It Only Took One Tweet for Microsoft to Buy Minecraft

Minecraft has been one of the most successful games this decade and by far the most impressive startup. The creator, Markus ‘Notch’ Persson, has now been honored for his accomplishments by a cover story in Forbes magazine. The article reveals a couple interesting things about Notch and among them, that it only took a single tweet from him for Microsoft to purchase his share of Mojang, the original company behind Minecraft.

Anyone want to buy my share of Mojang so I can move on with my life? Getting hate for trying to do the right thing is not my gig.

— Notch (@notch) June 17, 2014

Notch needed a change of scenery and on June 6th last year he tweeted that he felt exhausted, asking if anyone wanted his share of the company. It only took a couple of minutes before Microsoft was on the phone asking if he was being serious. Microsoft wasn’t the only one interested in the IP, other companies such as Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts also showed their interest.

The story isn’t all positive and Notch wasn’t happy how his after-Minecraft life was portrayed. There is the suggestion that he now spends his days running up $180,000 bar bills at Swedish nightclubs. Notch went to his favorite medium, Twitter, to deny this in a series of tweets.

Swedish newspapers copy and paste from the Forbes thing, with the headline "I'm dedicated to partying my money away". Oh lordy.

— Notch (@notch) March 4, 2015

There are good journalists out there, presumably. But a lot of them don't give a flying duck about the truth, they just wanna sell copies.

— Notch (@notch) March 4, 2015

He finished off with a remark to his fortune and that it would be seriously hard to party away more money than he makes just in interests.

Also, and this sounds like bragging, but I'd have to party REALLY DUCKING HARD to keep up with the interest, so it's not a viable option.

— Notch (@notch) March 4, 2015

Thanks to Forbes for providing us with this information