The deal has been rumoured for a while and now it has become a reality. Microsoft have bought Minecraft maker Mojang along with all of their intellectual properties, in what can only be described as a mega deal. The deal has been finalised and Microsoft ended up paying $2.5 billion.
Microsoft doesn’t plan to make big changes to the game or limit the platform availability, so there shouldn’t be any future problems in that area, something many users had been worried about. Notch made the decision to sell because the company had grown to big and so had the following responsibility for him. Markus ‘Notch’ Persson along with the Mojang co-founders Carl Manneh and Jakob Porsér will be leaving the company with no indication on what any of them will be doing next. Beyond that, the “vast majority” of Mojang employees are expected to remain with the company.
“He’s decided that he doesn’t want the responsibility of owning a company of such global significance,” Owen Hill said in a blog post on their site. “Over the past few years he’s made attempts to work on smaller projects, but the pressure of owning Minecraft became too much for him to handle. The only option was to sell Mojang.”
Minecraft adds diversity to Microsoft’s game portfolio and helps them reach more gamers across multiple platforms, said Phil Spencer, head of Xbox. Gaming is the top activity across devices and they see great potential to continue to grow the Minecraft community and generally nurture the franchise. That is why Microsoft plans to continue to make Minecraft available across all platforms. Further, Microsoft intends to bring back the Minecon convention next year; something that should make the fans happy.
[youtube width=”700″ height=”500″]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXNWchwDiG8[/youtube]“We’re excited to welcome Mojang to the Microsoft family and we are thrilled to support the success and longevity of Minecraft for years to come,” said Xbox head Phil Spencer.
Thank you Microsoft and Mojang for providing us with this information
This makes me absolutely sick! What about the 18000 people M$ recently laid off that relied on their paycheck? They were complaining they were costing the company too much money and they needed to streamline and restructure then not 5 minutes later they’re throwing $2.5 bill on the table for what? What a bunch of hypocrites.
I call that MEGA-sad as crap. R.I.P Minecraft, thank you for all these years! <3<3 :'(