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Minecraft creator banks $350k a day, turns down job offers from Valve and Bungie

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Re: Minecraft creator banks $350k a day, turns down job offers from Valve and Bungie

#121

Post by kscaldef »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #55
twymer wrote: post #8

Valve: "We heard you were making $350k/day, how would you like a job making $50k/year?"

a: he doesn't make $350k every day b: valve pays well north of $50k/year c: valve likely has profit sharing of some variety, which could be quite substantial d: likely valve wouldn't just hire him but would purchase his company, giving him a several million dollar lump sum payment Factor that in with the temptation to use valve's resources in developing your game, it's not such a bad deal. Nevertheless, if one is mak…

You still don't need many of those $350k days before you can comfortably "retire" (or whatever we're calling it when you have enough money to live off it forever)

Re: Minecraft creator banks $350k a day, turns down job offers from Valve and Bungie

#122

Post by ptomato »

henrikschroder wrote: post #65
9ec4c12949a4f3 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He'll be fine if he gets a financial planner and keeps running a business. He should start a business or foundation. Healthcare concerns are done away with because all your company really gives you with it's health care is the fact they've purchased into a group-policy with some company... you could do the same with your extended group of friends if you can organize the thing. 350k/day = 7 years of 50k/year. If he pu…

Pay attention to the article if you're commenting on it. Healthcare is done away with because of where he lives.

He's also going to pay roughly 60% of everything he's made so far in taxes.

Re: Minecraft creator banks $350k a day, turns down job offers from Valve and Bungie

#123

Post by henrikschroder »

studer wrote: post #104
henrikschroder wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean health care? Look again where he's living.

Public health care doesn't mean that nobody pays for it. Since he's not employed by anyone else, it's part of the ~15% in mandatory fees that he'll end up paying in addition to the ordinary income tax.

1) The grandparent argument that being employed would be great because of health care benefits assumes that the creator of Minecraft lives in the US. If he had bothered to read the first sentence of the actual article, he would have discovered that this is not the case. In this place, we read the articles before commenting.

2) What 15% fees? Health care in Sweden is financed through regional income tax.

Re: Minecraft creator banks $350k a day, turns down job offers from Valve and Bungie

#124

Post by points »

studer wrote: post #104
henrikschroder wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean health care? Look again where he's living.

Public health care doesn't mean that nobody pays for it. Since he's not employed by anyone else, it's part of the ~15% in mandatory fees that he'll end up paying in addition to the ordinary income tax.

I think the parents point was that health care in Europe is substantially cheaper than in the US. We pay similar rates of tax to in the US, but get Healthcare in that as well.

Re: Minecraft creator banks $350k a day, turns down job offers from Valve and Bungie

#125

Post by ianbishop »

clistctrl wrote: post #14

I get the impression that this game was built because he wanted to build something he himself would enjoy, not something he could become rich off. Maybe there's something to that philosophy ;)

It was actually created for a (for fun/ego) contest. People had such a positive reaction to the early version that he just continued to build onto it.

He also is responsible for Left 4k Dead (another contest entry) if you remember that from a year or so ago.

Re: Minecraft creator banks $350k a day, turns down job offers from Valve and Bungie

#126

Post by blasdel »

steveklabnik wrote: post #110
varjag wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

..so that's why it renders like a hog ;)

While I agree that this should be downvoted, just be aware that there is some truth to this: Minecraft makes my current generation (well, technically last, but the 13" model barely changed) MacBook Pro run hot enough that I cannot leave it on my lap. The only other thing that makes it do this is encoding video; I'm not really sure why, exactly. There is a decent amount of background processing going on, but it's limi…

On the contrary — it's enterely because of the graphics style and atomically destructible environment. Voxels are hard.

Re: Minecraft creator banks $350k a day, turns down job offers from Valve and Bungie

#127

Post by city41 »

SwellJoe wrote: post #94
ojbyrne wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that the Lightweight Java Game Library is seeing a spike in downloads.

I hate Java and I haven't done any game development since I was a kid, and I thought, "Hmm...I should check that out!"

It's a well written library, however it's not an engine or a framework. All it does is enable OpenGL, OpenAL and game pads in Java. The LWJGL team just calls it an "enabling" library.

Re: Minecraft creator banks $350k a day, turns down job offers from Valve and Bungie

#128

Post by derefr »

ido wrote: post #61
derefr wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, a good programmer can just treat Java as an object code format, compiling it in their heads from something like Scala or Clojure. The real problem isn't that Java is spent, it's that (most) Java programmers are dorky. I avoid the language mainly to avoid associating with the community.

Funny, the java community is one of the best and most helpful I've encountered. Much better experience than I've had with the supposedly enlightened lisp community. Also, Markus programs in straight java, not scala or clojure.

I didn't mean to imply that Notch doesn't program directly in Java—just that, like a C programmer writing assembler will write assembler with C conventions (like almost always passing parameters on the stack, etc.), a programmer who knows [any other non-Blub language] writing Java will think of things in terms of higher-order functions, duck-types, etc., then just type it in in a way java understands (many small anonymous classes, wide hierarchies supporting simple interfaces, etc.)

Let me restate the problem another way: there are many more programmers who only know Java, than programmers who only know [other language X]. Single-language programmers usually aren't familiar with very much theory, and don't know any design-pattern-like abstractions, borrowed from intrinsic features of other languages, that they can put in place instead of just writing tedious, repetitive, dorky (er, I mean, "enterprise") code. 90% of Java's libraries are very, erm, "enterprise."

Re: Minecraft creator banks $350k a day, turns down job offers from Valve and Bungie

#129

Post by rikthevik »

SwellJoe wrote: post #98
msie wrote: post #40

Good news: Indie developers can still get rich doing what they love. Bad news: You will probably not be one of them. ;-)

Best news: You probably can make a pretty good living, even if you don't get rich.

That's a great sentiment. I'm not interested in getting super rich, I'd just like to do interesting work and have some freedom in my life. Hopefully that's not too much to ask.

Re: Minecraft creator banks $350k a day, turns down job offers from Valve and Bungie

#130

Post by nl »

jeff18 wrote: post #78
jokermatt999 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also the advantage of them taking care of the business side. Reading some of his recent updates seems to indicate that the past few weeks have been spent dealing with administrative duties like lawyers, servers, and hiring. Were he to take them up on their offer, that could all be taken care of for him, if we wanted (I'm guessing). I'm happy that he's decided to stay independent, but I think Valve could actua…

With just a few days of revenue, Notch could retain world class accountants, lawyers, and sys-admins for years. :)

Well accountants & sys-admins maybe. Have you seen legal fees?
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