Markus Persson is getting back into game development.
By Tyler Fischer
Markus Persson — also known as Notch — has announced ‘Minecraft 2’. While the Minecraft IP is owned by Microsoft, which itself owns Mojang Studios, the studio behind Minecraft, they don’t own the idea or the concept of Minecraft. Further, Markus Persson no longer works at Mojang Studios, a company he founded and sold to Microsoft to 2014, which in turn made the Swedish games designer a billionaire. In other words, there is nothing stopping Persson from making a spiritual successor to Minecraft, which is exactly what he’s doing, according to a new post on social media platform X.
Right now, there are no details on the game nor is there any accompanying media. And that’s because the decision to make the game was just made following a poll on X where Persson asjed his 3.6 million followers if they rather see him make Minecraft 2 or another game, Uncursing Potions, which he describes as similar to Stardew Valley. Of course, Minecraft 2 won the poll.
“I basically announced Minecraft 2,” writes Persson on X. “I thought that maybe people ACTUALLY do want me to make another game that’s super similar to the first one, and I’m loving working on games again. I don’t super duper care exactly which game I make first (or even if I make more), but I do know I’m making one, so I figured I’d absolutely be willing to give it an honest shot in the form of a spiritual successor to Minecraft and put up a poll about it.”
Persson continues: “My intentions are to be clear and honest about it, saying that spiritual successors are usually kind of… you know… washed up. Tragic. The things I’m fearing my next game is going to be anyway and try to push myself to avoid. So why not do the thing that people DO want and are willing to give me, somehow, even MORE cash for. I intend for the money to the spent for good, but my god have I learned I fail a lot. Winning is failing until you make yourself succeed.”
The soft announcement is capped by warning fans he will not just be ripping off Minecraft: “Oh and I also very much value being a man of my word, so I also intend to do this in a way that in no way tried to sneakily infringe on the incredible work the Mojang team is doing and that Microsoft is successfully doing the Microsoft shittification about.
And I respect them for doing that. It’s their job. And they, from what I understand, let the studio do things their way, which seems very fair to me.”
What will come next, remains to be seen. Persson obviously has the resources to do just about anything he wants, but it sounds like this will be a solo effort, or at least nothing large scale.
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