Microsoft Purchases Minecraft Developer Mojang For $2.5 Billion!

Mojang has confirmed it's being sold to Microsoft for $2.5 billion.

The news was confirmed on the developer's official site, in which it also went into some of the reasons for the decision. As has previously been discussed, a large part of it centers on founder Markus ‘Notch’ Persson growing tired of working for such a big organisation. He and the two other founders, Carl and Jakob are all leaving the company following the deal.

"Minecraft has grown from a simple game to a project of monumental significance. Though we’re massively proud of what Minecraft has become, it was never Notch’s intention for it to get this big," a statement reads. "As you might already know, Notch is the creator of Minecraft and the majority shareholder at Mojang. He’s decided that he doesn’t want the responsibility of owning a company of such global significance. Over the past few years he’s made attempts to work on smaller projects, but the pressure of owning Minecraft became too much for him to handle. The only option was to sell Mojang. He’ll continue to do cool stuff though. Don’t worry about that.

"There are only a handful of potential buyers with the resources to grow Minecraft on a scale that it deserves. We’ve worked closely with Microsoft since 2012, and have been impressed by their continued dedication to our game and its development. We’re confident that Minecraft will continue to grow in an awesome way."

As had been reported, the PC, Mac, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, Vita, iOS, and Android editions will continue to be supported and developed as they currently are, despite the deal. While the blogpost promises things will continue to develop, it's unlikely to stop players from making videos, mods or anything else that makes Minecraft so special today. The post concludes by explaining its unclear where this leaves other projects, like Scrolls, but it seems Minecraft is Microsoft's main focus.

Read from Mojang.com: https://mojang.com/