Minecraft Maker Notch Clarifies 'Mojang to Close' Story

Markus 'Notch' Persson was profiled in once hip Rolling Stone magazine recently. Standard stuff, a bit of history, personal stuff about his dead father and grief, but also a quote about closing Mojang, the company he founded and which makes Minecraft.

Here's the quote: "Hopefully, we are going to keep making money at Mojang, but if we don't, that's fine," he says. "We just have 10 fun years, and then, the last year, we'd say to our employees, 'If we don't make any money this year, Mojang is going to be dead.  So you might want to look for new jobs.'"

It all sounds too easy. But when I ask Persson if all this casual talk is a front, to take the pressure off himself, he confesses. "You're absolutely correct," he says. "I think the only way I could make something fun and big is if I don't expect it to be."

This has lead to some confusion, stoked by media, about closing Zynga. So, let's let Notch clarify.

That article is weirdly angled. I meant we're saving money so that from the day we don't make a profit, we'll survive another ten years.

— Markus Persson (@notch) May 9, 2014

And I don't see how we'd stop making money any time soon at the rate things are going..

— Markus Persson (@notch) May 9, 2014

So basically, we've got money saved to have ten more years to come up with a new project, without making a single cent in that time.

— Markus Persson (@notch) May 9, 2014

See also Rolling Stone