Quote from CosmicDan»

I had literal lol's @ the replies, wtf is the go there? Are there even any Bukkit developers left now (every second poster is retired staff)?

Microsoft is Officially Buying Mojang

Quote from CosmicDan»

Don't you realize that every time you walk out of the house, a Jumbo Jet could crash into your face? Seriously man, don't let the fear control you. And please don't accuse us of being ignorant and not realising the possible changes because we do, there's no need to get hysterical over it because there's literally nothing we can do about it anyway. Just try and stay calm and positive, instead of letting fear control us and becoming rage...

Just to clarify, Microsoft didn't make Fable or Halo - Lionhead Studios and Bungie did, Microsoft are publishers (they own Lionhead but don't own Bungie) but yeah they do have executive power/direction over Mojang now.

People are posting faster than I can reply, so I'm probably going to stop now. It's really sad to see all the pain so many people are feeling, when nothing has even happened yet. Uncertainty does terrible things to people

Quote from danaphanous»

we'll see, we're in unknown territory now.

On one level I almost feel a little excited, on another a lot of dread. Minecraft is hands-down my favorite game ever and the only one that I intend to play off and on for perpetuity. Even Civilization, my first love, hasn't gotten the same replay value or affection, minecraft may be the first game ever that is infinitely replayable because the placement of every block in the world is unique. You only limit is your imagination. And playing with friends to build epic machines or structures is just an amazing feeling!

When I discovered how well mojang designed redstone (components not circuits!) that was when it sealed the deal. This is truly a masterpiece, mojang may have been slow with updates and bugs but one thing you could always count on was they would foster the community and give us new tools periodically to build even cooler things out of. I stil remember the thrill when hoppers/droppers came out. Over the space of 2 weeks I got on my prototypes single player game and redesigned every garden until I had invented a lot of automatic varieties.

This is the sort of thing I want to continue. I doubt these nice updates will be free, but I hope they continue, are relevant and in the spirit of minecraft, and are reasonably priced. I, for one, could see minecraft doing a deal where they realize slow but very thorough and nice updates on the cheap for maybe 2.50 per update. This would make them their billions back in no time, and I already know I'd be willing to pay for every one. If I see micro-purchases appear in-game I'm gonna burn things though...I doubt MS is that stupid though. I also expect MS to design and host their own santioned servers, worlds, projects, and forums/communities. If they play this right, a company like microsoft could really do a lot and give this community even nicer tools to do what we've always done. I, for one, hope they focus less on squeezing money out of the existing game and more on encouraging the nascent merchandizing, movie deals, and other things that have emerged.

A lot of existing services and companies make free money off mojang because mojang didn't care to sue them. Also, about 1/2 of players have pirated minecraft. legal copies are at 54 million, the 3rd biggest game ever according to an article I read, but I'd guess there's probably over 100 million players that pirated and play cracked servers or LAN, especially in places like china or overseas. It was just so easy to do with mojang being indie, not caring about money, and especially during beta when all those free executables were drifting around and offline mode. You didn't even need to know how to change any files to do it (I didn't but noticed this). If all microsoft does is crack down on pirating and make it harder to do it and still get the new content, they might get a flood of new users who have always played the game but never ponied up the money. We won't see this at all owning legal copies, but it'll make minecraft hundreds of millions. They probably will also insist on royalties now from companies that use minecraft to make money, and there are a lot. For instance, loads of servers and youtubers that make money off it for free. I'm guessing microsoft will find a way to protect their copyright better and get some of that. There is a LOT of money in minecraft. However, most of the money is above and below legal players. I'm guessing we won't feel changes for a while until Minecraft 2 with 64-bit graphics comes out or something. haha! There's a lot of improvement possible in minecraft as evidenced by the thousands of mods ppl play. I'm surprised Mojang didn't design 32 and 64-bit graphics textures and just add a slider to set the resolution you wanted. They kept saying they were protecting their players with older computers, but come on! Just add a slider to let the players choose. How hard right? And half the people I know use modded texture packs because of this. Probably one of microsoft's first moves will be to design their own, very nice, texture pack for a small fee.

Quote from sdrogheggiante»

Hey you! You want the 1.9 update? Pay 15 dollars! It's a dlc!

Pretty much how it's going to be going... the community might not be dead, but if Microsoft messes up... it will slowly start to degenerate... and what are we going to do if all the minecraft youtubers can't upload anymore! ;_;

Quote from Dulciphi»

The fear is definitely real but that doesn't automatically make it legitimate. Fear is not a good basis for decision making. We need more information.