By negotiating to sell his gaming start-up to Microsoft, the Minecraft creator Markus Persson is growing closer to a company that he once lambasted – and that could make him a billionaire at age 35.
The Swede, who has gained 1.8 million Twitter followers and the admiration of gamers worldwide since creating Minecraft in 2009, has used his fame to pour scorn on companies from Facebook to Electronic Arts while touting the values of being “indie”. Microsoft, a US$386 billion giant dominating the global software industry, has received its fair share of Mr Persson’s appraisal of large corporations.
“Got an email from microsoft, wanting to help ‘certify’ minecraft for win 8,” Mr Persson wrote on Twitter in September 2012, referring to Microsoft’s Windows 8 software. “I told them to stop trying to ruin the pc as an open platform.”
“I’d rather have minecraft not run on win 8 at all than to play along,” Mr Persson, known for his black hat and dubbed “Notch” by the Minecraft community, posted that same day.
Mr Persson’s comments about Microsoft have become less harsh since, and a sale to the Washington state-based company would cement a relationship that has been strengthening recently. Microsoft, the maker of the Xbox, is in talks to buy Mr Persson’s company, Mojang, for more than $2bn, people with knowledge of the talks said.
Mr Persson controls about 71 per cent of Mojang, according to the annual reports of the Stockholm-based game maker and Mr Persson’s holding company, Notch Enterprises. That suggests his share of proceeds of $2bn would be about $1.4bn. He has also collected more than $100 million in dividends since 2011, which would give him a total net worth of $1.5bn.
Minecraft, which is a bit like playing Lego in a vast, virtual landscape, got its start as a project Mr Persson worked on in the evenings when he came home from his day job at Midasplayer making games for King.com. Downloads began soaring soon after release, and the title won recognition including the grand prize from the Independent Games Festival in 2011.
Although Minecraft was initially sold only through Mr Persson’s website, he later made it available at web-app stores and for consoles such as PlayStation 3, for which it was the No 2 best-selling game by physical retail copies sold in July. Minecraft was made available for the newest Xbox generation, Xbox One, this month.
The game is a pixelated online world where users build structures, including replicas of actual cities and buildings, and face few rules or restrictions. One aim is to avoid being eaten by monsters that come out after dark. Enthusiasts host conventions and contests to reward the most spectacular constructions.
“Minecraft is an alien in the videogame landscape,” said Laurent Michaud, an analyst for consumer electronics and digital entertainment at researcher Digiworld Idate. “The game boasts pixel graphics and basic development, while everyone else is talking ultra-high-definition and spending tens of millions to develop. It struck a chord where no one expected.”
The game’s popularity – it had sold more than 54 million copies as of June – has challenged Mojang’s status as a small, independent game studio. Sales jumped 38 per cent to 2.07bn kronor (Dh1.06bn) last year and profit rose to 896 million kronor. Mojang pays Mr Persson’s holding company licence fees to use the Minecraft brand. Mojang had 35 employees last year, documents showed.
Mr Persson started programming as a child, according to the 2013 book Minecraft: the Unlikely Tale of Markus “Notch” Persson and the Game That Changed Everything by Linus Larsson. In high school, according to the book, Mr Persson signed up for a programming course. During the first lesson, he ignored the teacher’s instructions and instead created his own version of the game Pong. After realising how skilled Mr Persson was, the teacher suggested he skip the rest of the classes and just take the final exam. Mr Persson got an A, says the book.
As Mojang grew, Mr Persson continued to promote indie game-maker values, including open-source standards and criticising companies having too much access to users. On Twitter, he accused California-based Electronic Arts, the maker of the Fifa football and Titanfall video games, of not supporting smaller publishers.
Two years ago, when answering questions on Reddit, Mr Persson said Mojang’s long-term goal was to “stay indie, make fun games that we like playing”.
This year he slammed Facebook, tweeting that the “things they can do to your phone is creepy, so I’m switching to web”. In March, he said he cancelled a deal to bring Minecraft to the Oculus Rift virtual-reality headset after Facebook agreed to buy its manufacturer, because Facebook “creeps me out”. Last month he said he was “officially over being upset about Facebook buying Oculus”.
E-mails to Mr Persson and Mojang were not returned. The company’s vice president, Jonas Maartensson, declined to comment at Mojang’s headquarters, in a yellow stone building on a quiet street in the Soedermalm district in southern Stockholm. The sound of billiards being played could be heard as developers worked behind rows of computers.
Mr Persson has developed a relationship with the Microsoft Xbox team through work on the Xbox version of Minecraft and has had dinners with the Xbox chief, Phil Spencer, whom he challenged last month in the ice-bucket challenge to raise awareness for ALS. In 2012, Mr Persson tweeted: “Hey, Microsoft. You might be a big and scary American company that likes secrets and meetings and such, but I love working with you. Turning Point”.
A deal with Microsoft began to take shape after Mr Persson reached out to the software maker a few months ago, based on a positive working relationship on Minecraft for Xbox, said a person familiar with the matter.
The two companies quickly agreed on a framework and approximate price and have been working out the details since, the person said. Mr Persson will help out with the transition, although he is unlikely to remain beyond that, according to the person. Mr Persson handed over the main Minecraft developer duties to his colleague, Jens Bergensten, in 2012 to focus on other projects.
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