Why Minecraft’s Markus Persson is ‘struggling’ after $2.5bn Microsoft deal

The creator of the building-sim game has cashed in his virtual blocks – and angered fans who held him up as an indie champion standing against the giants of the computer world
  
  

Markus Persson
Markus Persson: 'I'm aware this goes against a lot of what I've said in public.' Photograph: Emma Johansson/Press Association Images Photograph: Emma Johansson/Press Association Images

Name: Markus Persson.

AKA: Notch, Markus Alexei.

Age: 35.

Appearance: Bald, or wearing a hat. At a party or behind a computer screen.

What has he done? He’s a Swedish programmer who invented a game called Minecraft over a weekend in 2009. Now he has sold the company that makes it to Microsoft for $2.5bn (£1.5bn).

Minecraft, yes. The name is familiar. You’re clearly not eight years old.

How can you tell? At this point an eight-year-old would be shouting about being chased by creepers and explaining how you make charcoal in order to create a torch on your crafting table. Plus a few little things in your appearance.

And Microsoft. Remind me, who they are again? Bill Gates, Xbox, annoying paperclip, big in the 1990s, still very rich …

Ah yes. Them. So well done Markus Persson, eh? Sort of. Not everybody is patting him on the back.

How come? Jealousy? Perhaps. But also crossness. You see, Minecraft and Persson hitherto embodied all that was great and pure and noble about computer games. It’s open, like virtual Lego, drawing on the users’ own infinite creativity. In just a few years, they have formed a vast community of mutually supportive hobbyists.

How lovely. Yes, and Persson himself became a champion of small, independent companies and free-spirited game-making.“Got an email from microsoft, wanting to help ‘certify’ minecraft for win 8,” he tweeted in 2012. “I told them to stop trying to ruin the pc as an open platform.”

That’ll tell ’em. Is it just me or do computer people take random stuff really seriously? They do. Indeed, Persson claims the pressure of being the “symbol” of Minecraft, being blamed whenever anything goes wrong, is precisely why he’s selling.

Couldn’t he just put the company in a trust or something? Perhaps he didn’t think of that. “I’m aware this goes against a lot of what I’ve said in public,” he said in a statement. “I have no good response to that. I’m also aware a lot of you were using me as a symbol of some perceived struggle. I’m not. I’m a person, and I’m right there struggling with you.”

Struggling in a billionairey kind of way. Exactly.

Do say: “He’s the thinking man’s Kim Dotcom.”

Don’t say: “Perhaps he can pay people to say he’s not a hypocrite?”

 

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