he stood up to leave. He hesitated, not sure how to say goodbye. So he decided not to. He made his way past the desks outside where his employees sat working, past the shelves stacked with awards and prizes. He took a left out the door, went down a small stairwell, and stepped out of the building.
z3t4 11y ago
I guess Notch wanted to try the rockstar life, something he couldn't do representing Mojang. I hope he gets tired of it and comes back to the gaming scene, or at least starts blogging again. He has a really great analytic mind when it comes to games. He actually quit his day job to start making games on how own. (He already made games for a living). And decided to make Minecraft because he knew it was easy money he could use to keep afloat. Jens already had his own successful game studio when joining Mojang. It was a pretty good hire ... I guess he's not that good at negotiating, considered he didn't get any ownership. But I guess he's happy enough to be the lead on the greatest games of all time, besides Tetris. :P
triplesec 11y ago
I wish it had put "book excerpt" in the HN header because I was looking for the rest of the article when I got to the bottom. Not satisfying.

161 points by jsnell 11y ago

Interesting, but this is just a huge advertisement for a book. Also; it says nothing about what Microsoft is doing with Minecraft in the last year. There is no new news here in this blurb as far as I can tell. Move along.

gtCameron 11y ago
Some people read things simply because they are interesting, even if they do not contain any "new news"
Finster 11y ago
Who cares? I love reading some of these book exceprts. Got me to buy and read the history of Marvel. This stuff is pretty interesting.
VLM 11y ago
"Also; it says nothing about what Microsoft is doing with Minecraft in the last year." That is accurate. Nothing so far. At least in public. When the news of the purchase went out there was a lot of theory about how they will get rid of all console ports but the msphone/xbox ports, get rid of the osx and linux port, somehow find a way to make it un-runnable on anything but windows 8 which I'm sure with effort is technically possible, or monetize the heck out of it like buy diamonds for real world cash or whatever. I'm not sure if they're wisely waiting for things to quiet and calm, or if they're actually making no progress. The modding community is busy enough. I don't think its possible for one human to keep up with absolutely everything in the FTB DW20 pack, for example. It would just take more wall clock time to gain expertise than there is wall clock time between new releases and new mods.
- rilita 11y ago
  There was a lot of hoopla from the community right when it happened. The head of forge quite, leaving the guy under him to make the next forge version. The one guy in bukkit sunk the whole project due to it also. I would like to know what if anything Microsoft has done to help Forge to keep the community strong. My guess: nothing as you say. If they have done something that would be news. There is speculation that nearly all Minecraft mods right now are illegal due to reverse engineering of the obfuscated core.

MrZongle2 11y ago

Several items from the article jumped out at me, such as: "Everyone at Mojang was made the same offer: whoever stayed on board for at least six months after the sale would be rewarded with two million Swedish crowns, approximately three hundred thousand dollars, after taxes." While it pales in comparison to the payday Mojang's founders received, I'd be happy to get that much. Especially if: "The three founders were yet to make anyone else a shareholder in the company, not even those who had been with Mojang from the start. This meant that the massive profits generated by Minecraft still went straight into their pockets, even though Markus himself hadn’t done any actual work on Minecraft for over two years now. ... Many no longer regarded Markus, Carl, and Jakob as their equals, as part of the team, but simply as management. Mojang had long since ceased to be anything but a workplace." Sounds like if you were a working stiff at Mojang, your options were simply "find a new job" or "enjoy a $300,000 bonus after 6 months of continued employment". Compared to what had been happening, this sounds like an improvement. I can't blame Mojang's founders for selling the company; hell, I'd do the same when offered that much money. Markus (Notch) can spend the rest of his life quietly making games mostly to amuse himself. That sounds like a dream. But when I read something like this: "When Microsoft sent a delegation for its first official visit to Mojang in Stockholm, Markus wasn’t around. Few if any of his employees knew for sure, but it was rumored that he’d just returned from a few days in Vegas with Jakob. Either way, he was either too tired or too uninterested to show up in person. The task of representing Mojang to its new owners fell on Carl." and: "The day before, Markus had put in his last day at work. Several others were in the office as he stood up to leave. He hesitated, not sure how to say goodbye. So he decided not to." ...I can't help but think, "geez, what an ass." You've got your big payday, but you can't even be bothered to see the thing through or say goodbye to some of the people who helped make your big payday happen? This is only one side of the story, of course, and as rilita notes elsewhere in this thread this is largely a promotion for a book. After reading this and having watched Minecraft's lack of progress over the last year (compared to its previous 2), I think that perhaps the acquisition by Microsoft may be the best thing that happened to the game.

mpdehaan2 11y ago
There is this article about Notch sharing $3M with employees previously - can't imagine there being that many employees, and don't know how equal the sharing was. http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-03-02-notch-shares-USD3m-dividend-with-employees http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-03-02-notch-share... Which strikes me as pretty awesome, because with that much money you don't really know what to do with it -- except maybe outbid Beyonce for a very very expensive house (which strikes me as excessive and better used elsewhere).

sageabilly 11y ago

After reading this story I'm struck by a bit of a parallel between Notch and Tarn Adams, the guy who writes Dwarf Fotress. Both are to be extremely passionate about the simple but massively playable games that they make, but Dwarf Fortress has a niche following and Minecraft has EXPLODED in popularity. I can see Notch riding the leviathan for a while but at some point that's got to be extremely tiring and every day's growth would take him further and further from the "I just want to sit in the basement and make fun games" that got him in the industry in the first place. Regardless of intent, at some point if someone comes along and says "hey we'll give you $2B to walk away from this and go back to making fun games in the basement and never having to worry about money ever again" it will be a more attractive offer than trying to deal with the headache that comes with running a large company (which would be compounded by never desiring to have a large company in the first place).

baldfat 11y ago
> Both are to be extremely passionate about the simple but massively playable games. Have you ever even looked at Dwarf Fortress? It is the most complex non-trival game I have ever layed my eyes on. It takes over 100 hours just to understand the ascii art. Quoting: "Dwarf Fortress is one of the most complex computer games in the history of computer games. How complex? In the game's discussion forum, one player asserts that after 120 failed games, he can finally "get into the swing of things." [http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/02/dwarf-fortress-ten-hours-with-the-most-inscrutable-video-game-of-all-time/ http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/02/dwarf-fortress-ten-hou...]
- GuiA 11y ago
  That's a bit of a dramatic exaggeration for theatrical effect. The ASCII art definitely does not take 100 hours to understand. If you use a beginner's guide, you can get the basics in a couple hours - after that, you start having fun but of course it takes a very long time to learn and understand all of the subtleties of the game (but that's true of any good strategy game). O'reilly has published a book about the game, I highly recommend it. You can start really grokking the game within an afternoon.

phn 11y ago

The other side of the story is that notch contacted Microsoft about the sale in the first place, and he was pretty transparent about the reason why, after it was done: http://notch.net/2014/09/im-leaving-mojang/ http://notch.net/2014/09/im-leaving-mojang/

sageabilly 11y ago
Ah, I had forgotten about this posting when I posted my earlier comment. He says flat out that it's gotten too big for him to deal with and that it's not fun anymore. It's kinda the double edged sword of making something awesome- on the one hand, you've made something awesome. On the other hand, now you're in charge of your awesome thing that's way too big for one person to handle alone, so the bigger it gets the more people you have to bring in to run it, and the further and further away from being directly involved in the day to day. Unless you're Steve Jobs, but not everyone can be or wants to be that way.
adventured 11y ago
Notch didn't contact Microsoft, they contacted him. “Anyone want to buy my share of Mojang so I can move on with my life?” he asked. “Getting hate for trying to do the right thing is not my gig.” "Mojang CEO Carl Manneh was sitting at home with his family when he first saw the tweet. Within 30 seconds of his reading it, his phone rang. A Microsoft executive who coordinated with Mojang wanted to know if Persson was serious. “I’m not sure–let me talk to him,” said Manneh. "While Persson originally wrote the message as a half-joke, the realization that he could disassociate from Mojang took hold. The man who once publicly pledged that he would not sell out to evil corporations now had his head turned. "In the week that followed, Manneh’s phone rang constantly with interest from Microsoft, Electronic Arts, Activision Blizzard and others. Talks with Activision petered out. Persson, cryptically, won’t discuss what happened with EA but says that Mojang ruled out potential buyers “who did game play in a way we didn’t like.” Microsoft, however, apparently passed muster." http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2015/03/03/minecraft-markus-persson-life-after-microsoft-sale/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2015/03/03/minecraft-mar...
- phn 11y ago

boroboro 11y ago

It's always an opportunity to sell to someone how is desperate and has deep pockets, especially when you're currently looking for an exit. Minecraft, Wunderlist, ...

DrTung 11y ago

Always thought he'd opensource Minecraft and then sell it to Unicef (or Unesco) for 1 dollar. But alas it was not to be :-(

johnyzee 11y ago

It's interesting to me how entitled the employees come across as. Minecraft was making millions, but they were only getting a regular salary. (Aside from luxury trips to Monaco with their families, and an extremely laid back and pleasant work environment.) I remember that Notch was doing Minecraft development all alone for the longest time, even after it had become hugely popular, and users had been begging him to hire people to speed up development. So these employees join as regular employees, getting a regular salary, taking none of the risks of the founders, yet they are pissed off because they don't own shares of the company. I suspect this is very common in successful startups, and in a way I understand it: They see the founders, guys their age, rolling in the dough, on the back of their work. I've felt the same way as an employee, when stuff I come up with and implement ends up making the company a lot of money and the most I get, if I'm lucky, is a pat on the back. But, as a founder? Where the fuck do you get off expecting to take a piece of my company, that I have literally sacrificed blood, sweat and tears for, taken time away from my life and my family, risked huge amounts of money, relationships and years of my life, without any guarantee that I would ever succeed. And you take an interview, walk in the door from nine to five and do your job, which you get fairly compensated for, and would not be paid anymore for anywhere else, you can, and probably will, leave whenever you feel like it with no stress or loss. Yet because the company succeeds, somehow you are entitled to own parts of it for simply being there and doing your job?

aaron_m04 11y ago
In my experience, early employees at startups don't usually just work from nine to five. They usually _do_ make large time sacrifices. I would say that early employees generally _are_ entitled to a fraction of the profits.
- devbug 11y ago
  In Minecraft's unusual case, it was already seriously de-risked when the first few employees were hired. The additions however, did keep the momentum going, and deserve a cut for that. Jeb immediately comes to mind.
  - 11y ago

adventured 11y ago

"Everyone else had to do with a normal salary, plus whatever perks or bonuses Markus decided to throw their way when he felt generous." To say that Markus had been generous with employees, would be an understatement. https://twitter.com/notch/status/175174949277941760 https://twitter.com/notch/status/175174949277941760

paulornothing 11y ago
It certainly seems like for some reason (I assume the success of the game) that employees think they are entitled to more than a reasonable salary. I've worked plenty of jobs where I've received a decent salary and no perks. The one company I worked for was doing really well, I received a good salary and we received perks. No trips anywhere but catered lunches or desert bars or other things about every other month or so. Things like that show that you are appreciated, not sure where the entitlement comes from.
- adventured 11y ago
  It sounds like nothing more than run-of-the-mill envy and fear of change. Someone else is getting rich. I don't think people anywhere - Sweden or otherwise - are immune to it. I believe it's an extraordinarily common human attribute. I think the culture at Mojang amplified, perhaps even was responsible for, the sense the employees had that it was their baby. I inherited a business with a dozen employees when my parents died at a young age. The tenure of the employees was long, averaging ten or so years. The employees believed the business belonged to them (they had never been promised ownership, they didn't own it in any regard), that their jobs were perpetual, and that their roles were to never change. For the next year, they were fond of quoting that "well, I was told that my job was x y z by the previous owners." I've never met more entitled people in my life, and this was at a small business that didn't make tons of money. That extreme atmosphere of entitlement, in that case, came from how the former ownership had, basically, allowed the inmates to run the asylum and never have to deal with change. It became, as the years went by, an increasingly entrenched mindset that it was their business, and they were all very afraid of change at their ages (average age of 45).

frik 11y ago

Yesterday, LEGO launched Minecraft's competitor LEGO Worlds: http://videogames.lego.com/en-us/lego-worlds/about/screenshots http://videogames.lego.com/en-us/lego-worlds/about/screensho...

somedangedname 11y ago
What a terrible launch page. Video not front and centre, video trailer doesn't load and the 'more info' button displays copyright information. Because that's what grabs kid's attention these days - a wordy rights statement asserting WB's ownership of '...the Brick and the Knob configurations'.

pcunite 11y ago

Any story about Minecraft needs to mention Zachary Barth.

andyidsinga 11y ago

this really shocked me. He must have been filled with all sorts of mixed emotions to not even say goodbye to the team. (or he did, and for whatever reason that's not public ..). >> The day before, Markus had put in his last day at work. Several others were in the office as he stood up to leave. He hesitated, not sure how to say goodbye. So he decided not to. He made his way past the desks outside where his employees sat working, past the shelves stacked with awards and prizes. He took a left out the door, went down a small stairwell, and stepped out of the building.

z3t4 11y ago

I guess Notch wanted to try the rockstar life, something he couldn't do representing Mojang. I hope he gets tired of it and comes back to the gaming scene, or at least starts blogging again. He has a really great analytic mind when it comes to games. He actually quit his day job to start making games on how own. (He already made games for a living). And decided to make Minecraft because he knew it was easy money he could use to keep afloat. Jens already had his own successful game studio when joining Mojang. It was a pretty good hire ... I guess he's not that good at negotiating, considered he didn't get any ownership. But I guess he's happy enough to be the lead on the greatest games of all time, besides Tetris. :P

triplesec 11y ago

I wish it had put "book excerpt" in the HN header because I was looking for the rest of the article when I got to the bottom. Not satisfying.