Microsoft to acquire Minecraft creator Mojang

MANILA, Philippines – Microsoft announced Monday, September 15, a US$2.5 billion deal to acquire Stockholm-based Mojang, the creative force behind the development of Minecraft, one of the world’s most popular video games.

The Mojang team will join Microsoft Studios and Microsoft said the company’s “investments in cloud and mobile technologies will enable Minecraft players to benefit from richer and faster worlds, more powerful development tools, and more opportunities to connect across the Minecraft community.”

Microsoft said it will keep making Minecraft available across the PC, iOS, Android, Xbox, and PlayStation platforms.

According to a post on the Mojang development blog, the development, sales, and support of the various versions of Minecraft is expected to continue, though they cannot predict what Microsoft has in store for the company and the evolution of the Minecraft title.

As of now, however, there is no news on what will happen to strategy collectible card game Scrolls, another title Mojang is working on.

Notch leaving Mojang

Regarding the staff of Mojang, the company confirmed that three of Mojang’s founders, including Markus “Notch” Persson, will be leaving the company to focus on other projects, though they will likely not be Minecraft related.

In a letter on his blog, Persson noted that once the Mojang deal is concluded, he would leave the company and focus on small-scale experiments instead, citing that he doesn’t want to become “a symbol, responsible for something huge that I don’t understand, that I don’t want to work on, that keeps coming back to me.”

“I’m not an entrepreneur. I’m not a CEO. I’m a nerdy computer programmer who likes to have opinions on Twitter,” Persson adds, noting that his reason for leaving Mojang is not to cash out.

“It’s not about the money. It’s about my sanity,” he wrote. – Rappler.com