Markus 'Notch' Persson Interview: 'Minecraft' Creator Opens Up About The 'Minecraft' Deal And His Life After That; 'Notch' Claims EA And Activision Too Expressed Interest In Buying Mojang!
Markus "Notch" Persson recently opened up about why he eventually sold Mojang to Microsoft, in an interview with Forbes.
With an unbelievable 100 million downloads and counting, "Minecraft" became a canvas for human expression. Crossing $60 million "Minecraft" sales, the sandbox independent video game became the best-selling PC game in history.
Citing it's incredible popularity, tech giant Microsoft purchased Minecraft developer Mojang for a whopping $2.5 billion dollars in cash. CinemaBlend noted that Swedish programmer, Markus "Notch" Persson, who originally created "Minecraft," claimed Microsoft was not the only well-to-do company that waved stacks of money in his face.
Besides Microsoft, Activision and Electronic Arts expressed interest in buying his company; however, negotiations didn't work out, Persson revealed in a recent interview with Forbes.
Although he didn't really discussed what caused the deals' disintegration, but he did say that Mojang's founders did not want to hand the reigns over to a publisher who, according to them, did game play in a way they didn't like. Following Microsoft's promise to retain all of Mojang's 47 employees, Notch along with the other two founders sealed the deal.
According to CinemaBlend, Notch's Twitter feed was opinionated and critical of the industry and he had become something of a spokesman for the ordinary gamer. Notch even canceled a virtual reality port of "Minecraft" when the social networking giant Facebook acquired Oculus VR.
Contrary to what many gamers assume, Notch did not sell Mojang because the money was too good to pass up. According to CinemaBlend, he already had one foot out of the door by the time Microsoft offered to buy the company. Apparently, the daily deluge of vitriol over the EULA had taken its toll.
Persson recalls how he struggled with people being so mean online. He said, the mean comments seem like they are written in a bigger font size.
In fact, the sale probably would have never happened without this tweet.
Anyone want to buy my share of Mojang so I can move on with my life? Getting hate for trying to do the right thing is not my gig.
— Markus Persson (@notch) June 17, 2014
Soon after his tweet hit the net, offers started rolling in. Acitivision and EA were not the only companies interested as several venture capital firms too put their proposals on the table. Notch and the two other Mojang founders finally signed the company over to Microsoft.
