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Minecraft: Markus "Notch" Persson Bids Mojang Adieu
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
A day after the announcement of Microsoft's buyout of Minecraft's development studio, Mojang, the studio's founder Markus "Notch" Persson has posted a farewell letter to fans of the wildly popular title.
I'm leaving Mojang
September 15th, 2014
I don't see myself as a real game developer. I make games because it's fun, and because I love games and I love to program, but I don't make games with the intention of them becoming huge hits, and I don't try to change the world. Minecraft certainly became a huge hit, and people are telling me it's changed games. I never meant for it to do either. It's certainly flattering, and to gradually get thrust into some kind of public spotlight is interesting.A relatively long time ago, I decided to step down from Minecraft development. Jens was the perfect person to take over leading it, and I wanted to try to do new things. At first, I failed by trying to make something big again, but since I decided to just stick to small prototypes and interesting challenges, I've had so much fun with work. I wasn't exactly sure how I fit into Mojang where people did actual work, but since people said I was important for the culture, I stayed.
I was at home with a bad cold a couple of weeks ago when the internet exploded with hate against me over some kind of EULA situation that I had nothing to do with. I was confused. I didn't understand. I tweeted this in frustration. Later on, I watched the This is Phil Fish video on YouTube and started to realize I didn't have the connection to my fans I thought I had. I've become a symbol. I don't want to be 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.
As soon as this deal is finalized, I will leave Mojang and go back to doing Ludum Dares and small web experiments. If I ever accidentally make something that seems to gain traction, I'll probably abandon it immediately.
Considering the public image of me already is a bit skewed, I don't expect to get away from negative comments by doing this, but at least now I won't feel a responsibility to read them.
I'm aware this goes against a lot of what I've said in public. I have no good response to that. I'm also aware a lot of you were using me as a symbol of some perceived struggle. I'm not. I'm a person, and I'm right there struggling with you.
I love you. All of you. Thank you for turning Minecraft into what it has become, but there are too many of you, and I can't be responsible for something this big. In one sense, it belongs to Microsoft now. In a much bigger sense, it's belonged to all of you for a long time, and that will never change.
It's not about the money. It's about my sanity.
Leave us your thoughts in the comments.
Comments
They don't bother to fact check at all here prior to posting articles, they just post them and then correct mistakes after the fact.
Very unprofessional and sloppy.
Is a man not entitled to the herp of his derp?
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i'd love to see him spin up another company and make a new sandbox game, this time with better graphics XD
in all seriousness though, if i got handed that much money i'd probably never play another video game in my life. IRL is probably a lot more fun when you can buy yourself a yacht full of victorias secret models and sail around the world doing whatever you please
"It's not about the money. It's about my sanity."
Because you'd be insane not to retire off a copy-cat game that hit it big. I would of done the same thing. Screw the fans. I now know what EA execs feel like.
what i dont understand is why people even play this crap game... if it was a 10 year old kid sure i understand, but even grown ups...
If any of you actually had followed him and his "career" you would know that indeed Notch is a peculiar person, one who cares deeply about making games - but has his issues with the world and people, especially foreign people/strangers and their actions. I'd call him Asperger or such, socially inept or whatever, but a statement of "this is not about the money" I believe immediately in his case.
When I read about the rumors that MS would buy Minecraft I immediately thought "Whoa, something must have happened, he'd never consider that, something must have absolutely hurt him/alienated him - he is leaving Minecraft for sure now.". Reading now about he EULA thing and how much it must have alienated/hurt/confused him ... Notch lives in a small, very peculiar circle/world where he does the best he can to cope with what life demands in an emotional and social way from what I gathered over the years, more than a decade even. And opening one self up to the internet and its uncaring, aggressive mob of anonymity and demand and all is something extremely disturbing and indeed unhealthy to someone of Notch's personality.
So I deeply hope that whatever happened does not chase him away indeed or for good for "anything that becomes bigger", because the very peculiarity of his person is what had him break down game boundaries and renew the scene of indie games in a large scale as well. It would be a sacrifice and tremendous loss to all of us if these traits were no longer coupled with curious and adventurous ones and coming with trust and peace but instead shying away from the people who play.
Played: Pretty much any fantasy MMO, some did not even make it to release ...
Favorites: UO, EQ2, Vanguard, Wurm Online, Salem, ESO, Creativerse
Playing: ESO, Creativerse, Guild Wars 2
Anticipating: (sigh) ... maybe Ashes of Creation
maybe for you is crap game but for + 25mil ppls is great game looks like you care only for graphic
alot of great YOUTUBERS + 20 years old playing Minecraft
and no next generation games will not kill MINECRAFT
imagine if you had made 200+ million would you still be a game developer or gone to do other things which are more important . I'm impressed that he has hung around for this long.
"Microsoft sucks! Windows 8 sucks! Minecraft will never be Windows 8 certified, I'd rather have it not work on Windows 8 at all! Take your stupid closed environment operating system and... wait, you'll give me how much for Minecraft?"
"I LOVE YOU MICROSOFT!! YOU'RE THE BEST, WOOOOO!"
Pretty much sums up my view of the situation. While it may not be entirely about the money, the money played a huge part I'm sure.
AN' DERE AIN'T NO SUCH FING AS ENUFF DAKKA, YA GROT! Enuff'z more than ya got an' less than too much an' there ain't no such fing as too much dakka. Say dere is, and me Squiggoff'z eatin' tonight!
We are born of the blood. Made men by the blood. Undone by the blood. Our eyes are yet to open. FEAR THE OLD BLOOD.
#IStandWithVic
The only thing I care about is how this will affect Minecraft modding on the PC.
I don't care about the vanilla minecraft experience. Vanilla pales next to forge mods for minecraft on the PC. So I really hope that Microsoft won't lock down modding for minecraft just to start pumping out lame dlc.
As for Notch. this letter is about him leaving Mojang, not about selling his major interest in the company. So in that light , the last sentence makes perfectly sense. He didn't have to leave Mojang to make the deal with Microsoft happen.
Minecraft (when considering the mods you can get for it) offers more then any other game currently on the market. And this has nothing to do with grapics.
Depending on the mods you get, it can be a RTS, RPG, lego whatever you can think off, all in a sandbox environment. A server can create any rule you can think of for their players, so it is very good in creating pvp activities too. And I am not talking about crappy vanilla anarchy servers.
Ok... Show me one post h ehas made that states that he Notch, loves Microsoft... I dare you... I double dare you. Selling your share in a company and the company in turn being sold has very little to do with love. It is about securing the jobs of the people you have employed. We do not know how much of the money that Mojang was sold for he actually get... Now i am sure that it is not chump change in any way but i am sure there are others who greatly benefit from this too.
Ofcourse money had a part in it. It always does but as others noted if you have followed him over the years you would know that the money was never the important thing to begin with. But he knew that if he left Mojang he would have to make sure it was taken care of because once he left a fair bit of the "glory" would be gone in the eyes of the internet. So he in essence had four choices Microsoft, Activision, Sony and EA. Microsoft i guess was fastest and/or offered the best terms.
He don´t need to love them... They just had to give him and Mojang what they wanted. Simple biz 101.
This have been a good conversation
Good on Notch. I can't see where any of what he said would bother me but I can see that he knows himself. I hope he finds what makes him happy.
I hate that this sold out to Microsoft and will probably no longer support Minecraft in any way now tho. I just can't see this being good for the game and I think Microsoft is clueless about what makes this game so popular. Let's see if they prove me wrong.