Microsoft is reportedly in discussions to buy Mojang, the Swedish games studio behind the multimillion-selling building game, Minecraft.
The Wall Street Journal has spoken to a source who claims the deal could be tied up as early as next week, for a figure in the region of $2bn.
With over 100 million users worldwide, Minecraft has risen from indie obscurity to huge success since its launch in November 2011. The game, which allows players to construct their own buildings out a variety of virtual materials, is available on PC, consoles and smartphones. Last year Mojang, currently a privately owned company, made revenues of $326m, the vast majority from Minecraft.
The studio’s founder, Markus “Notch” Perrson, has previously rejected attempts to buy the company. In 2011 games-publisher Electronic Arts is said to have made a bid. However, it could be that the developer, which employs just 40 people, would like to release itself from management tasks to concentrate on creating games. In June, there was controversy in the Minecraft community when Mojang tried to enforce rules about how server providers could monetise the game.
Although originally a PC game, Minecraft has been a huge hit on the Xbox 360 selling over 12 million copies. Buying Mojang and securing exclusive console access to further updates would provide Microsoft with a strong weapon in the sales battle with Sony’s PlayStation 4 machine. It would also doubtless lead to the game’s availability on Microsoft smartphones and smoother compliance with Windows 8 PCs. In 2012, Perrson said he’d rather not have the game on the operating system where it would support what he saw as a more restrictive and controlling Windows environment.
There is no official word from either Mojang or Microsoft at this point.
