A rumor recently popped up that Microsoft was looking to purchase Mojang AB, the developer of the popular sandbox game Minecraft, for an eye-watering $2 billion. Not only this, Markus “Notch” Persson will also take home a gargantuan $1.4 billion paycheque as per his 70% ownership stake in the company.
Whilst a lot of non-gamers and industry fanatics stare in awe over the massive valuation of the company - which has garnered a reported $290 million in revenue spread across 54 million copies sold worldwide - most diehard, or even passive fans of their number one hit have taken to social media to express their dismay at these latest reports.
Let’s look at it from Mojang’s point of view.
One of the unique selling points of Minecraft is its constant updates. Should Microsoft go ahead with this purchase, the chances of them removing all copies of the game from all platforms aside from their own are very small, and given the fact that they’ve hardly been the soup du jour among the gaming community in recent years, such a maneuver would surely be commercial suicide, even if only temporarily.
However, they may proceed with only releasing future updates on their own ecosystem, leaving out other platforms to survive with older and less exciting versions of the game, with perhaps the occasional and infrequent update. Obviously from the point of view of non-PC and Xbox gamers this is quite an annoying ordeal, but for Microsoft it must be a fantastic business model and an exciting prospect. Minecraft is huge on consoles, and the prospect of MS leveraging that popularity to bolster the ailing Xbox One must be tempting indeed for the Redmond giant.
Minecraft has surpassed anyone’s imagination, let alone its creator’s, in that it has risen to become one of the highest-selling games of all time in a relatively short timeframe. With that comes an extremely dedicated fanbase who in some cases would go to the extremes of buying a new console for the sole purpose of playing Minecraft. More Xbox consoles being bought means more profit for Microsoft, and the potential of catching up with the sales advantage currently enjoyed by Sony’s PlayStation 4.
Another trend that would keep this going is the desire people have to own the latest updates and the most recent features, which can be seen most keenly in the almost parodical fervor surrounding any product launch by Apple. Microsoft would therefore continue the releasing of (possibly more commercialised) updates on their own consoles, forcing some of these desire-filled players to switch platforms.
Arguably the biggest feature of Minecraft though is its community. Hundreds of thousands of maps have been shared, millions of skins and countless videos uploaded, all of which combine to make the game’s fanbase a force to be reckoned with. To put it simply: Microsoft pisses them off at their peril. The Minecraft community could make or break the long-term success of any potential deal, and Microsoft will be seeking to court them if these rumors are indeed true.
One reason behind the community being so vociferous in its support of Minecraft could be that the game was created by a single man, and has since developed into a global phenomenon all from the desk of an indie developer surpassing the likes of A-list games like Call of Duty and Halo. For Minecraft to lose that charm and to become part of an ever-growing portfolio from one of the world’s biggest corporations - in other words, to sell out - would be a catastrophe in the eyes of many. Minecraft might be a phenomenon, but it was one built on the back of the community - not through the chequebooks of the ad men.
Most of the younger players may not understand what is going on, but for those of us who have been playing it for two or more years, as well as the hardcore communities on sites like Reddit and Twitch, this could mean the end of Minecraft, it would become part of our games libraries and sit there until one day we decide to maybe venture back into it.
But at the end of the day, these are two businesses with similar interests, and it’s up to them how they spend their money or accept the money of others. Yes, it could mean the end of a community - but it could also mean the start of something new and fresh.
What many might claim to be the potential death of Minecraft could, in fact, secure its future.
Oliver McQuitty
@oliverfrenchie
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