Microsoft has bought Mojang, the maker of popular world creation game Minecraft, with the game’s creator leaving the company because he is a “nerd”, not a CEO.
The deal will see Microsoft pay £2.5bn (£1.5bn) for the Swedish firm, and said its cloud and mobile technologies would bring “richer and faster worlds, more powerful development tools, and more opportunities to connect across the Minecraft community”.
Minecraft lets users build and explore a virtual Lego-like world and has been downloaded 100 million times on PCs alone since it launched in 2009.
It is also the most popular online Xbox game and is the top paid-for Apple and Android app in the US.
Despite now being a Microsoft title, the game will continue to be available on all its current platforms, including rival Apple, Android and Sony Playstation platforms.
The deal will see all three of Mojang’s founders are to leave the company.
Writing on his blog, game creator Markus ‘Notch’ Persson, said he never made the game to have a huge hit and expressed frustration at having become a “symbol”.
“I’m not an entrepreneur. I’m not a CEO. I’m a nerdy computer programmer who likes to have opinions on Twitter,” he said.
Notch said he intends to go back to “small web experiments”.
Addressing criticisms from some fans that he is “selling out”, Notch signs off: “It’s not about the money. It’s about my sanity.”
Microsoft Mojang CEO Carl Manneh: “As the founders move on to start new projects, we believe the high level of creativity from the community will continue the game’s success far into the future.”
Mojang, which also makes the games Scrolls and Cobalt, was vague about other potential personnel shifts: “Though it’s too early to confirm which of us will continue working on Minecraft or other projects, we predict that the vast majority (if not all) Mojangstas will continue to work at Mojang for the time being.”
Microsoft expects the deal to close in late 2014, and is expected to be break-even by fiscal 2015.
Watch this video from Bloomberg analysing the deal here:
Read Persson’s blog post here