(Newswire.net — September 16, 2014) — Now Mojang’s co-founders are choosing a quieter life, and no-one can begrudge them that.
Minecraft has grown from a simple game to a project of monumental significance and has become far too massive and mainstream for a small studio like Mojang to be the caretakers of it.
So, it makes perfect sense that a mega-company like Microsoft would buy it.
However, Microsoft might have a good track record from Mojang’s perspective, but they don’t by almost any other measure. Games for Windows Live was and still is an awful piece of software. They’ve been famously bad at dealing with smaller indie studios in the past.
Is the game going to change? Will we still be able to make videos, mods, awesome builds, and all the cool stuff we’ve created over the past few years?
Minecraft will continue to evolve, says developers, just like it has since the start of development. They don’t know specific plans for Minecraft’s future yet, but they do know that everyone involved wants the community to grow and become even more amazing than it’s ever been. Stopping players making cool stuff is not in anyone’s interests.
Minecraft has flourished thanks to community creativity, but let’s not underestimate the importance of Mojang’s thoughtful curation in enabling that. Today Minecraft still only costs $30 with no microtransactions or subscription fees. You can buy plenty of merch, of course, but it’s external to the Minecraft platform. No features were locked off.
However, not all PC gamers are enthusiastic about the transfer.
“There’s a part of me that’s surprised. There’s a part of me that’s not surprised.” said Phil Savage.
There are whole businesses built on the existence of the game, and—however legitimate their business practices—they were going to fight any possible restrictions. “I’m not sure Mojang were fully prepared for how fierce that fight became.” the gamer said.
To be blunt, Microsoft doesn’t care. They’ve got the infrastructure to effectively manage and police an empire as vast and sprawling as Minecraft. At the same time, everything they do—especially in games—is defined by a preference for closed systems.