> Microsoft acquired Mojang for a smooth 2.5 BILLION dollars.
Impressive.
I hope that Microsoft won't disrupt Minecraft's development (e.g. like they did with Skype, making Linux a third-rate platform - which should not happen since Minecraft's coded in Java).
Many lines would need nothing.
Overarching structure, idiomatic usage, and lack of benefits from being able to use language constructs of efficiency in C# would yield sub-optimal results.
Manual conversion to idiomatic C# would be a better route and add the benefits of deeper familiarity with the application. It's one thing to wrestle with a new codebase. It's another thing to try to make sense of something transcoded by a tool. Was the original coder insane or is it just an edge case in your translation tool?
On a language level, not that hard (though the result wouldn't be idiomatic in a lot of places). But on a library and API level ... Either you move everything that uses the stdlib to your own standard library excerpt that you maintain for both languages to be identical. Or you find compatible implementations in the other language (or translate Apache Harmony to C# as well). Or you'll deal with all the things that your program could call and emit code that does the same thing in the target language, with more code where standard library functionality differs slightly.
And then there is the problem of external libraries and their APIs. Either translate them as well, or find API-compatible replacements, or find replacements and handle the API differences yourself.
Actually, it comes down to the same thing either way, when considering the standard library just as a library, among the others.
You might be interested to know about ngit. It's a c# git library under the mono project: https://github.com/mono/ngit . The thing is they created a tool called sharpen so they could convert most of the jgit code over to c# :)
That would mean 2 things:
1 - They stop supporting everything except Windows and XBox
2 - They need to buy Xamarin too in order to keep supporting all platforms.
One would hope that their recent "open" nature to things like the .NET compiler and parts of the .NET source will rub off on the arm that will control Minecraft/Mojang. I find it hard to believe that they'd fail to recognize the impact of being on multiple platforms. But, Skype is a recent example of failing to realize the importance of platform agnostic software.
Not at all. They did get all of Skype's assets, but they modified the technology significantly to comply with NSA spying desires, as well as port the back-end from PostgreSQL to SQL Server. It was not a quick surgery, and now Skype is a regular old crappy MS product.
I'm curious: on the Mac, Skype went through a major regression in terms of usability from 3? to 4? (I forget exactly which major version change it was; I do know that 6.xx is not significantly different from the version everyone I know avoided upgrading to until they were forced) -- did this not also happen on Windows?
> He’s decided that he doesn’t want the responsibility of owning a company of such global significance
> The founders: Notch, Carl, and Jakob are leaving
Yeah, that's exactly what I suspected when the rumors started. Markus doesn't really want to run a company, so he's cashing out and doing his own thing. Good on him.
What I wonder is what Carl and Jeb are going to do though. Do those three have another collective project? Or is it all sunny beaches and martinis? Or a Carl/Jeb project while Notch tinkers away?
Holy crap, 2.5 BILLION? And on top of that Notch and Jakob (and Carl) are leaving? I understand Notch's decision (as he has been doing his own thing), but I did not imagine Jakob or Carl leaving.
>What about the other editions of Minecraft? Will they stop being developed?
>There’s no reason for the development, sales, and support of the PC/Mac, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, Vita, iOS, and Android versions of Minecraft to stop.
So what is happening to the Linux edition that has been fully supported since day 1?
In my experience, there are frequent linux-specific bugs. If linux support isn't something that is valued by the developers, then it may linger for a while but it will eventually rot away.
The whole answer is non-comital. "There's no reason" ... "Of course, Microsoft can’t make decisions for other companies or predict the choices that they might make in the future." And to me that signals "We don't know and frankly don't care".
There goes all hope of Minecraft being released as open source.
There was a blog post from several years ago from Notch saying that after he made enough money with the game, he would "probably clean it up and release it as open source". Oh well.
Instead now we have the DMCA-infighting and an atrocious modding community that hosts their binaries on shady file upload sites, their "project page" in a forum thread, make their measly money from adfly-like sites and have never heard of Github.
So much wasted potential. Anyhow, congratulations Microsoft.
This is the first time i've seen the word infiniminer in 2 years, not sure i'll see it again. I think it already got the publicity it would out of minecraft, the game is already well enough known without MS.
To be honest, despite what Notch said several years ago I don't think it was ever well on its way to being open-sourced. Any hope that he would "clean it up" vanished when he lost interest in taking active part in development and passed it on. Not to mention that they've been working on a public modding API for years that never took off.
> Instead now we have the DMCA-infighting and an atrocious modding community that hosts their source code on shady file upload sites, make their measly money from adfly-like sites and have never heard of Github.
Couldn't agree more, but it's more of a consequence of most modders being new and inexperienced developers and kids. Some of the bigger and more professional modding projects like Bukkit are already hosted on GitHub [0], so I wouldn't blame it on just being closed source. It's not guaranteed that it would be that much better, though it might be because that way a lot more existing developers might feel like contributing.
Bukkit is possibly the only shred of sanity in the Minecraft world. I know its original developer (Nathan Adams) and he is absolutely top-notch (no pun intended) and deserves every bit of success he had with Bukkit and later with Mojang - he now works there.
So no, bukkit isn't the problem. The problem is all the bukkit mods, and the situation between bukkit and mojang. Urgh.
Bukkit is a licensing disaster zone though - the developers decided to license it under the GPL without exceptions even though it had to be tightly integrated with proprietary Minecraft server code to actually be useful. Now that CraftBukkit - the glue code to do that - has been DMCAed and everyone knows it's not legal to distribute, Bukkit is useless.
The only fork of it that's still standing is Spigot, who are releasing their updates as binary patches against the last pre-DMCA-notice release to avoid redistributing the stuff which was the subject of the DMCA, and aren't making any source-level patches available. (Which in turn is almost certainly a violation of the GPL/LGPL license that CraftBukkit was under.)
> Instead now we have the DMCA-infighting and an atrocious modding community that hosts their source code on shady file upload sites, make their measly money from adfly-like sites and have never heard of Github.
I'm not sure what you said is (solely) the result of Mincraft being closed source. As far as I know, Android is released as open source, but most of what you said also applies to that modding community.
It doesn't need to be open source. Minetest (an Irrlicht C++ clone) is open-source, as is Infiniminer. Also, Voxel.js. All the relevent code is available for future learning...
I bought Minecraft quite early, back when it wasn't such a big hit. Normally I do not buy games. But I'm all for free & open source games, and back then what the site said read or at least felt like a personal promise to eventually release the code. That is why I bought Minecraft. The game looked interesting, and I wanted to contribute to (eventual) open source gaming. I wouldn't have paid for it otherwise... and no, I don't actually play Minecraft.
Seems like you bought it for a very silly reason! I bought it because it was a game I wanted to play. I think I spent $14 on the pre-alpha? The first 20 minutes of playing that game (which turned into probably 15 hours over that weekend) alone were worth $14.
>Am I also silly for having donated money to some open source projects?
No. Because they are open source. Minecraft was not. Vague platitudes about someday being open source are worthless. Notch is notoriously dishonest and would say or do anything to push minecraft early on. Look how quickly he jumped from 4chan being his only customers to "4chan is the worst thing ever right reddit!?".
I'm sorry, but I share the idea that it's a silly reason. Paying for closed source software to contribute to open source gaming? I don't understand that. It's different than say, downloading Ubuntu and donating $20. With one you're saying "I enjoy this free product, take $20 to help continue development." With the other, you're telling them it's ok to not provide it for free, and you'll gladly pay for it.
I bought Minecraft for what it was, and still is, a sandbox game that I've had hundreds of hours of fun in. I've bought it for several friends of mine for the same reason. But I won't buy something because of the chance it might become something I want, when it currently isn't. (I learned that lesson when pre-purchasing Spore).
Actually the intended message was that I'll gladly pay for it since you promised to make it free. But I guess the message gets lost and this is another reason why voting with one's wallet doesn't work.
We're still looking for a way to fund free games. And I don't think donations work too well. More importantly, the people who actually make games don't seem to find it working too well, because they are not making free donation-supported games. On the other hand, many game authors already see the value in eventually freeing their work. So if they promise to do that, it is a reasonably effective way of getting a free game by first helping them do what it takes to make it profitable enough to actually build and finish the game and eat something too. Is it not?
There goes all hope of Minecraft being released as open source.
Microsoft has been releasing more and more of their software platform as open source. It's not outside the realm of possibility that some bits of Minecraft would be open sourced.
Yeah it's kind of sad. I really felt that when it went open source we would have seen a huge new explosion in creativity with the game that would have given it legs for years to come.
I really don't mind that Notch sold out. I do mind that he says that this wasn't about money. It sounds more like he is trying to convince himself of that more than anyone else.
If it really wasn't about money why not just open source it and walk away? Or just give it to the employees of Mojang? He already has over 100+ million, so he's certainly not worried about food.
More power to him for making an insane amount of money, because he certainly deserves it, but don't bullshit me about your motivations.
I'd package it for free on Microsoft platforms - the solitaire of the twenty-first century - and keep selling it on other platforms at the current rate.
Worse kept secret ever.Good for Notch and everyone else though, a well-deserved cash out and completely understandable. Notch never striked me as a guy who wanted to run a big company like Mojang in the first place.
That's 2.5 Instagrams, or 0.33 Nokias. What do you feel, realistic, too much, too little?
Personally I feel this makes (much) more sense than instagram, these guys have a very loyal following, a tremendously strong product and actually make money.
Congratulations to everybody on the selling side in this deal, too bad it had to be Microsoft but with amounts like that there are not too many companies on the acquiring side.
Does anyone know if this was stock / cash / a mix?
edit: this Microsoft - Mojang deal will do more to get people into (games) programming than a million $ adspend by codecademy would
edit2: right now (16:43 my time) microjang.com is still free
Wonder how long it will take before that is a registered domain.
edit: microjang.com is now no longer free.
Registrant:
Microjang Development (DR is US)
PO Box 100439
NY, NY 10163-4668
US (UNITED STATES)
A large majority of this very loyal following are still < 16 years old. If MS play things right and can retain this following in about 5 years time it will be a very loyal following with a huge reserve of disposable cash then this could become a very profitable move indeed.
Noticing this aggressive downvoting trend quite alot on HN lately. Perfectly valid inoffensive arguments are downvoted just because the downvoter disagrees with them.
Unless you've got something newer to suggest otherwise, that's how HN operates. "Downvotes aren't for disagreeing" is an absurd redditism (everyone knows that they are, since upvotes are for agreeing).
It's a little different on HN due to how the comments are hidden quite quickly when downvoted. I frequently upvote people who reply to me but I disagree with, simply because it would ruin the comment chain and hey, they might just be right anyway ;)
I reserve downvotes for rudeness and demonstrably wrong/misleading comments.
I can understand a downvote with a solid reply, but downvote just for disagreeing doesn't add to the discussion, its more of a censorship which should only be used for offensive/misleading comments IMHO.
Personally, I use upvotes to reward new knowledge or an interesting argument in a comment, I don't upvote every comment I agree with, and downvote only if the comment is offensive.
So then the end result is that opinions/comments that a lot of people disagree with will get punished? Seems counter-intuitive if you're trying to have a reasonable argument/discussion/debate about something. It's one thing to express disagreement, but it's completely different to silence + punish someone because you disagree with them.
I think it's funny how HN likes to think of themselves as free-minded, creative individuals and yet there's a persistent cult of personality around here.
With all due respect, I don't find it particularly relevant what one guy said 6 years ago. I don't care whether he created HN or not. He's no longer an active participant.
I think people get way too bothered about downvotes (myself included). They affect nothing other than color. If someone disagrees with you, good. It means you've taken a stand on something.
Most of my kids' friends see Minecraft as a game for kids. Except for a few minecraft loyalists, they're moving on to "grown up" games like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto.
It's a small sample size, but I think Minecraft is destined to be a kids' game with a minority of adult enthusiasts. (That's not necessarily bad--Lego and Pokemon fit that description, too.)
With an even smaller sample size of my 14 year old from time to time he grows up to more grown up games, but he keeps coming back to Minecraft. He loves the hackability aspect (setting up servers, installing plugins etc..) to it that you don't get from these other games. Now that he is starting to learn to code I am hoping he will start developing plugins as well.
If MS can nurture the hackers and enable them to create and maybe even monetize their hacks, then it should be possible to keep a core set of fans well into adulthood.
Has your son discovered KSP[1] yet? It's got a great modding community, and would, IMHO, suit a keen 14yo perfectly. It suits a keen 37yo perfectly as well :-)
"A large majority of this very loyal following are still < 16 years old."
I believe this to be a mythology that "everyone knows is true" although it isn't.
For similar examples, MMORPG players are all 13 year old boys, FPS players in general are all 13 year old boys, there is a perfect 1:1 mapping between WWII FPS and gaming in general...
I'll admit in public to relax I'll log in with my son and we'll work on the big base and rail system. Better than watching TV together. I find rail work to be relaxing exactly like working on a model railroad (obviously you need railcraft mod for this). I like building vast chemical refineries, like a fully automated system where you dump ore blocks in one side, all mixed together, and via AE and IC2 and compactsolars and all that, ingots of metal eventually plop out the other end. I also like multifarming and setting up automated ethanol plants.
From talking to other parents its very fight club where the first rule is we don't talk about it. Kind of like how legos seem to get played with by dad as much as kids, unofficially, although its a kids toy. Like many I have tried to sneak a lego imperial star destroyer past the wife "for the kids", unsuccessfully. Lego seems very expensive compared to when I was a kid...
I disagree with most of what you said. I don't see Minecraft as "for children" game. It was a game made for the full spectrum of the gaming community and its early success was as far as I'm aware primarily adults. The fact that children flock to this game as much as they do surprised me, but for what I hear from parents and teachers I would bet that a large majority of this very loyal following are still < 16 years old.
I have actually spoken with several people who were neither parents or teachers. What I concluded is that even among the game playing techies Minecraft is no where near as prevalent as is is among children. In addition to that parents and teachers also also talk to parents and most parents know little about Minecraft other than that it is a game their children play.
It feels pretty reasonable to me, unless you think that it's a flash-in-a-pan that will decline fairly soon. If you think it's a franchise brand that will either hold steady or grow, then it's not really a huge purchase price. Mojang has profits of somewhere around $100-150m on revenues of $300-400m, so this values them at 15-25x profits, or 6-9x revenues, both of which are lower than most recent major tech purchases (e.g. Google paid something like 10-12x revenues for Nest). Heck, a 15-25 P/E ratio isn't even out-of-line for an established tech company without huge growth expectations (Intel and Microsoft both trade around 20).
The terms seem pretty generous, though, a completely clean buyout with no requirement that the principals stay for even a little bit.
Is it a cash deal or a stock deal or both? The release mentions 'dollars' which makes it seem this is an all cash deal. That would be quite something, but since there is no lock-up for the founders it makes good sense that it would be just a cash deal.
It wouldn't surprise me though given notch hasn't had a compelling reason to sell so far (no investors, lives a modest lifestyle, it's still minting money like crazy). This appears to be a "too good a deal to turn down" sale, so he probably called all the shots to make it stick.
Well, for a centimillionaire. Spending less than 2% of his then net worth (more like 0.2% now though) on his main property was relatively modest. No jets, cars, helicopters, $200m+ London homes.. he seems to spend more time noodling with Dart than spending his money ;-)
I think it doesn't matter that much. Microsoft stock is notoriously stable for tech stocks, so the difference between an all cash deal and an all stock deal wouldn't be too big after, say, a year or something.
Notch also probably wasn't too pressured to make the sale, so the terms would be understandably in his favor.
If an opportunity to re-invest came along in that window then you'd miss out, microsoft stock is relatively stable but has seen both 'up', 'down' and 'neutral' years where up and down were on the order of 20 to 30%.
On top of that, cash is king, simply put: there is absolutely no uncertainty at all.
Given the option between x in cash and x in stock or a mix or stock and cash you should always go for the cash.
And something a bit less than x is probably still preferable in cash.
Let me give you a hint: if you ever are in the position to do a major exit get yourself a tax lawyer. Or you indeed might find yourself in the poorhouse after all.
I'm pretty sure that if it is a cash deal that he will convert to Euros to get rid of the $ exchange rate risk. If the deal contains a stock component that's a double risk.
> cash is king [...] there is absolutely no uncertainty at all
2009 was only 5 years ago. Money markets nearly crashed, banks went bankrupt, the Fed printed enormous amounts of money, and BTC was invented. With $2.5 billion on the table, I'd first hire a team of lawyers and accountants, and maybe some lobbyists too... then I'd let MS know how I want to receive the rest of the money.
Agreed. Warner Bros is already talking about a potential movie franchise for Minecraft. Merchandising seems to be going crazy too, I can't seem to turn around without seeing Minecraft posters, dolls, toys, etc. It probably has more long term financial potential than Harry Potter, even ignoring the core piece of software, and Azure could be an excellent fit with the move into providing and leasing servers to players that Minecraft has been dabbling with.
Friends had to pull together party gear from lots of independent sources for that birthday theme. I wonder if Microsoft will be unable to build a merchandising empire thanks to the trademark not being defended enough.
All I know is that every one of my kids' friends knows about and plays Minecraft regularly. Even girls pay, though not as many. Among elementary school age kids, it's as close to universally accepted/known as you can get. We went on vacation to the beach, and my sons made friends with a boy, and they immediately started talking about Minecraft. The next thing, they are playing on the same server with each other, etc. Same with new friends in other activities like soccer.
Now we're starting to talk about mods or being able to write mods for Minecraft some day. As this young, enthusiastic population of users grows up, they will have a lot of buying power and interest in things like the customizations and programming aspects of the game.
I have 3 daughters, all grade-school age, and they play Minecraft more than I do. We talk about it over dinner and watch YouTube videos about how to build things. I've also seen them make quick friends by talking about it. My daughters have even come to know some server terminology (mostly from hearing me say it while getting their games to work).
It is also a thrill for me, as a parent, to be able to see their young imaginations manifest in a 3D space which I can explore and interact with.
I think it's reasonable. Minecraft is one of the most popular games in history, period. That says a lot right there. Add to that the fact that it is insanely popular with kids and teens, folks who will continue to have a strong attachment to minecraft as they get older.
Minecraft makes a crazy amount of revenue at present without very much effort being put into monetization. If MS did nothing other than to offer paid high quality hosting and other basic features they'd bring in even more revenue. If they developed the game more thoroughly, came out with a sequel, more merch, etc, they'd be rolling in cash.
Indeed, Minecraft is the most popular non-bundled game ever.
The most popular version of Minecraft in terms of raw sales is the Pocket Edition which is Android and iOS only, so I suspect MS is seeing an opportunity there.
>> That's 2.5 instagrams. What do you feel, realistic, too much, too little?
I don't think there's the revenue growth potential in Minecraft like there is in Instagram. On the other hand, Mojang made $330 million in revenue and $129 million in profit last year. They can probably hold on to those margins because their sales system doesn't share revenues with retailers or distributors (or Valve, Google, or Apple for that matter).
The interesting question is whether Minecraft has legs to continue selling for ten or twenty more years. I think it might. I know lots of parents that don't let their kids play video games except for Minecraft. When I pick my kids up from school, I always see a handful of kids wearing Minecraft shirts and carrying Minecraft lunch boxes. It could become like Lego--a toy that's viewed as educational and beneficial by parents.
If I was Microsoft, I'd do two things: First, I'd work on performance and clean up the presentation a bit, especially on the loading screens and menus. Second, I'd roll out a service to make it easy for parents to set up a locked-down server for their kids. You wouldn't believe the number of parents who have asked me for help in setting up a Minecraft server for their kid and his/her friends. I finally stopped showing them because it's too complicated for them to keep running. A service that cost $4.95/month and was reputable, simple, and secure could make a killing.
On the other hand, Mojang made $330 million in revenue and $129 million in profit last year. They can probably hold on to those margins
The margin is interesting, because Mojang supposedly paid Notch personally another ~$129m in licensing fees.
If he has managed to sell the company and will still collect such large licensing fees, he's laughing all the way to the bank. If he sells whatever rights he is licensing to Mojang/Microsoft first, however, then their margin will leap up as their expenses are, in reality, a lot less than they seem due to this arrangement.
I'm curious and seems like no one has addressed this. Notch owns the Minecraft ip and it is licensing it to Mojang. Does this mean Mojang( now Microsoft ) will have to keep paying the license?
There are quite a few Minecraft hosting providers that are even cheaper than that, actually. But it would make sense for Microsoft to handle that themselves.
I'm not sure if you're aware of it, but Mojang recently (within the last year or so) started a service called Realms[1] which is exactly what you mentioned: hosted, invite only Minecraft servers. The only difference is that it's 13.99 a month, although it's cheaper if you do a longer term (3-month or 6-month). It'll let 10 players on at a time, with a 20 player white list. I'm not sure what their current implementation for Realms' backend is, but if it's not on Azure or another cloud provider, moving to Azure would probably cause a decrease in price.
I do agree about improving performance and presentation within the game though. My understanding is that there is a lot of room for improvement.
Regardless of what the right amount of money is, microsoft will screw this up.
Repeating the success of minecraft is nigh impossible, it was the confluence of several factors at the right place and the right time. The best that can be hoped for is good stewardship of the minecraft community and client. Unfortunately this isn't the way microsoft thinks about games or products(see halo), expect a Minecraft 2: Creepers Return, Minecraft 3: the Blockening, etc... They didn't spend 2.5 Billion to steward a community.
They won't. They'll just take the C++ ports that already exist (Xbox, mobile) and port that to desktops. Or rewrite the whole thing in C++. While C# is MS' baby, it makes no sense to write a 3D game in it (and for everyone who thinks Unity is C# - it isn't - Mono is just used for scripting).
Minecraft isn't heavy duty graphics, you just need a simple voxel engine. Your game code could be running in python and you wouldn't know any better.
There is quite good reasons not to do everything in C++ if game designers are involved. Unity uses C# for scripting; only the inner graphics engine need be native.
Reasons to do it in C++ - mobile and console is already in C++, so you can unify ports. Can make fancier graphics - it's Voxel graphics right now, but the next Minecraft could look like Destiny while retaining all the sand-box nature of Minecraft.
You use scripting languages to save dev time - Microsoft can just throw more devs at it. They spent 2.5 billion on it - labour is cheap at that scale...
"Minecraft could look like Destiny"... ahahahah. Sorry. That shows an utter and complete misunderstanding as to the attraction of Minecraft. If MSFT did that, they'd kill it instantaneously.
There is a reason why kids prefer lego batman and lego starwars to real batman and starwars.
> Minecraft isn't heavy duty graphics, you just need a simple voxel engine. Your game code could be running in python and you wouldn't know any better.
On the contrary, Minecraft is very heavy on the CPU and would benefit from running on native code rather than a managed bytecode based virtual machine environment.
It isn't heavy duty graphics, so you don't need a super strong GPU (it's still quite heavy), but Minecraft is very CPU and memory intensive. Graphics can be fast regardless of the programming language if you unload things to the GPU, but Minecraft requires a lot of CPU side work to prepare the voxel graphics (ie. building GPU vertex buffers, etc from the voxel octree in CPU/main memory).
There are huge potential performance benefits of rewriting it in native code. I don't think that will happen, though.
Here's a recent interesting article about optimizing visibility and minimizing overdraw, in particular for mobile "chunker" (aka. "tile deferred") GPUs. In the end it improves performance but at the cost of even more CPU work.
I think Microsoft wants all the 7 year-olds writing their first Minecraft mods on a platform that they sell tools for. Given Microsoft has been cozying up to mono, I wouldn't put it past them to port the game over to a platform they can leverage to get little kids using a free version of Visual Studio.
Microsoft will absolutely screw this up. We shouldn't forget why Minecraft became popular: It was run by one (and later a few) guys who were close to the community. They cared about input and made stuff to be fun. They avoided all kinds of big business/management decisions to taint that or get in the way.
There is no way Microsoft will let it run like that. They bought it because they have plans for it and those plans will likely collide with the interests of the community. Microsoft is big in the gaming console business and struggling in the mobile market. It seems likely that they'll try to use Minecraft to push those markets.
Even if they won't do it immediately I suspect that they'll eventually make Minecraft exclusive to Xbox and mobile. Meanwhile they'll drop or decrease support for systems they don't like, like GNU/Linux, Playstations, etc. Maybe this will be part of a rewrite or a new huge upgrade (which I guess we can call "Downloadable Content" or whatever it is called in the XBox universe from now on).
And Microsoft will put their game guys in charge of it. And those guys speak a different language than Mojang. They don't care about indie and close community. They care about downloadable content and making new sellable releases every 12-24 month.
Have you actually ever spoken to one of the MS games guys?
I have. Granted it was around 5 years ago so things have probably changed, but it was around the time they were launching the XBox arcade dev kit and they seemed very genuinely interested in indie dev and supporting communities.
Meat Boy certainly seemed to come about in that kind of positive environment.
Not saying that I'm 100% confident that MS won't mess up Minecraft. I've never played it, but have always enjoyed following Notch and his epic trip with Minecraft as I was once a starry eyed indie game dev. I also have a young child who I know will be into it. Everything I've read seems like Minecraft totally failed to learn from id software and valve when it comes to modding. And still Minecraft mods are massive.
It blows my mind. It also makes me think that MS would have to try REALLY REALLY hard to mess it up. If Minecraft has been a success with all the hurdles so far, I figure it is basically an unstoppable cultural entity now.
> Everything I've read seems like Minecraft totally failed to learn from id software and valve when it comes to modding. And still Minecraft mods are massive.
I have played it but I'm not really a Minecraft person myself. However as far as I know the modding situation isn't that bad because the Minecraft jar can be easily decompiled. The problem is only the lack of a stable API (which seems to be in development though) which means updates can break mods and other mods can break mods. There also doesn't seem to be an official loader or mod list. Thus people are forced to deal with obscure websites and obscure mod makers.
Mojang is not putting any artificial hurdles in the way of modding. Something which I highly doubt would have ever been possible if it had been a Microsoft company.
They're buying an IP for the future. Attached to that they also get a company with some staff (some of which are excellent at what they do).
If they have a solid idea of how they want to use the IP, it makes sense. It also comes with a massive risk though - it will be very easy for them to "be the guys who ruined Minecraft".
I imagine it will need to be something like "stay very hands-off for a significant amount of time to prove that they didnt in fact ruin it" followed by some way of turning it into a link in and value add for their existing products rather than something that they sell expansions/new stand-alones for.
Something like Minecraft being the Tetris/Solitaire of the 2010s or so? It comes pre-loaded with their OS's, create a great experience on surface tablets etc, trying to turn it into "the new Microsoft gives you cool stuff and makes it open for everyone" to position Microsoft as the open alternative to the more closed environments of Google and Apple?
I dont see how the purchase makes sense from a money-making point of view today - the Mojang crew hasn't proven they can do repeated success with new IPs, but I could totally see it making sense from a holistic point of view - successful integration of Minecraft in the Microsoft universe could add significant value to Microsoft as a whole.
The Microsoft press release says, "Microsoft expects the acquisition to be break-even in FY15 on a GAAP basis", which means that on a P/E basis, they are valuing $1 of Mojang profit at $1 of Microsoft profit. It's a game studio with 1 hit, so I'd probably only pay half that, but it's within an order of magnitude of what I'd pay.
Instagram was obviously a strategic asset, where Mojang sits in terms of strategy I really don't know exactly. Microsoft and games has always been there, but there's also been recent talk of divesting the games branch. I think one thing is clear which is that Mojang doesn't seem to be a games house that has a reputation of producing consistently successful titles, rather it seems like one indie project blew up and a team was built around that to support and iterate on one single concept. So it really seems clear that they're buying minecraft which is a game that is exceptionally lucrative financially. In the past 24 hours it sold $0.3m which gives an annual run rate of $100m+ for just the game. But perhaps more importantly, it gets huge traction with people of all ages, including kids, and both genders. It's really a cross-over product that sits extremely well with parents. The Raspberry Pi for example is indicative of this, they're only half serious now when they say one of the key requirements is that it has to be able to run minecraft, when this thing is used by kids worldwide in and outside of classrooms. Being able to integrate that with the Microsoft brand is a big deal as you can have an entire generation grow up with positive connotations towards Microsoft, as well as a generation of parents, who know that if their kids will use computers and play games anyway, it'd be great if they'd spend it on minecraft. So I guess it's both highly profitable (though 2.5b is quite steep at 100m annual revenue) but also has strategic value in terms of branding, although I don't yet see how exactly they want to integrate it into their existing games branch.
Integrating with their non-games services seems far more likely. Server hosting, voice chat, mod development, etc can all push people towards MS products.
It's worth noting that the price Instagram sold for was widely considered insane at the time. Now, it's not such a big price, and seems to have been a smart buy.
Insanely profitable, established and growing viral user base. The valuation feels a little high, but not complete insanity made out of unicorn farts and fairy dust.
It's realistic. Minecraft is this generations pokemon. In fact I think it's bigger. Not only boys but a significant amount of girls play it. Not only does it have cultural value it also makes money (which instagram doesn't)
And personally and culturally, I enjoy intelligent conversations about it with my kids, and "approve" of it (as do my friends with kids) in a way I haven't with other crazes.
I have been trying to understand why Microsoft would buy Minecraft. Even though Minecraft is really important, and wildly successful, but the price tag for a game studio with one successful game is rather odd, considering it is unlikely Minecraft will sell millions of copies more (it is already the most sold game ever made). This is a long shot, but it may explain it:
If Microsoft is trying to build its own Steam competitor (which given Valve's current strategy to make Linux an alternative gaming platform to Windows, makes sense), then Minecraft is the perfect acquisition to start it up, for a number of reasons. It is the best selling video game of all time, with over 15 million copies sold for the PC (54 million copies across all platforms), and it has over 100 million accounts registered. It is possibly the only successful indie game that has never integrated with Steam, and that has a very young userbase (based on my experience) which, given their ages, probably isn't part of Steam's userbase. All of these aspects make it a great strategic acquisition if Microsoft wants to make a new and successful game marketplace and platform for Windows.
Anyone else has any other idea why the 2.5 billion price tag?
I think Steam competitor idea is interesting, but forcing it on your playerbase is generally quite a bad idea (see Origin or Uplay). I'd love to see more competition though.
Yep. HL2 was the first game to require it. You would buy the game at best buy and then you'd need to go download this strange program and tie the game to your account.
A lot of people were super pissed. Gabe Newell said "I know, I know, but trust me: this is going to be AWESOME in the future" - boy was he right :)
Games have always tried to implement DRM, whether it was requiring a game disk to be inserted or a funny graph to be consulted or a word on a specific page from the manual to be entered.
You know what happened when you lost any of those physical assets before the rise of the Internet? Go buy a new game.
As someone who feels that it is a moral imperative to pay for creative works or forgo them, Steam is just fine by me.
Steam didn't bring about DRM in games. Games not listed on Steam still have DRM, and generally have much more restrictive DRM than Steam. DRM isn't even a requirement for selling on Steam. Some games (though not many, I know Bastion is one example) will run without Steam, and Steam is just used for updates and achievements.
Forcing it on your playerbase is definitely going to upset people, but that doesn't always make it a bad idea. A good enough product can cause an ecosystem like that to actually gain the mass of users it needs to succeed.
Could you imagine if tomorrow, every Minecraft player needed to create a MS account and use some new sort of steam-like MS Games service to launch it? Sure, a few would quit, but not the majority. Overnight you could gain enough users to compete with Steam.
I'm not saying this will happen, or is even likely. Just that it makes sense to me.
They have reduced uptake amongst the next generation and need to find a computing experience they can ruin for them specifically. This is about $20/player, which is pretty good value compared to the cost and effort required to convince school departments to make 100 million kids sit through Excel 101 classes.
Maybe this is just part of the strategy of "keeping Microsoft cool and ready for the next decades". Making young generation aware that Microsoft is cool and forgetting what happened in the last decades.
>considering it is unlikely Minecraft will sell millions of copies more (it is already the most sold game ever made).
Pretty much every machine on the planet on which you can sell software has a copy of Tetris. Ports of Minecraft could also exist into infinity in a similar sense.
It seems silly to me, but there has been speculation that Microsoft wants the users. Minecraft is the number 1 paid app on iOS and Android, and Microsoft wants to push its mobile offering and take some of those users.
I can't see it actually working -- do users really switch phones for a single game? Even if a new version were to become exclusive or measurably better on their platform?
I heard some theory that MS had earnings from outside the USA and if they brought it back into the USA they would have to pay USA taxes on it. So they wanted to spend it on something outside the USA.
If that is true, I'm sure that is just a small part of it.
Well, 54 million copies across all platforms means that there's still seven billion potential customers. With the Firefox OS and new Android One phones, as well as other efforts to increase the amount of computers in the non-rich western world, I can see Minecraft becoming the next Tetris for a lot of people in the near future who never had access to computers before.
Since there is an aisle of Minecraft related merchandise in my local Target, I think the future cash will come from that. The Cars franchise has been worth billions in merchandise for Pixar/Disney. Regarding CARS "In the five years since its 2006 release, "Cars" has generated global retail sales approaching $10 billion, according to Disney. That ranks the Pixar film alongside such cinematic merchandising standouts as "Star Wars," "Spider-Man" and "Harry Potter," as well as its own paean to playthings, "Toy Story," according to researcher NPD." http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/21/business/la-fi-ct-ca...
In my house of kids (10,7,4,1) Minecraft is more popular than Lego, and it is a point of interest shared by many kids. I have been instructed several times that a Minecraft related gift would be good for a kids birthday party. Since the kids provide the design, entertainment, etc like Lego, I think this has a long long way to go.
My kids are still playing on the Xbox, and have not learned about mods or anything else yet. I am sure it will come soon.
Look at what Microsoft was able to do with Bungie. They took Bungie, who was effectively a one-hit shop, and milked the Halo IP for the better part of 10 years. Hell, they were centimeters from spinning it into a Hollywood blockbuster.
This is the exact same play and frankly, they're pretty good at it. They're going to turn the Minecraft franchise into a Xbox/Windows exclusive. Obviously that's going to piss off a lot of folks, but it's still going to result in a ton of XBox sales - at least as many as Halo was responsible for. They'll iterate on this for the next 10 years and my guess is they'll do it quite successfully.
You aren't thinking uncreatively enough. There will be Minecraft 2, Minecraft 3, Minecraft: Reach, Minecraft MMO, Minecraft Web Series, Minecraft: The Movie, ad nauseam...
The thing is that what makes Minecraft strong is its community, unlike Halo. You won't see Minecraft succeeding at being Windows exclusive, or by making Minecraft 2, 3 or 4. There is a plethora of community mods made and being made for MC, you won't see that happening for any sequel, not at the same level.
I don't think that's true - at least not for children.
My kids are fairly young, but both of them play Minecraft on the Xbox purely for the creative outlet. They've only played a few times with other kids on Xbox live.
I suspect as they grow older they'll be more interested in online multiplayer. However, like most parents, I haven't figured out how to let that happen and still shelter them from the frothing insanity I used to regularly encounter when I'd play Halo back in the day.
Private servers, with whitelists. Because the other players are not anonymous, they're less likely to behave poorly. As the admin, you can ban them, and either call their parents or let your kids deliver the news in person, much as you could if someone came over and started breaking things in person on a play date.
"""
Hi, this is Alice's dad. Mal has been really mean to her when playing on our Minecraft server. It's a shared creative world that Alice, her friends, and cousins have been cooperating to build a city in together. Mal decided it would be fun to destroy most of the city, and cover the rest of it in lava.
This really Alice's feelings, as she and the others have spent a long time building together.
Unless Mal will apologize to Alice and the rest of their friends, we aren't willing to let Mal play with us this way.
"""
There's probably a better way to give the "your kid's being a jerk to my kid" than what I came up with off the top of my head, of course. I suspect that the rest of your kids' peers would swiftly ostracize griefers, as well.
Bungie had at least three hits (Pathways into Darkness, Marathon, and Myth) even if you don't count the successful sequels to successful games. Halo was likely to have been a huge hit (relative to Bungie) if they had been able to finish and ship it. (That may have been a big "if", as my understanding is that they were struggling financially after the Myth 2 installer debacle, but their ability to produce aside from finances was well established.)
Call it three or four hits, depending on how you count Halo, or the Halo-that-never-was.
I don't think it's fair to call Bungie a one-hit shop. Pathways into Darkness, Myth, and Marathon were all successful and well respected. Halo definitely moved them onto the big stage by pushing them off the mac platform. I agree with everything else you say though.
I don't think Microsoft has any interest in building their own Steam, beyond just building an all-purpose App Store on the Windows platform. Games For Windows Live was a disaster, and their main focus on games today is with the XBox, not the PC.
Very peculiar seeing this news after Notch was so critical of the OculusVR sale to Facebook.
Seeing as I bought my premium Minecraft account on 8/1/2010, I must be due some sort of equity for supporting him at such an early stage.
edit: Oh, and what do you think will become of the old alpha/beta/release builds? I'm thinking about going ahead and archiving them all in case access to them is revoked. Not sure if I'm being too paranoid, but I much preferred the simpler versions without all the distractions like XP, hunger, and those weird tall black guys.
Notch said the Facebook deal was rotten because early backers on Kickstarters who weren't promised equity didn't get equity. Minecraft was one of the first early access games and likewise didn't promise or give equity.
Well, then these people are very nearsighted. Virtual Reality could very well become the next big thing. And not just in gaming. Apart from gaming there is simulation training and yes, communication for example. This could lead to some incarnation of a Holodeck if you will. Virtual meetings where you actually can see the other person and not just some avartar but the actual HD picture somehow modeled onto a virtual model in a way that makes it indistinguishable from real life. That may be decades down the road but it could happen.
And facebook, being in the communication business is now trying to push this forward by backing Oculus.
Trying to make VR be just about gaming is sort of like trying to make the TV be all about displaying your xbox picture. When in fact the TV can be used as a medium for much more.
What you are describing is that changing your apparent opinion for money is abhorrent, because it confuses social elements with monetary considerations, not unlike paying you mother-in-law for dinner is shocking. More example of "abhorrent" behavior, i.e. mixing realms are paying for organs, or selling meat from pets.
Occulus did something similarly unacceptable because they cashed out, in spite of fan monetary support. (Don't get me confused: I'm not accusing them of cannibalism, there are degrees in abhorrent: cashing out is low on that scale.)
Notch said he never wanted to sell because cashing out didn't make sense to him. It still doesn't. He sold because he is tired and detached: he didn't sell for money's sake, he left and took the opportunity to have paper to throw at "cancer surgery and beer". This is not abhorrent to most because both his changing motivations (keeping creative control vs. not having to deal with that responsability) are both in the same principled realm.
I would love to say this distinction is black-and-white, but any class on moral philosophy would show how it full of greys; in Notch case, the effort to stride such discrepancies is explicitly the main reason why he is leaving the company. Making moral calls in the name of a large community is exhausting; he prefers clear choices, like "fighting cancer". Good for him.
Agreed. It's not a simple situation, and I tried not to pass any judgements in my original comment. I do appreciate you clearing up some of the finer points.
I'm happy that he can do what he wants now without having to worry about impacting the giant brand he created.
And if he sees my tongue-in-cheek claim to equity and wants to jokingly send me a few thousand dollars, I'll gladly send him my details.
If he wanted to walk away there are plenty of other options there that aren't about money. Open source it, give it to the employees of Mojang, or another variety of options along the same lines.
This is completely about money, which is fine, but let's not pretend like their is some superior moral virtue going on here.
I think one can still take a lucrative action and still not have done it "for the money".
Doing something "for money" means that the money was the goal, the driving force. Selling one's controlling stake in a profitable company, even if lucrative, could be for many other reasons: a desire to focus on something else, a desire to no longer have to check e-mails, and so on.
Giving it away would be magnanimous, but isn't an ethical imperative (to most people). He wanted out for the reasons he stated (couldn't deal with the social pressures), and if that happens to come with a big fat paycheck, more power to him.
He wasn't involved in that project for years, and still was considered its moral guardian -- cf. the tweets about the EULA. Open-sourcing would most likely have not changed that. If you though copyright was complicated, try copyleft…
I am not arguing one realm is superior to another; just that handling their interactions is something Notch has expressly said he didn't want to deal with. Selling is simple.
>Very peculiar seeing this news after Notch was so critical of the OculusVR sale to Facebook.
Not really. MS is also a gaming company. Facebook is in no way a VR or emerging tech company. Are we really going to take seriously this "all big companies are alike" attitude?
I wish the Oculus guys all the luck in the world, but I see myself buying a Sony or MS headset well before I'd consider the Oculus, which would require a gaming PC that dwarfs my current PC. My current PC plays just about everything at high or near high. The idea that I need a $1200 machine to do 1080p (or higher) per eye at 60 fps is kinda rough. From a culture point of view, it fits in with the hardcore gamer crowd. What does Facebook remotely know about that crowd? How does 'the social' intersect remotely with that crowd, especially since that crowd is so sick of tacked on social crap. I share the doubts that Notch has and with good reason.
They'll probably create a market. Right now mods/skins are for the most part being given away for free. I think the obvious thing to do is allow mod creators to sell at a profit if they wish.
I presume the assumption is that with Microsoft now owning Minecraft (and presumably the copyright over it, among other things), they could leverage that to get videos of Minecraft pulled off of Youtube.
Personally I doubt it extremely, but you never know.
MS presumably now own the intellectual property (IP) surrounding Minecraft and could choose to demand payment from people using the Minecraft TM commercially - eg to run a YouTube channel.
If those channels are offering tips on circumventing MS's lockdown (yes I'm pessimistic about what MS will do) then MS will use IP initially to shut them down I imagine.
The Minecraft EULA has the standard "we can change this without notice" clauses. I will be fascinated to see what changes come to it.
If Microsoft did anything like that they would be flushing their 2.5 billion dollars down the drain. The community that surrounds Minecraft is why it's worth so much.
I've seen too many times in the past where big organizations do things that don't seem to be in their best interest. Microsoft is made up of many people and one VP may decide that short term profits for a quarter (which increases his bonus for the year) trumps the wellness of a community. And he'll rationalize his decision as being better for the community.
> We know that people like you love our games and sometimes want to use things like gameplay footage, screenshots, music, and other elements of our games ("Game Content") to make things like machinima, videos, and other cool things (your "Item" or "Items"). We'd like to make that easier for you. So long as you can respect these rules, you can use our Game Content to make your Items.
Perhaps Microsoft has a similar project in the works, and instead of fighting over IP and copyright, they just bought the company. Like Intel or Cisco buying innovators to avoid patent litigation.
I very much doubt it. The two companies have been working closely on the Xbox version. I don't think for a second that Microsoft has any intention of making a game similar to Minecraft.
I'm thinking this is an almost-certainty at this point. I doubt they can really do anything about existing builds of Minecraft on non-Microsoft properties, but a Minecraft 2 XB exclusive is the obvious way to get a healthy ROI on the Mojang acquisition.
I obviously don't know the whole picture here, but I see the purchase of Mojang as a strategic move to strengthen the Xbox One platform. They're banking on Minecraft being a strong property for the next few years; they could easily sell a few hundred thousand units holiday season 2015 if they have a exclusivity on Minecraft 2.
With Microsoft, I think Minecraft 2 is a given. You didn't expect Disney to NOT release another Star Wars trilogy after acquiring the franchise from Lucas, did you?
Did Minecraft ever take on any VC money? I think not, so this 2.5b is very, very different than the stuff you see here. Not comparable to Instagram in net profit for the founders.
>There’s no reason for the development, sales, and support of the PC/Mac, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, Vita, iOS, and Android versions of Minecraft to stop. Of course, Microsoft can’t make decisions for other companies or predict the choices that they might make in the future.
Translation: MS hasn't killed them yet, but probably will soon.
That's subjective. An objective fact is that it still exists on non-MS platforms, it's interoperable across platforms, and there hasn't been a "Skype 2" to replace it on MS platforms only. If that same holds true for Minecraft, that allays most of the largest fears people have.
This makes me sad. I see that there is the potential for good to come from this, I don't think it will happen. At least Jeb is staying. There might have been some pretty big problems for Minecraft if he didn't stay.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 340 ms ] threadImpressive.
I hope that Microsoft won't disrupt Minecraft's development (e.g. like they did with Skype, making Linux a third-rate platform - which should not happen since Minecraft's coded in Java).
Manual conversion to idiomatic C# would be a better route and add the benefits of deeper familiarity with the application. It's one thing to wrestle with a new codebase. It's another thing to try to make sense of something transcoded by a tool. Was the original coder insane or is it just an edge case in your translation tool?
[1] http://www.ikvm.net/
And then there is the problem of external libraries and their APIs. Either translate them as well, or find API-compatible replacements, or find replacements and handle the API differences yourself.
Actually, it comes down to the same thing either way, when considering the standard library just as a library, among the others.
#stopspeculation :)
You know, on principle.
> The founders: Notch, Carl, and Jakob are leaving
Yeah, that's exactly what I suspected when the rumors started. Markus doesn't really want to run a company, so he's cashing out and doing his own thing. Good on him.
http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Jakob_Pors%C3%A9r
http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Jens_Bergensten
Xbox announcement: http://news.xbox.com/2014/09/games-minecraft-to-join-microso...
>There’s no reason for the development, sales, and support of the PC/Mac, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, Vita, iOS, and Android versions of Minecraft to stop.
So what is happening to the Linux edition that has been fully supported since day 1?
https://bugs.mojang.com/browse/MC-174?jql=project%20%3D%20MC...
> The founders: Notch, Carl, and Jakob are leaving. We don’t know what they’re planning. It won’t be Minecraft-related but it will probably be cool.
There was a blog post from several years ago from Notch saying that after he made enough money with the game, he would "probably clean it up and release it as open source". Oh well.
Instead now we have the DMCA-infighting and an atrocious modding community that hosts their binaries on shady file upload sites, their "project page" in a forum thread, make their measly money from adfly-like sites and have never heard of Github.
So much wasted potential. Anyhow, congratulations Microsoft.
But hey, who knows which of my words I might eat with gravy sauce?
> Instead now we have the DMCA-infighting and an atrocious modding community that hosts their source code on shady file upload sites, make their measly money from adfly-like sites and have never heard of Github.
Couldn't agree more, but it's more of a consequence of most modders being new and inexperienced developers and kids. Some of the bigger and more professional modding projects like Bukkit are already hosted on GitHub [0], so I wouldn't blame it on just being closed source. It's not guaranteed that it would be that much better, though it might be because that way a lot more existing developers might feel like contributing.
[0] https://github.com/Bukkit/Bukkit
So no, bukkit isn't the problem. The problem is all the bukkit mods, and the situation between bukkit and mojang. Urgh.
The only fork of it that's still standing is Spigot, who are releasing their updates as binary patches against the last pre-DMCA-notice release to avoid redistributing the stuff which was the subject of the DMCA, and aren't making any source-level patches available. (Which in turn is almost certainly a violation of the GPL/LGPL license that CraftBukkit was under.)
I'm not sure what you said is (solely) the result of Mincraft being closed source. As far as I know, Android is released as open source, but most of what you said also applies to that modding community.
I bought Minecraft quite early, back when it wasn't such a big hit. Normally I do not buy games. But I'm all for free & open source games, and back then what the site said read or at least felt like a personal promise to eventually release the code. That is why I bought Minecraft. The game looked interesting, and I wanted to contribute to (eventual) open source gaming. I wouldn't have paid for it otherwise... and no, I don't actually play Minecraft.
No. I bought the game (cheap), I played it a bunch, I enjoyed it. They have no further obligations to me.
What about the people who back to-be-released-as-free-software projects on kickstarter or such, are they silly?
I might be silly. I know, I'm not like everyone else. :-)
But hopefully there are more silly people like me.
No. Because they are open source. Minecraft was not. Vague platitudes about someday being open source are worthless. Notch is notoriously dishonest and would say or do anything to push minecraft early on. Look how quickly he jumped from 4chan being his only customers to "4chan is the worst thing ever right reddit!?".
I bought Minecraft for what it was, and still is, a sandbox game that I've had hundreds of hours of fun in. I've bought it for several friends of mine for the same reason. But I won't buy something because of the chance it might become something I want, when it currently isn't. (I learned that lesson when pre-purchasing Spore).
We're still looking for a way to fund free games. And I don't think donations work too well. More importantly, the people who actually make games don't seem to find it working too well, because they are not making free donation-supported games. On the other hand, many game authors already see the value in eventually freeing their work. So if they promise to do that, it is a reasonably effective way of getting a free game by first helping them do what it takes to make it profitable enough to actually build and finish the game and eat something too. Is it not?
Microsoft has been releasing more and more of their software platform as open source. It's not outside the realm of possibility that some bits of Minecraft would be open sourced.
While I'm grateful for that, I'd be shocked if they released the source for any of their consumer products, including VS.
Not holding my breath, but I wouldn't be surprised by anything at this point.
clean re implementation
I really don't mind that Notch sold out. I do mind that he says that this wasn't about money. It sounds more like he is trying to convince himself of that more than anyone else.
If it really wasn't about money why not just open source it and walk away? Or just give it to the employees of Mojang? He already has over 100+ million, so he's certainly not worried about food.
More power to him for making an insane amount of money, because he certainly deserves it, but don't bullshit me about your motivations.
Personally I feel this makes (much) more sense than instagram, these guys have a very loyal following, a tremendously strong product and actually make money.
Congratulations to everybody on the selling side in this deal, too bad it had to be Microsoft but with amounts like that there are not too many companies on the acquiring side.
Does anyone know if this was stock / cash / a mix?
edit: this Microsoft - Mojang deal will do more to get people into (games) programming than a million $ adspend by codecademy would
edit2: right now (16:43 my time) microjang.com is still free
Wonder how long it will take before that is a registered domain.
edit: microjang.com is now no longer free.
edit: downvoted already, new record.
At least I didn't suggest that Microsoft would now have to re-write minecraft in C# rather than in the Java that they love so much there.
I reserve downvotes for rudeness and demonstrably wrong/misleading comments.
Personally, I use upvotes to reward new knowledge or an interesting argument in a comment, I don't upvote every comment I agree with, and downvote only if the comment is offensive.
With all due respect, I don't find it particularly relevant what one guy said 6 years ago. I don't care whether he created HN or not. He's no longer an active participant.
I'm not!
It's a small sample size, but I think Minecraft is destined to be a kids' game with a minority of adult enthusiasts. (That's not necessarily bad--Lego and Pokemon fit that description, too.)
If MS can nurture the hackers and enable them to create and maybe even monetize their hacks, then it should be possible to keep a core set of fans well into adulthood.
[1] http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/
I believe this to be a mythology that "everyone knows is true" although it isn't.
For similar examples, MMORPG players are all 13 year old boys, FPS players in general are all 13 year old boys, there is a perfect 1:1 mapping between WWII FPS and gaming in general...
I'll admit in public to relax I'll log in with my son and we'll work on the big base and rail system. Better than watching TV together. I find rail work to be relaxing exactly like working on a model railroad (obviously you need railcraft mod for this). I like building vast chemical refineries, like a fully automated system where you dump ore blocks in one side, all mixed together, and via AE and IC2 and compactsolars and all that, ingots of metal eventually plop out the other end. I also like multifarming and setting up automated ethanol plants.
From talking to other parents its very fight club where the first rule is we don't talk about it. Kind of like how legos seem to get played with by dad as much as kids, unofficially, although its a kids toy. Like many I have tried to sneak a lego imperial star destroyer past the wife "for the kids", unsuccessfully. Lego seems very expensive compared to when I was a kid...
Well, yes, I'd expect parents and teachers to talk largely about < 16 year olds.
Of course this is all anecdotal.
The terms seem pretty generous, though, a completely clean buyout with no requirement that the principals stay for even a little bit.
"One centillion is a number, which is equal to either 10^303 or 10^600, depending on the system used."
Centi can designate 100 of something or one-hundredth of something.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/centi-
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/centimillionaire
http://www.forbes.com/sites/calebmelby/2012/11/12/breaking-d...
I think it doesn't matter that much. Microsoft stock is notoriously stable for tech stocks, so the difference between an all cash deal and an all stock deal wouldn't be too big after, say, a year or something.
Notch also probably wasn't too pressured to make the sale, so the terms would be understandably in his favor.
If an opportunity to re-invest came along in that window then you'd miss out, microsoft stock is relatively stable but has seen both 'up', 'down' and 'neutral' years where up and down were on the order of 20 to 30%.
On top of that, cash is king, simply put: there is absolutely no uncertainty at all.
Given the option between x in cash and x in stock or a mix or stock and cash you should always go for the cash.
And something a bit less than x is probably still preferable in cash.
I want to do business against you. :P
Because currency values don't fluctuate at all...
https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/q?s=EURUSD=X
2009 was only 5 years ago. Money markets nearly crashed, banks went bankrupt, the Fed printed enormous amounts of money, and BTC was invented. With $2.5 billion on the table, I'd first hire a team of lawyers and accountants, and maybe some lobbyists too... then I'd let MS know how I want to receive the rest of the money.
Stock wouldn't be bad though.
They're missing a huge market... children's birthday party crap.
Now we're starting to talk about mods or being able to write mods for Minecraft some day. As this young, enthusiastic population of users grows up, they will have a lot of buying power and interest in things like the customizations and programming aspects of the game.
It is also a thrill for me, as a parent, to be able to see their young imaginations manifest in a 3D space which I can explore and interact with.
Principles were already gone. Notch never really worked on the game anymore. He stayed around because they wanted him to.
Minecraft makes a crazy amount of revenue at present without very much effort being put into monetization. If MS did nothing other than to offer paid high quality hosting and other basic features they'd bring in even more revenue. If they developed the game more thoroughly, came out with a sequel, more merch, etc, they'd be rolling in cash.
The most popular version of Minecraft in terms of raw sales is the Pocket Edition which is Android and iOS only, so I suspect MS is seeing an opportunity there.
I don't think there's the revenue growth potential in Minecraft like there is in Instagram. On the other hand, Mojang made $330 million in revenue and $129 million in profit last year. They can probably hold on to those margins because their sales system doesn't share revenues with retailers or distributors (or Valve, Google, or Apple for that matter).
The interesting question is whether Minecraft has legs to continue selling for ten or twenty more years. I think it might. I know lots of parents that don't let their kids play video games except for Minecraft. When I pick my kids up from school, I always see a handful of kids wearing Minecraft shirts and carrying Minecraft lunch boxes. It could become like Lego--a toy that's viewed as educational and beneficial by parents.
If I was Microsoft, I'd do two things: First, I'd work on performance and clean up the presentation a bit, especially on the loading screens and menus. Second, I'd roll out a service to make it easy for parents to set up a locked-down server for their kids. You wouldn't believe the number of parents who have asked me for help in setting up a Minecraft server for their kid and his/her friends. I finally stopped showing them because it's too complicated for them to keep running. A service that cost $4.95/month and was reputable, simple, and secure could make a killing.
The margin is interesting, because Mojang supposedly paid Notch personally another ~$129m in licensing fees.
If he has managed to sell the company and will still collect such large licensing fees, he's laughing all the way to the bank. If he sells whatever rights he is licensing to Mojang/Microsoft first, however, then their margin will leap up as their expenses are, in reality, a lot less than they seem due to this arrangement.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-03-19-mojang-made...
I do agree about improving performance and presentation within the game though. My understanding is that there is a lot of room for improvement.
1:https://minecraft.net/realms
Repeating the success of minecraft is nigh impossible, it was the confluence of several factors at the right place and the right time. The best that can be hoped for is good stewardship of the minecraft community and client. Unfortunately this isn't the way microsoft thinks about games or products(see halo), expect a Minecraft 2: Creepers Return, Minecraft 3: the Blockening, etc... They didn't spend 2.5 Billion to steward a community.
How long before they port it to C#?
> How long before they port it to C#?
I beat you there by a while :)
They won't. They'll just take the C++ ports that already exist (Xbox, mobile) and port that to desktops. Or rewrite the whole thing in C++. While C# is MS' baby, it makes no sense to write a 3D game in it (and for everyone who thinks Unity is C# - it isn't - Mono is just used for scripting).
There is quite good reasons not to do everything in C++ if game designers are involved. Unity uses C# for scripting; only the inner graphics engine need be native.
You use scripting languages to save dev time - Microsoft can just throw more devs at it. They spent 2.5 billion on it - labour is cheap at that scale...
There is a reason why kids prefer lego batman and lego starwars to real batman and starwars.
On the contrary, Minecraft is very heavy on the CPU and would benefit from running on native code rather than a managed bytecode based virtual machine environment.
It isn't heavy duty graphics, so you don't need a super strong GPU (it's still quite heavy), but Minecraft is very CPU and memory intensive. Graphics can be fast regardless of the programming language if you unload things to the GPU, but Minecraft requires a lot of CPU side work to prepare the voxel graphics (ie. building GPU vertex buffers, etc from the voxel octree in CPU/main memory).
There are huge potential performance benefits of rewriting it in native code. I don't think that will happen, though.
Here's a recent interesting article about optimizing visibility and minimizing overdraw, in particular for mobile "chunker" (aka. "tile deferred") GPUs. In the end it improves performance but at the cost of even more CPU work.
http://tomcc.github.io/2014/08/31/visibility-1.html
Moving to C++ is always a PITA, I hope this isn't an optimization made so early, especially when there are other things to do.
You mean Minecraft.NET Pro?
There is no way Microsoft will let it run like that. They bought it because they have plans for it and those plans will likely collide with the interests of the community. Microsoft is big in the gaming console business and struggling in the mobile market. It seems likely that they'll try to use Minecraft to push those markets.
Even if they won't do it immediately I suspect that they'll eventually make Minecraft exclusive to Xbox and mobile. Meanwhile they'll drop or decrease support for systems they don't like, like GNU/Linux, Playstations, etc. Maybe this will be part of a rewrite or a new huge upgrade (which I guess we can call "Downloadable Content" or whatever it is called in the XBox universe from now on).
And Microsoft will put their game guys in charge of it. And those guys speak a different language than Mojang. They don't care about indie and close community. They care about downloadable content and making new sellable releases every 12-24 month.
I have. Granted it was around 5 years ago so things have probably changed, but it was around the time they were launching the XBox arcade dev kit and they seemed very genuinely interested in indie dev and supporting communities.
Meat Boy certainly seemed to come about in that kind of positive environment.
Not saying that I'm 100% confident that MS won't mess up Minecraft. I've never played it, but have always enjoyed following Notch and his epic trip with Minecraft as I was once a starry eyed indie game dev. I also have a young child who I know will be into it. Everything I've read seems like Minecraft totally failed to learn from id software and valve when it comes to modding. And still Minecraft mods are massive.
It blows my mind. It also makes me think that MS would have to try REALLY REALLY hard to mess it up. If Minecraft has been a success with all the hurdles so far, I figure it is basically an unstoppable cultural entity now.
I have played it but I'm not really a Minecraft person myself. However as far as I know the modding situation isn't that bad because the Minecraft jar can be easily decompiled. The problem is only the lack of a stable API (which seems to be in development though) which means updates can break mods and other mods can break mods. There also doesn't seem to be an official loader or mod list. Thus people are forced to deal with obscure websites and obscure mod makers.
Mojang is not putting any artificial hurdles in the way of modding. Something which I highly doubt would have ever been possible if it had been a Microsoft company.
>There’s no reason for the development, sales, and support of the PC/Mac, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, Vita, iOS, and Android
If they have a solid idea of how they want to use the IP, it makes sense. It also comes with a massive risk though - it will be very easy for them to "be the guys who ruined Minecraft".
I imagine it will need to be something like "stay very hands-off for a significant amount of time to prove that they didnt in fact ruin it" followed by some way of turning it into a link in and value add for their existing products rather than something that they sell expansions/new stand-alones for.
Something like Minecraft being the Tetris/Solitaire of the 2010s or so? It comes pre-loaded with their OS's, create a great experience on surface tablets etc, trying to turn it into "the new Microsoft gives you cool stuff and makes it open for everyone" to position Microsoft as the open alternative to the more closed environments of Google and Apple?
I dont see how the purchase makes sense from a money-making point of view today - the Mojang crew hasn't proven they can do repeated success with new IPs, but I could totally see it making sense from a holistic point of view - successful integration of Minecraft in the Microsoft universe could add significant value to Microsoft as a whole.
Even if they do nothing else.
I take it that is in the hypothetical sense or are you capable of closing $2.5 B deals by your lonesome?
> Microsoft - Mojang deal will do more to get people into (games) programming than a million $ adspend by codecademy would
Definitely. And it will get more developers into the MS ecosystem than any Microsoft Certification tests would.
If Microsoft is trying to build its own Steam competitor (which given Valve's current strategy to make Linux an alternative gaming platform to Windows, makes sense), then Minecraft is the perfect acquisition to start it up, for a number of reasons. It is the best selling video game of all time, with over 15 million copies sold for the PC (54 million copies across all platforms), and it has over 100 million accounts registered. It is possibly the only successful indie game that has never integrated with Steam, and that has a very young userbase (based on my experience) which, given their ages, probably isn't part of Steam's userbase. All of these aspects make it a great strategic acquisition if Microsoft wants to make a new and successful game marketplace and platform for Windows.
Anyone else has any other idea why the 2.5 billion price tag?
A lot of people were super pissed. Gabe Newell said "I know, I know, but trust me: this is going to be AWESOME in the future" - boy was he right :)
You know what happened when you lost any of those physical assets before the rise of the Internet? Go buy a new game.
As someone who feels that it is a moral imperative to pay for creative works or forgo them, Steam is just fine by me.
Could you imagine if tomorrow, every Minecraft player needed to create a MS account and use some new sort of steam-like MS Games service to launch it? Sure, a few would quit, but not the majority. Overnight you could gain enough users to compete with Steam.
I'm not saying this will happen, or is even likely. Just that it makes sense to me.
Pretty much every machine on the planet on which you can sell software has a copy of Tetris. Ports of Minecraft could also exist into infinity in a similar sense.
I can't see it actually working -- do users really switch phones for a single game? Even if a new version were to become exclusive or measurably better on their platform?
If that is true, I'm sure that is just a small part of it.
In my house of kids (10,7,4,1) Minecraft is more popular than Lego, and it is a point of interest shared by many kids. I have been instructed several times that a Minecraft related gift would be good for a kids birthday party. Since the kids provide the design, entertainment, etc like Lego, I think this has a long long way to go.
My kids are still playing on the Xbox, and have not learned about mods or anything else yet. I am sure it will come soon.
This is the exact same play and frankly, they're pretty good at it. They're going to turn the Minecraft franchise into a Xbox/Windows exclusive. Obviously that's going to piss off a lot of folks, but it's still going to result in a ton of XBox sales - at least as many as Halo was responsible for. They'll iterate on this for the next 10 years and my guess is they'll do it quite successfully.
Halo wasn't released anywhere when they bought it, so they could use it as a cash cow for the XBox.
Minecraft is already everywhere.
My kids are fairly young, but both of them play Minecraft on the Xbox purely for the creative outlet. They've only played a few times with other kids on Xbox live.
I suspect as they grow older they'll be more interested in online multiplayer. However, like most parents, I haven't figured out how to let that happen and still shelter them from the frothing insanity I used to regularly encounter when I'd play Halo back in the day.
""" Hi, this is Alice's dad. Mal has been really mean to her when playing on our Minecraft server. It's a shared creative world that Alice, her friends, and cousins have been cooperating to build a city in together. Mal decided it would be fun to destroy most of the city, and cover the rest of it in lava.
This really Alice's feelings, as she and the others have spent a long time building together.
Unless Mal will apologize to Alice and the rest of their friends, we aren't willing to let Mal play with us this way. """
There's probably a better way to give the "your kid's being a jerk to my kid" than what I came up with off the top of my head, of course. I suspect that the rest of your kids' peers would swiftly ostracize griefers, as well.
Call it three or four hits, depending on how you count Halo, or the Halo-that-never-was.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_game...
Seeing as I bought my premium Minecraft account on 8/1/2010, I must be due some sort of equity for supporting him at such an early stage.
edit: Oh, and what do you think will become of the old alpha/beta/release builds? I'm thinking about going ahead and archiving them all in case access to them is revoked. Not sure if I'm being too paranoid, but I much preferred the simpler versions without all the distractions like XP, hunger, and those weird tall black guys.
That's a valid point.
> Seeing as I bought my premium Minecraft account on 8/1/2010, I must be due some sort of equity for supporting him at such an early stage.
I don't think that's a valid point :)
Literally.
Microsoft, on the other hand, has the xbox and has been publishing games since at least the 1990s, maybe the 1980s?
Even QBasic Gorillas is from 1991, and published by IBM. Not Microsoft.
PS: Separate comment as the anti-procrastination filter kicked in. ;)
And facebook, being in the communication business is now trying to push this forward by backing Oculus. Trying to make VR be just about gaming is sort of like trying to make the TV be all about displaying your xbox picture. When in fact the TV can be used as a medium for much more.
Occulus did something similarly unacceptable because they cashed out, in spite of fan monetary support. (Don't get me confused: I'm not accusing them of cannibalism, there are degrees in abhorrent: cashing out is low on that scale.)
Notch said he never wanted to sell because cashing out didn't make sense to him. It still doesn't. He sold because he is tired and detached: he didn't sell for money's sake, he left and took the opportunity to have paper to throw at "cancer surgery and beer". This is not abhorrent to most because both his changing motivations (keeping creative control vs. not having to deal with that responsability) are both in the same principled realm.
I would love to say this distinction is black-and-white, but any class on moral philosophy would show how it full of greys; in Notch case, the effort to stride such discrepancies is explicitly the main reason why he is leaving the company. Making moral calls in the name of a large community is exhausting; he prefers clear choices, like "fighting cancer". Good for him.
I'm happy that he can do what he wants now without having to worry about impacting the giant brand he created.
And if he sees my tongue-in-cheek claim to equity and wants to jokingly send me a few thousand dollars, I'll gladly send him my details.
This is completely about money, which is fine, but let's not pretend like their is some superior moral virtue going on here.
Doing something "for money" means that the money was the goal, the driving force. Selling one's controlling stake in a profitable company, even if lucrative, could be for many other reasons: a desire to focus on something else, a desire to no longer have to check e-mails, and so on.
Giving it away would be magnanimous, but isn't an ethical imperative (to most people). He wanted out for the reasons he stated (couldn't deal with the social pressures), and if that happens to come with a big fat paycheck, more power to him.
I am not arguing one realm is superior to another; just that handling their interactions is something Notch has expressly said he didn't want to deal with. Selling is simple.
Not really. MS is also a gaming company. Facebook is in no way a VR or emerging tech company. Are we really going to take seriously this "all big companies are alike" attitude?
I wish the Oculus guys all the luck in the world, but I see myself buying a Sony or MS headset well before I'd consider the Oculus, which would require a gaming PC that dwarfs my current PC. My current PC plays just about everything at high or near high. The idea that I need a $1200 machine to do 1080p (or higher) per eye at 60 fps is kinda rough. From a culture point of view, it fits in with the hardcore gamer crowd. What does Facebook remotely know about that crowd? How does 'the social' intersect remotely with that crowd, especially since that crowd is so sick of tacked on social crap. I share the doubts that Notch has and with good reason.
Shutting down Etho, Yogscast, etc is likely to lead to hordes of 13 year olds hating MS for ever.
Maybe there'll be an MVP programme for YouTubers? </s>
I just hope MS can sort out modding: a sane mod interface would make many people very happy.
Personally I doubt it extremely, but you never know.
Imagine one part of MS submitting stuff to YouTube for ContentID, and including the Minecraft music.
Suddenly you have a bunch of people struggling to put content online.
If those channels are offering tips on circumventing MS's lockdown (yes I'm pessimistic about what MS will do) then MS will use IP initially to shut them down I imagine.
The Minecraft EULA has the standard "we can change this without notice" clauses. I will be fascinated to see what changes come to it.
Heck, you can broadcast to Twitch from the new Xbox. I think MS fully understands the value of fan created videos and supports them.
Can you say with certainty that 13 year olds know what Microsoft is?
> Game Content Usage Rules
> We know that people like you love our games and sometimes want to use things like gameplay footage, screenshots, music, and other elements of our games ("Game Content") to make things like machinima, videos, and other cool things (your "Item" or "Items"). We'd like to make that easier for you. So long as you can respect these rules, you can use our Game Content to make your Items.
[1] http://www.xbox.com/en-US/community/developer/rules
I obviously don't know the whole picture here, but I see the purchase of Mojang as a strategic move to strengthen the Xbox One platform. They're banking on Minecraft being a strong property for the next few years; they could easily sell a few hundred thousand units holiday season 2015 if they have a exclusivity on Minecraft 2.
Translation: MS hasn't killed them yet, but probably will soon.
I would offer an educated guess that Minecraft is/was the single most valuable indie game IP outside of actual game sales.