http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/9/6128759/microsoft-said-to-be-buying-the-maker-of-minecraft-for-2-billion

Not sure how I feel about this.

I'll wait before I voice my judgement.

But with my personal experiences with Microsoft, I'm going to say this is a bad thing.

I just hope they leave Minecraft alone and let the current team work on it. That way, Minecraft isn't ruined.

I think this is a great thing to be honest and a smart move by Microsoft. Mojang is so understaffed (considering how popular the game is) which is just ridiculous considering how much money they make off of Minecraft. I don't really care who buys Mojang though, I just think it needs to be bought out by someone.

legacyme3 : Unless you play Minecraft on the PS3 or PS4 (which I doubt), this shouldn't affect you.

Davideo7 :

It "shouldn't" affect me. That's how it should be.

But until we see exactly Microsoft's involvement, we can't be sure.

If Microsoft buying Mojang and thus, Minecraft "does" affect me, it will almost certainly be for the worse, given the quality of the products they get their hands on.

In short, if they let Mojang continue to do their thing, this should be fine, as it is just resource allocation. If they insist on getting more involved, then things probably won't be fine.

Raw deal for Sony gamers though, almost certainly hurts people who bought a PS3/4 with the intention of playing Minecraft on consoles (which I think is a mess anyways)

legacyme3 : Don't forget about Apple users as well, because that can also hurt people that bought Minecraft for their Mac computers and/or bought Minecraft on their iOS devices

This is kinda bad by my point of view as well, because why I said that, I 100% agree with Leggy, I in fact do play Minecraft on the PlayStation 3 and this will have major issues with not just Sony Minecraft players, but also Apple Minecraft players and this might hurt Mojang more than help.

Just think about it, these are the devices that Mojang uses that Microsoft are rivals with...

PlayStation 3, 4, & Vita (Sony)
All Mac computers (Apple)
All iOS devices (Apple)


To my opinion, Mojang really need to watch what they do a deal with, if they go with Microsoft, they will lose half of their customers (since half of them plays the above things I mentioned), and that will be bad for their business.

The problem isn't going to be for the "mainstream gamers" but for the people who make mods or do youtube videos and the like. That is part of what has made the game so great and Microsoft will kill all of that.

If Microsoft buys Minecraft maybe Minecraft would work better on Windows 8/8.1 (if they plan on working on it after its bought)...there was some problems people been having with minecraft on windows 8. Even im having a problem getting minecradt too work.

Lets hope Microsoft doesnt ruin the good name of Minecraft.

Hopefully these are just wild rumors, because it doesn't seem like such a great idea.

The company only has 1 well known IP, that's already on its competitors, selling faster on the PS4 version than the Xbox One version, and is most dominant on the PC.

It's already ended its sales period in terms of popularity on the consoles it was out for before, and there's not really much they can do with it anymore aside from charging people for updates.

Which I really don't like the idea of, but I wouldn't put it past Microsoft.

Anyways, the idea of Microsoft purchasing a company like that for 2 billion dollars is fairly outlandish.

That's not even getting to the idea of what would happen to the modding community.

I own Minecraft on all platforms but PC right now, and I hope to get it on Vita when it comes out (It's free). Having the full experience in your pocket would be a really great thing to have.

Considering Microsoft IS XBOX and PC, I can see them making a ton of changes to the game on both platforms. They aren't going to spend that much money to only pull in an extra 100 million a year, so Microsoft will most likely do as much as they can to pull in even more money, and what better time to buy than after the newest update when even more people will be playing, and for longer amounts of time?


I can realistically see a few changes that Microsoft may make to the games, the first being simply ads, I believe that especially on the PC version, that instead of just showing the logos when the game starts up, a few banner ads may be on the screen before the game starts. Also, I can easily see an official Microsoft server, where like on most servers, players can buy in game supplies for money. 

Though, I don't nessicarily agree with the server because it's done too much, there are so many servers that Microsoft would have to go above and beyond for more people to choose their server.

I really don't like it.
But I see it the same as Leggy. There may come some changes that aren't that good, but we'll have to wait and hope.

This might be the death of the good Minecraft or Microsoft will lead to a better Minecraft, who knows?

Still, I'm skeptic about how this will turn out.

surprising acquisition.
I doubt they plan to stifle the game, I think this is more about diverging their market and acquiring a new means of market influence, through the users of mine craft.
Im not sure what their long term expectations with this are. I suspect they are worried at the number of large companies like google, going after businesses like twitch. Most of the big companys are diverging now and Microsoft has been losing market share in its primary business.

I imagine most if any, changes made will be mostly beneficial to the consumer.
It doesent really effect me though, iv never even played mine craft.

I will get annoyed if I start seeing ads while I'm playing, that's for sure.

But I also see this as added stability for the game.

I could see Microsoft earning more money by hosting servers, but I'm hoping there will be little to no change in actual gameplay.

this IS very bad, microsoft has done this same thing before, and they ruined the people that they bout from nintendo. Rare. banjo threee will never be a thing because of microsoft, and they will do the same to minecraft. some of my favorite dreams i burn people who work at microsoft for there crappy xbox and windows 8, i hope this is not another reason to want to kill them all,

I know this might be a shocker, but I will announce this in case that Microsoft does in fact buy Mojang, I will resign from being the Minecraft server manager, because to be honest, I am an anti-Xbox and pretty much an anti-Microsoft person to (bad enough using Windows).

After looking at comments on a few sites like IGN and all them, they are filled with ignorant people, they want the idea because Notch will get "2 billion dollars". And I tell myself, you care about them stuffing their pockets and not caring about their people, like really? Those ignorant people want to see Mojang to stab all the Sony and Apple users in the back for 2 billion dollars.

But hey, according to those ignorant people, it's 2 billion dollars.

Though I'm not a fan of the proposed sale...

Penny Arcade has a good and fair take on it.



The following below is from Tycho's (one of the people involved with PA) musings on the comic, which I think best describes how I'm beginning to feel about this.

"I guess we’ll find out to what extent this selling Minecraft stuff is real, or which parts of it are real, in the next few days. I saw Notch at PAX once, years ago, a fact that has cemented my role as Cool Dad for eternity with my son and his fellows. The last time I said anything to Notch was after he was dealing with the fallout from the EULA changes, to offer words of comfort from someone who has experience being Internet Satan. I think that had to get tiring for him. I think doing the best you can, the best that can be expected of any finite entity, and still getting ****ed in the eye-hole is a hard business.

Two billion dollars, the number they’re throwing around, isn’t really money anymore. It has a Dynastic quality. Two billion dollars might as well be The Spice they talk about in Dune. I would love to have that! I know exactly what I’d do. But it’s only partially the Product that is being purchased, only partly the growing services platform. If you don’t hang around with Children Of A Certain Age, you might not know exactly what is being bought here. They’re functionally purchasing a generation. Two billion dollars starts to look like a steal.

People are worried that this means Minecraft won’t exist anywhere but the PC or the Xbox, which is reasonable I think, but everyone who would be making those kinds of decisions over there is still relatively new to their job. They’re in a position to show that This Is A Different Microsoft than the monolithic, witless Ettin that crashed around in The Nineties and what are sometimes called The Oughts. I think that Sun Tzu would say that True Victory means being indispensable on your competitor’s platforms. It’s completely possible to do this right, if they want to."

All told, this is a business move for everyone involved, and while this could be absolutely terrible, both companies are in a position to make this NOT terrible.

Could you imagine Microsoft permitting Minecraft to continue to be sold and updated on other consoles? To be able to say that one of the best selling games on a rival platform is a game that you technically own the rights to? It's the sort of thing that could be realistic in the coming future.

What we thought we knew about console exclusivity could eventually die out, and actually give way to competition over the hardware, and not the software, since eventually all things will be compatible with all things.

That's purely speculative, and wistful thinking on my part. But suddenly this move starts to make me think what it could mean for things other than Minecraft and Mojang, and what it means going forward for gaming as a whole.

This isn't Rare being bought out. Rare had a couple of nice titles, but they never had as big a hold on a generation of people as Mojang presently does. This is a legitimately large company that a majority of people know about and a good deal of people care about.

Microsoft can't afford to mess this up if that's the case. This could be a good thing. It could force Microsoft to do right by the gamers for once.

Let me just say, from what I've heard, M$ plans to keep and support the game on all platforms, and let the current team continue work on the game. But at any rate, I didn't care for pocket/PS360 edition, and as long as we don't delete the current server/client software as it is right now, It shouldn't be a problem.

And for the one worried about Mac users, All PC (Mac included) use the same exact version, the game is written 100% in java, which means even if M$ wanted to, they can't stop Mac version (well they could techniclly, but I don't think they would.

But yes, I agree that M$ should't get their hands on Minecraft, but for this reason. We may have to start paying for updates. Why? Mojang themselves said a long time ago (back in the betas) that after 1.0, they can't garentee free updates for legal reasons (which hasen't been a problem, but M$ may still abuse it). That is what I'm worried about.

And, just to put it out there, this will make it even more fun to figure out who owns bukkit.

It's official. Microsoft is buying Mojang for $2.5 BILLION dollars.

Basically, Notch is the majority shareholder of Mojang. He's decided that the responsibility of owning Mojang, and managing Minecraft, is too much for him. He wants to move on to new pastures, basically.

According to the article I linked, it doesn't sound like much will change. Microsoft will continue development on PS3/4 and mobile, and they will hire in most (if not all) Mojang employees. I'm glad I didn't spend $20 just to have the PS3 version canceled, lol. Of course, we can't anticipate if Sony will block Minecraft from it's devices, but it sounds promising for Sony and Mobile users.

Finally, according to the article, Microsoft plans to continue to allow youtubers to continue to create content as they have been based off of Minecraft. Honestly, it sounds like almost nothing will be changing.

Thoughts?

mrfe : That would be terrible if Sony ended up blocking Minecraft, which they can do. However would I play the game on my Vita if they end up canceling the game after it's made but before they even start selling it?

As I had mentioned before, there are many things that Microsift can now do as a way to make a ton more money off of the game, but now with access to more fund and a heck of a lot more people, a lot more can be done for the game that could make it better, and if they do only good changes, then I would be happy.

mrfe : I think people are just getting paranoid and want something to rant about, there's no reason for Microsoft to do anything to harm the game, they would'nt invest that kind of money if they didn't know what they were doing. Xbox has gained bad reputation over the past few years but now that Phil Spencer is ahead of the Xbox division, they've been on the road of redemption and I've only been seeing good things since and I'm sure we'll only see good things from here on out as well.

IgorBird122 : Sorry to hear about you resigning from the server, I'll go ahead and remove your admin powers.