With rumors of a purchase between the two companies floating around last week, today the announcement has been made official that Microsoft will be purchasing Mojang for a mere $2.5 Billion. There are a few reasons for the sale but one of the main ones if that Notch has wanted to work on smaller projects and running a company this size, which he never though he would be doing, isn’t allowing him to work on these smaller projects.
Minecraft has seen ridiculous growth since its release, spreading to just about every platform there is including Android and iOS. With this sale, Notch will be leaving the company along with two other founders, Carl Manneh and Jakob Porser.
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. – Notch
The sale of Mojang to Microsoft might worry a few people regarding the future of Minecraft but aside from a few founders leaving the company, almost all the staff working on the game will be remaining. That means we shouldn’t see too much of a change when it comes to updates for the game, future content and development or anything else. In fact we might see an increase in this activity. Notch, of course, admits that there is no guarantee with any of this since Microsoft will own the company and could suddenly make it a Microsoft only product, with future content only being available on their platforms or at least coming out on them first.
You can check out additional information about the purchase over on the Mojang blog and Notch’s blog.
Website Referenced: Android Police
