Microsoft Officially Acquires Minecraft Developer Mojang

It’s official: Microsoft now owns the development studio that created Minecraft: Mojang. It was officially announced by Microsoft in a press release this morning, purchasing the studio for $2.5 billion. This is in conjunction with what was reported by Reuters last week.

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Interesting enough, the press release states that Microsoft intends to keep Minecraft available “across all the platforms on which it is available today: PC, iOS, Android, Xbox and PlayStation.” That means that the relatively-just-released versions on the PS4, PS3 and PS Vita will likely continue to get support for at least the near future. It also means that if you own Minecraft on PlayStation or were planning on picking it up on one of Sony’s devices, that you shouldn’t worry about support or playability suddenly dropping due to this acquisition.

Mojang, the studio in question being purchased, have also provided their thoughts on the acquisition on their blog, trying to anticipate questions to answer themselves. While being written by Owen, he’s made it clear that Notch “doesn’t want the responsibility of owning a company of such global significance.” Ultimately, the co-founders in Notch, Carl, and Jakob are leaving, with no further substantial announcements currently on hand. Jens Bergensten is still the lead designer for Minecraft for the foreseeable future, as well.

Markus “Notch” Persson wrote his thoughts on his own website (which is timing out due to many requests at press time, with Notch facilitating his own Pastebin).

"I was at home with a bad cold a couple of weeks ago when the internet exploded with hate against me over some kind of EULA situation that I had nothing to do with. I was confused. I didn’t understand. I tweeted this in frustration. Later on, I watched the This is Phil Fish video on YouTube and started to realize I didn’t have the connection to my fans I thought I had. I’ve become a symbol [for Minecraft]. I don’t want to be a symbol, responsible for something huge that I don’t understand, that I don’t want to work on, that keeps coming back to me. I’m not an entrepreneur. I’m not a CEO. I’m a nerdy computer programmer who likes to have opinions on Twitter.As soon as this deal is finalized, I will leave Mojang and go back to doing Ludum Dares and small web experiments. If I ever accidentally make something that seems to gain traction, I’ll probably abandon it immediately."

He goes on further to sum up exactly why he made this deal in two short sentences:

"It’s not about the money. It’s about my sanity."

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