Minecraft creator Markus ‘Notch’ Persson on leaving Mojang: ‘It’s not about the money. It’s about my sanity’

Markus "Notch" Persson was just a small, unknown indie developer when he first created Minecraft. As a result of the game's booming success, Persson quickly rose to stardom in the gaming industry — an idol for indie developers everywhere — despite never really seeing himself "as a real game developer." 

"I make games because it’s fun, and because I love games and I love to program, but I don’t make games with the intention of them becoming huge hits, and I don’t try to change the world," Persson explained in a blog post titled I'm leaving Mojang (Pastebin).

"Minecraft certainly became a huge hit, and people are telling me it’s changed games. I never meant for it to do either. It’s certainly flattering, and to gradually get thrust into some kind of public spotlight is interesting."

In the post, Persson reflected on a number of things — mostly reasons why he doesn't feel he'll fit in with Microsoft.

"A relatively long time ago, I decided to step down from Minecraft development. Jens was the perfect person to take over leading it, and I wanted to try to do new things. At first, I failed by trying to make something big again, but since I decided to just stick to small prototypes and interesting challenges, I’ve had so much fun with work. I wasn’t exactly sure how I fit into Mojang where people did actual work, but since people said I was important for the culture, I stayed.

"I was at home with a bad cold a couple of weeks ago when the internet exploded with hate against me over some kind of EULA situation that I had nothing to do with. I was confused. I didn’t understand. I tweeted this in frustration. Later on, I watched the This is Phil Fish video on YouTube and started to realize I didn’t have the connection to my fans I thought I had. I’ve become a symbol. I don’t want to be a symbol, responsible for something huge that I don’t understand, that I don’t want to work on, that keeps coming back to me. I’m not an entrepreneur. I’m not a CEO. I’m a nerdy computer programmer who likes to have opinions on Twitter."

Persson confirmed that after the deal is finalized, he will leave Mojang and "go back to doing Ludem Dares and small web experiments." He said that if he ever "accidentally" makes something that starts to gain traction, he'll "probably abandon it immediately."

"Considering the public image of me already is a bit skewed, I don’t expect to get away from negative comments by doing this, but at least now I won’t feel a responsibility to read them.   I’m aware this goes against a lot of what I’ve said in public. I have no good response to that.

"I’m also aware a lot of you were using me as a symbol of some perceived struggle. I’m not. I’m a person, and I’m right there struggling with you.

"I love you. All of you. Thank you for turning Minecraft into what it has become, but there are too many of you, and I can’t be responsible for something this big. In one sense, it belongs to Microsoft now. In a much bigger sense, it’s belonged to all of you for a long time, and that will never change."

Persson concluded his post by saying "It's not about the money. It's about my sanity." Having said that, I'm sure Markus "Notch" Persson stands to make quite a bit of money from the Microsoft acquisition.