WSJ: ''Mojang to be bought by Microsoft'
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Liamario
Banned
Plenty of pros and cons for this buyout in this thread. And a lot of it makes sense from either side. There's just one thing that doesn't make sense to me. $2 Billion seems like a ridiculous amount of money to pay for this IP and to be honest, the figure doesn't make much sense to me.
Liamario
Banned
Well I'd imagine at some point, when you have all the money you could possibly need or want, another billion or so isn't going to make much difference to you. Unless of course he plans to set up another business with it.
Handy Fake
Member
Also this. It's all very well looking at the moral and ethical sides of such a deal, especially considering the place Minecraft has in the hearts of gamers - it epitomises freedom of source - but $2 billion is a shitload of wonga.
fvng
Member
An amazingly well crafted argument indeed
pinkurocket
Member
acheron_xl
Member
I guess one of the things that bothers me about this, is that it's not like a startup that's been scrambling for angel investing, then gets a buyer before demonstrating the sustainability of it's business model. Mojang has money. I don't feel there's expertise that Microsoft could offer them that they just couldn't buy themselves. It just feels like Notch wants to unburden himself from his runaway juggernaut instead of seeing it through himself.
Freeman
Banned
I'm impressed by how people are still doubtful of MS incapacity to make good decisions, when was the last time they done something right?
aQuantive, Skype, Rare, Nokia not to mention their products like Surface, every other version of Windows(ME, Vista, 8), Zune,Kin, Xbox One, Kinect, Original Xbox, Windows Phone, Metro/Ribbon interfaces, Bing, MSN Messenger, Internet Explorer.
Usully they play dirty backed by tons of cash and still fail. All they have is a fallback to Windows, Office and their enterprise business. Odds are against them making a good decision.
aQuantive, Skype, Rare, Nokia not to mention their products like Surface, every other version of Windows(ME, Vista, 8), Zune,Kin, Xbox One, Kinect, Original Xbox, Windows Phone, Metro/Ribbon interfaces, Bing, MSN Messenger, Internet Explorer.
Usully they play dirty backed by tons of cash and still fail. All they have is a fallback to Windows, Office and their enterprise business. Odds are against them making a good decision.
I'd buy that.
Actually I'm kidding myself, I'd buy pretty much anything if it's called Minecraft 2.
It's a franchise that makes $300 million a year and is still growing and can move consoles like few others. Is it guaranteed to maintain it's popularity and make them their money back? Of course not, then the price would be even higher.
Compared to other big buyouts like the oculus deal or whatsapp or stock IPOs like King and Zynga this seems to have a lot more substance compared to the price. The surprise here is really that Notch is selling, not the price or that MS wants to buy
Zalusithix
Member
Money is closely related to power... Thus it tends to corrupt people like power does. Even if there's little need for more, the desire for more will still be there. There are those that can resist, but they're the exception and not the rule.
TheExecutive
Member
So what are the moral arguments for or against the sale of Mojong again? Seems fairly amoral to me...
Where did you get 300 million? They posted $129 million USD in profits for 2013.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-03-19-mojang-made-a-USD129-million-profit-in-2013
EDIT: Unless you are talking about revenue?
Handy Fake
Member
Aye, in spite of the moral arguments, I meant.
For $2 billion you could buy lot of other people's morals, you don't need any yourself. Same goes for friends. And kebabs.
Ray Wonder
Founder of the Wounded Tagless Children
It does seem like a ton of money, but the more I think about it, the more I think this could somehow work out. It's the biggest game since tetris, and it might beat that out. A household name like Minecraft carries weight. A guy at my job who is around 50 and doesn't even know what the difference between a Nintendo and Xbox knows what Minecraft is. That's a wide presence. Anything you do with that IP is going to get the attention of millions. Do something amazing with that IP, and that $2 billion is right back in your pocket.
Mengy
wishes it were bannable to say mean things about Marvel
Well, this is just rumor / conjecture / a possibility for now and we have no confirmation of anything either way.
But here is a question I talked to my girlfriend about last night:
If you were in Notch's shoes, and you owned Minecraft and MS approached you with $2 billion to sell it, would you? Or would you decline the offer and retain ownership of the indie game and franchise you had created?
Personally I think I'd turn them down. It's not like Notch isn't rich as fuck already, but he has something that money can't always buy: success. He owns the indie game that turned the world on it's end, and he has dozens of millions of happy customers and an extremely large and active community built up around that game. I mean at what point is enough money enough. Is giving up your dream to the devil worth $2 billion?
But here is a question I talked to my girlfriend about last night:
If you were in Notch's shoes, and you owned Minecraft and MS approached you with $2 billion to sell it, would you? Or would you decline the offer and retain ownership of the indie game and franchise you had created?
Personally I think I'd turn them down. It's not like Notch isn't rich as fuck already, but he has something that money can't always buy: success. He owns the indie game that turned the world on it's end, and he has dozens of millions of happy customers and an extremely large and active community built up around that game. I mean at what point is enough money enough. Is giving up your dream to the devil worth $2 billion?
TheRagnCajun
Member
He saw it through. He's fullfilled the concept of the game far beyond anyone's expectations and fully saturated the market. He's probably getting bored with it and is ready to move on. I can't blame him for taking 2 billion and walking away.
This is a very expensive deal for MS though. They are more or less buying in at the peak of success and value. Its actually very high risk and I'm not sure if MS intends to grow that business far beyond what it is already, or if this is more of a strategic play. If its the former, they have some work to do to get a return of investment in a reasonable time frame.
Eh how is it amoral?
I'm sure the staff isn't very happy about it but they've been given generous bonuses and been treated better than at pretty much any other gaming studio throughout the companies whole existence, so they can't really complain that much. Notch has no obligation to keep that going for eternity.
KiefbladeMaster
Member
Yes, apparently, as he is the one who supposedly initiated the talks.
Notch can use that money to be THE VC of indie games. He could very well just pour that money onto thousand and thousands of indie devs who are dying for funding.
Bolts-n-Rays1109
Banned
Now of this matters because Notch apparently approached MS.
Liamario
Banned
But then I'm saying to myself. Why buy the IP at its peak?! Even if lowers in value in few years, MS is one of the few companies who have the chequebook and interest in it. If they have bought it, I'd imagine they have plans to make another iteration of it. What form will that take? I can only see them destroying it with DLC and restricting mods...maybe I'm wrong :-/
Ray Wonder
Founder of the Wounded Tagless Children
IIRC Notch went to Microsoft.
Because Notch came to them. He's looking to sell, they're entertaining the idea. I can't see them restricting mods. I think it was Notch doing that to the console platforms. IIRC He said in the past that he hates mods because it tarnishes the idea that he built. He would rather people just use texture packs.
We'll see I guess.
yes I'm talking revenue. and out of that another 130M are the licensing fees to Notch for the rights to minecraft which I'd assume is included in this deal, so the actual profits are at least 260M
And what would be the point of an Minecraft 2? I just dont' see it.
Freeman
Banned
Unless he wants to develop Minecraft (it doesn't look like he does) he should just sell it, with the money he can invest on a new studio that will allow him to do much more if he wants. Minecraft is pretty much a finished product as it is, leave it on the hands of the community and cash out. He could become a major publisher and help other people develop their games.
There is no moral issue here, it just would be stupid no to do sell if the 2B$ figure is true. The only reason this became an issue is because of the thing he said when the Oculus sold out.
mentallyinept
Banned
Wait, what? Do you have a link or something for this?
I remember him promoting Jeb to lead Minecraft dev so that he could work on what he wanted. I don't remember him hiring someone to run Mojang itself.
Liamario
Banned
I'd imagine that they'd love another iteration of it. But like someone else said, what form would it take. Pyramids as well as cubes? New materials and crafting items?
Handy Fake
Member
Well, I suppose the stance you take on morality is very subjective. It's hard to quantify anyway.
Some would say the accumulation of wealth is amoral by its very nature, or at least is based inherently on amoral thinking.
But this is for another thread. Or for when we're drunk at 2am in the morning and we've watched as many American Dad!s as is humanly possible.
Liamario
Banned
Would I sell it for 2 billion, yes. Would I sell it to MS for 2 billion, no. I would like to think I'd be so financially comfortable and so protective of something that I created, that companies ala MS would be the last people I'd sell it to. I'd be quicker to release the source code to the public that selling something as creative to MS.
Maybe Notch feels that he is done with Minecraft and doesn't want to be associated with it for the rest of his career? This would be a nice way to send Minecraft off and then focus on something else.
Handy Fake
Member
Think of all the kebabs you can buy though. THINK OF IT.
I don't remember any specific link I think it was either said on his blog and/or wiki at the time, but can take a peek at mojang wiki page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojang
There is pretty much as many mojang Chief *something* Officer as there is devs working on minecraft PC.
I could see some seriously cool things come from a second Minecraft.
For example improvements to graphics such as better water shaders and proper dynamic lighting (they'd have to keep the same art style). More interesting world generation, expand the number of blocks and generally increase the amount of content. Make a proper combat system which isn't shit.
All basic stuff like that which would just be obvious improvements.
They could also go a bit crazy, I was thinking of an idea where they could take advantage of Azure and have a crazy MMO style option where you're on a server with many thousands of players.
You could have shared worlds stored in the cloud so that you wouldn't have to bother hosting your own servers.
They could integrate Project Sparks' koding features and create next gen level redstone.
Add mechanical engineering options to create massive machines.
They could do something mental like add the option to go to space. They could add human NPCs with towns, cities and villages. You could interact with these people, wage war with them or aid them in wars against other cities. They could massively improve the technology improvements to the point that you could move from the medieval era to the modern.
There's a lot of stuff they could do.
mojang pays royalties to notch though, so it wouldn't surprise me if the profit of minecraft is something like 300 million.
mentallyinept
Banned
There it is in black and white... he's not the CEO, he's not involved in the daily running of the company.
So this is purely about money.
After all his bluster about Oculus he does the same thing, only to a worse company.
Wow.
thehillissilent
Member
Those are really good suggestions and I see Microsoft doing a lot of this.
Handy Fake
Member
Bit of maths for you all.
A large doner kebab here in old Blighty costs around or abouts £6, so at the current exchange that's $9.68.
A recent survey said that average large donner kebab weighed about 568g.
So, $2 billion could buy you 103305785.124 large kebabs.
That's 586776859.504 kg of greasy 2am goodness.
That's equivalent to 2875 Statue of Libertys.
I'd sell a leg for that kebab.
A large doner kebab here in old Blighty costs around or abouts £6, so at the current exchange that's $9.68.
A recent survey said that average large donner kebab weighed about 568g.
So, $2 billion could buy you 103305785.124 large kebabs.
That's 586776859.504 kg of greasy 2am goodness.
That's equivalent to 2875 Statue of Libertys.
I'd sell a leg for that kebab.
killer rin
Member
You can bet that first order of business is building a side team to port the entire codebase to C++/.NET while they have a main team work on the Java Version only as long as it takes for the C++/.NET version to be complete before they light the Java version on fire. Not only does it make business sense for them because their whole company knows C++ like the back of its hand, but they dont want to be backing a language they had no involvement in.
..Not to mention by getting off Java, they have room to do sooo much more performance-wise, because lets be honest, Java Sucks.
You're in London I'm guessing? Even when drunk I could find a better deal than £6 for a dodgy donner, but not in London haha! Either way, I'm hungry.
Mengy
wishes it were bannable to say mean things about Marvel
It depends heavily on who is making that Minecraft 2. Jem has some good ideas:
All of that could happen for Minecraft 2 if Mojang made it. However, if MS pays $2,000,000,000 for Minecraft and they make a sequel, these will most likely be the design points of it:
- either exclusive to Xbox or maybe possibly also exclusive to whatever newest version of Windows they are pushing
- only sold through the Microsoft store
- tons of DLC and paid content, including skins and texture packs
- several updates per year sold through the Microsoft store. If you want to keep playing with your friends then you will HAVE to upgrade
- no mod scene or public development at all, only MS addons allowed (sold)
If they pay that much money for it then you can bet your mortgage that they will monetize the ever loving SHIT out of it to get their investment back and to appease the shareholders. And they won't be putting it on competitors consoles or devices. Is the Halo franchise on Playstation? Is it even sold on Microsoft's own Windows platform??? No, they aren't. How much DLC did the latest Forza have in it?
BarrenMind
Member
Sorry if this has been posted. Scoops dug up this delightful old tweet from 2012:
bengraven
Member
I would be up for all of this. I just hope that if there's a new team on MC2 (please keep the Mojang guys) that they understand there has to be a 30/30/30 - survival/creation/redstone.
I don't know, I'm still mad. Trying to wrap my head around this. I understand why Notch did this, though I question why Microsoft, with it's recent history.
I consider myself invested in this game, more so than a fanboy, which makes me very nervous about a company that has made some big recent mistakes, a company known to just let indie or "below their standards" studios go take control of this. I mean, are Cobalt and Scrolls in danger now?
Things like the amount of updates, the cost of those updates, I don't like the idea of MS being involved in. I worry about the things we were promised in alpha, that any "dlc" or "updates" on the PC version will remain free.
I know they're going to demand MC2 start creation immediately and the amount of updates will drop. And of course it's an Xbone exclusive, though I hope they understand beta testing it on PC first worked incredibly well (unless they don't give a shit about player created content).
Notch gets what he wants - money for life to just code games no one will ever see and Minecraft moves on, but...
Hopefully it's a Disney/Marvel thing, not a Microsoft/every studio it ever bought thing.
Handy Fake
Member
The Northeast. We're premium Kebab Eaters up here. Only the best for we Celtic Vikings.
The only time we head out for a bargain meaty greasepocket is 3am when the pubs have shut and we fancy a kerfuffle in the takeaway shop.
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