The Swedish developer has confirmed the deal and explained what it will mean for the company’s multimillion-selling building sim. Founder Markus Persson is set to leave.
Minecraft – Mojang’s multimillion-selling hit is heading into a new and unclear future with Microsoft Photograph: Mojang
Keith Stuart and Alex Hern
Monday 15 September 2014 14.41 BST
Minecraft creator Mojang is being sold to Microsoft, the studio has confirmed. According to a statement released by the Swedish developer on Monday afternoon, the purchase price is $2.5bn.
Mojang spokesman Owen Hill and Microsoft have separately sought to reassure fans of the multimillion selling building sim that work on the game will continue unaffected.
In the statement, Hill suggested that the pressure of running the company, which generated $326m in revenue last year, became too much for the founders, Markus Persson (known by his username, Notch), Carl Manneh and Jakob Porser. All are leaving the company.
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Minecraft has become a global phenomenon since its launch in 2009 as an incomplete “alpha” project. Since then, the game, which provides users with randomly generated environments in which to craft all manner of buildings, has sold over 50m copies on PC, smartphone and consoles.
In its announcement of the deal, Microsoft claimed that Minecraft had been downloaded more than 100m times on PC alone since 2009 – a figure that includes free downloads – while pointing out that Xbox 360 owners have played the game for more than 2bn hours in the last two years.
According to Mojang’s statement, the focus of the company will now be on supporting Minecraft with new content and features:
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“Minecraft will continue to evolve, just like it has since the start of development. We don’t know specific plans for Minecraft’s future yet, but we do know that everyone involved wants the community to grow and become even more amazing than it’s ever been. Stopping players making cool stuff is not in anyone’s interests.”
Mojang has assured fans that the purchase won’t necessarily mean that versions of the game running on non-Microsoft platforms will be scrapped.
“There’s no reason for the development, sales, and support of the PC/Mac, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, Vita, iOS, and Android versions of Minecraft to stop. Of course, Microsoft can’t make decisions for other companies or predict the choices that they might make in the future.”
Microsoft has confirmed this, saying that the company “plans to continue to make Minecraft available across all the platforms on which it is available today: PC, iOS, Android, Xbox and PlayStation.”
“We are going to maintain ‘Minecraft’ and its community in all the ways people love today, with a commitment to nurture and grow it long into the future,” added Phil Spencer, head of Xbox at Microsoft.
When the deal closes, Mojang will sit within Microsoft Studios, alongside the developers of Halo, Forza, Fable and other franchises.
It’s likely however, that Microsoft will seek to leverage Minecraft in both the console market, where its Xbox One machine is lagging behind rival PlayStation 4, and in the smartphone sector, where its Windows Phone falls a distant third behind iOS and Android.
“Gaming is a top activity spanning devices, from PCs and consoles to tablets and mobile, with billions of hours spent each year,” said Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella in a statement.
“Minecraft is more than a great game franchise – it is an open world platform, driven by a vibrant community we care deeply about, and rich with new opportunities for that community and for Microsoft.”
While ceasing Minecraft development on other platforms would give Microsoft exclusive control over one of the world’s biggest game brands, such a a tactic would have huge repercussions amid the game’s highly vocal community.
“Microsoft’s challenge will be to maintain the spirit of Minecraft while developing the franchise in a commercially meaningful way,” wrote games industry analyst Piers Harding-Rolls recently. “With around 40 employees at Mojang, this is the sort of acquisition which can easily get lost in a huge organisation like Microsoft, and this factor is probably the main threat to longer term success.”
The sale also marks a shift in perceptions of some of the biggest Silicon Valley firms. When VR firm Oculus sold to Facebook, Persson was outspoken in opposition to the deal, going so far as to cancel a planned Oculus version of Minecraft because “Facebook creeps me out”. Six months on, and the sale to Microsoft, formerly a synecdoche for ‘hated tech firm’, has gone through with his apparent blessing.
Writing on his blog, Perrson stated
The changed attitude underscores Microsoft’s reinvention as a largely enterprise-focused firm with one major successful consumer-facing division: Xbox. The company will be hoping that the success to date of Minecraft is only the beginning for a firm which could end up being “the 21st century version of Lego”. If it does reach that scale, then $2.5bn would be a steal.
We have approached both Mojang and Microsoft for comment.
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