There’s a lot of nonsense masquerading as analysis out there about Microsoft’s $2.5 billion Mojang game studio purchase (and by proxy, Minecraft). So here’s some nonsense by design: Conan’s take on the multi-billion dollar deal.
Microsoft shoveled out a mountain range’s worth of cash for the formerly independent Swedish studio: $2.5 billion. An exorbitant amount, you might say, and half a billion higher than the sum pegged by all the (erroneous) reports that surfaced in the lead-up to the official announcement.
Redmond confirmed the deal in an Xbox Wire video and press release, while Mojang co-founder Markus “Notch” Persson, wrote separately that he was leaving the company along with the studio’s two other founders, Jakob Porsér and Carl Manneh.
In June, Persson wrote (joked?) about selling his 70% stake in the company on Twitter.
And in his Pastebin note, Persson explained his desire to disembark from the Minecraft train: “I’ve become a symbol. I don’t want to be a symbol, responsible for something huge that I don’t understand, that I don’t want to work on, that keeps coming back to me. I’m not an entrepreneur. I’m not a CEO. I’m a nerdy computer programmer who likes to have opinions on Twitter.”
Which is all well and good, but that’s why you need a guy like Conan to come along to give you the real story.
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Write to Matt Peckham at matt.peckham@time.com