Minecraft to be Bought out by Microsoft

Did you hear the news? Mojang, the company that makes Minecraft, is under final negotiations to be bought by Microsoft. Here are a few articles that explain it pretty well if you don’t know already:

The Wall Street Journal:

Bloomberg:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-09/microsoft-said-near-2-billion-deal-for-minecraft-maker.html

Apparently, Microsoft is dropping 2 billion dollars for Mojang. I personally hope that it will take the route of Twitch with Amazon, where Amazon promised Twitch they wouldn’t mess with anything on the website. My nightmare is “Oh, look! You found some diamonds? That’d be seven Microsoft Points per block!”

What do you guys think?

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I think we need to accept the days of quality from any company with a big budget are over. We are destined to watch the things we love that were created as something special gobbeled up and monetized over and over again. Que Minecraft 2, Minecraft pay barriers, minecraft expansions, then Mojang being shut down, the devs spinning off a new company that is essentially the old company, then doing something special again but without the same luster becuase subconsciosly they know if they repeat minecraft success it will just be destroyed again, so they subconsciously sabotage it.

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wow… quite the morbid outlook! I’m not saying the speculation is wrong, mind you… just morbid… :smile:

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Yea sorry about that. If anyone can tell me a single studio Microsoft has acquired that it didn’t gut and then shut down I will happily reverse my opinion.

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I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry. The fact is, I’m been disappointed with Mojang for a good long while now, and maybe it’d be better if a team of professionals were working on it. Can Microsoft really make Minecraft any worse? On the other hand, I am still monumentally pissed at Microsoft for what they did to Bungie, and what 343 has done to Halo.

The thing that’s most hilarious to me is the price. $2 billion? With a B? Not in my wildest dreams could I imagine Mojang is worth that much money. If I owned any Microsoft stock, I’d be selling now. Buying Minecraft isn’t going to sell XBones or Windows 8. All I can figure is Microsoft wants to turn Minecraft into a massive merchandising opportunity, but even then I don’t see Microsoft recouping their losses, especially since there’s likely to be a big fan backlash if Mojang “sells out”.

I can understand why a lot of people would be devastated by this news. I sympathize, but I can’t blame Notch for selling, if in fact he does. If I sat down in a meeting with some big company, and they offered me billions for my entire life’s intellectual property, I’d smile very politely, ask them to repeat the number, and then try to get the deal done as soon as possible. Let’s say after taxes, and splitting the price between various other people in the company, Notch stands to have many hundreds of millions of dollars by the end of this. With that sort of money, he can do anything at all. He can wait for his contract to run out, and start a new company. He can buy an island and live in complete luxury for the rest of his days. Some might call it greed, but I’d call it total freedom.

Meanwhile, there’s lots of Minecraft clones out there, and games sort of similar to Minecraft that people can switch to, if Microsoft really screws it up. Many of those games might actually be better. I think a Microsoft-owned Minecraft opens up a niche for some enterprising indie developer to really create a breakout hit. Stonehearth, for example, might end up getting a lot more players once the game progresses a bit more.

So really I’m just laughing and shaking my head at Microsoft’s newest potential blunder. I do pity all the folks still playing Minecraft, but I find I just don’t have the patience anymore for its developers. Them “selling out” would just be another in a long line of community betrayals.

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I have my faith in them. They have made quite a few awesome gaming related stuff in the past.

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Yeh microsoft actually is not bad as a buyer, it’d give mojang more funds! Microsoft actually rarely interferes with games, they just want to make more money xD
Perhaps like this the minecraft realsm will finally have some power behind them :wink:

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Age of Empires <3 .

Also, is it me, or didn’t Bungie have really bad issues WRT sticking to timetables, to the point where Microsoft had to give them a good hard kick up the backside to get one of the Halo games released?


TBH, I’m not really worried about this. Firstly, as regards Minecraft itself, it’s the goose that lays the golden egg - Microsoft would be terminally stupid to screw it up. On the other hand, they could easily make millions (billions?) from it simply by letting the dev team carry on whilst they use Microsoft muscle to push new toys, marketing for it, etc.

Additionally, it means we may actually see some decent coding in MC for once - because let’s face it, Minecraft is not the best coded game out there :stuck_out_tongue: .

As for a Minecraft 2, or Minecraft: The Deep Nether expansion pack or w/e? Who knows. If I had to guess, I’d say that Minecraft won’t see any paid-for DLC/expansions/etc, though maybe a sequel will. On the other hand, Minecraft could easily be kept going for years, so even if Minecraft 2 is announced for £59.99 for X-Box, and £29.99 for PC 6 months later, with a dozen £9.99 DLC packs to follow… we’ll still all be playing the original game :wink: .

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Well, this whole forced to stick to timetables thing resulted in arguably the worst of the Bungie-made Halos. I would much rather a game gets made properly, even if it takes a little bit more time.

Absolutely.

Love AoE,

and to me its not that big a problem do to me playing older versions of MC and all with mods lol

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People buy Minecraft like it was going out of style, there’s an army of modders that keep the game interesting for free, even more people creating videos and more publicity - and all this without Mojang spending one cent. I would even go as far as saying that they really neglected the community in the past… how many years ago have they announced a modding API now?

I doubt that Microsoft would promote Minecraft or even give it “more funding”. Minecraft doesn’t need more funding, I would guess that they have all the funding that they need for the moment. As others have said, there is little for Microsoft to gain: Certainly Minecraft doesn’t have any ground-breaking technology, nor does it hold any patents or other interesting rights. It’s got a huge, rather childish community that is quite bipolar and rather emotional; I’m not sure how they will accept that either.

Then again, I don’t think Microsoft cares a lot about its image, nor does it have to.

Of course Mojang is more than Minecraft, but I honestly can’t imagine any of these projects seriously being anything interesting either. Unless Microsoft wants to make its own trading card game, of course.

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Which Halo was the worst?

Weren’t Bungie in somewhat financial trouble prior to Microsoft acquiring them?

I think you should probably name those it has acquired, gutted, and then shut down. It has some great studios under its belt, which studios do you feel have genuinely closed due to the work of Microsoft and not due to other circumstances?

The only studios I can think of that Microsoft have acquired and that you could possibly argue have produced somewhat lacklustre games in recent years are Lionhead and Rare. But the golden day of Rare is long gone, and that’s not Microsoft’s fault.

In what ways? I felt that the Halo 4 storyline was a a really solid entry to the series, the multiplayer I can agree was the worst entry in the series, but I put that down to an attempt to fit in with the CoD/BF crowd, here’s hoping Halo 5 will go back to its roots.

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Halo 2 was basically unfinished when it shipped. That’s what I’m referring to. I personally enjoyed it, but compared to the other Halos put out by Bungie, it is pretty weak and the story ends very abruptly, and that’s entirely Microsoft’s fault for forcing a schedule.

As for 343, I found Halo 4’s storyline totally incomprehensible. Multiplayer was awful, as you say. They changed the iconic sounds of the game, completely, making the game basically unrecognizable as a Halo game and completely removing any sort of immersion you’d normally get.

Anyway, they killed it for me. I’m not going to buy any future Halos. I have no faith in 343.

i have no opinion on MSFT’s involvement with the Halo franchise (never played the series… dont judge me!)…

i am however very curious about the underlying intent for purchasing Mojang (as are most, i’m sure)… i just cant find a decent business justification for the purchase… i mean, aside from the license to print more money… :confused:

Join the club :slight_smile: .

That is a valid business justification :stuck_out_tongue: .

But seriously, I’m sure Microsoft can use Minecraft for far more tie-in stuff than Mojang could. Just think about the possibly toys etc with Microsoft backing the brand.

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Personally, Mojang is probably a bit of a one trick pony. Minecraft is probably their one breakout game, released at the perfect time during the perfect circumstances. Microsoft paid 2 billion dollars for Minecraft, not for the games that Mojang is going to produce. The milking ability for Minecraft is absolutely colossal, and that’s why Microsoft is paying so much.

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I think this is Notch’s way out. It has been apparent from his tweets over the last year that he is becoming increasingly more irritated with the semantics of owning a company, and the backlash of his player base. Minecraft was a huge success but it seems that Notch wanted more and he really didn’t get it… he got divorced, his other games were failures, he handed over development to another member of the team, etc.

This was a long time in the making, and based just on how he’s been in public over the last year I assumed he was going to quit soon as he seems very dissatisfied with things as they are now. This buyout coming is just a means for him to at least capitalize on his leaving. I honestly think he’ll probably take a rather long hiatus before you hear about him again and when he does emerge I think it will be more as a consultant and backer rather than forming another company.

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a related, if fairly generic, article on “why” MSFT is making this play:

:+1:

I notice now that there is a lot of hate and anger directed towards Notch and Mojang. I find all this pretty interesting, because the majority of the mythology which surrounds Notch has been compounded by a fandom and not entirely of his own making. You can’t deny that Notch waltzed into the industry at a pinnacle point and I think this has lead to an illusion that he is some sort of great hero that the bards will sing of for decades to come.

The reality isn’t so cut and dry. He did accomplish a great deal and proved many things like indie games can be taken seriously, indie games can be extremely lucrative, that an early access model does work, and more importantly developer involvement with the player base is not only a great tool… it can thrust you into legendary status. With that a hero was born, and Notch kept up a pretty positive attitude for the majority of the time he was in the lime light. He was a large proponent of net neutrality, he sympathized with those who pirate games, and openly criticized the industry he was in…

There was nothing not to like about him, and suddenly when his interest in minecraft drifted away and he gave up the position of lead dev on the project things… he suddenly became a lot more human. Frustrations, stresses, disappointments and all the other compounded issues with being an Internet celebrity/ developer/ business owner all weighed heavily. Throw in a few major disappointments and not only does he now look less like the projected hero the mythology created but he looks down right human with flaws and everything!

At this point his fandom is quickly becoming a mob and I think this is the very sort of thing which is making him walk away from the industry. People placed him far too high up on a pedestal, and he only had further to fall once the rose glasses were removed. It is a shame because I still find him a very likable fellow, and I don’t think people should be tearing at him like they are. I can see why people were allured by the mystique created around him but to be honest I feel like most people forgot he was a human being.

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I’m just glad he sold it to Microsoft, not EA :wink:!

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