Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

online.wsj.com

111–120 of 273 posts

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#111
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Notch's perspective is that Minecraft as an IP is worth more than that. He can probably ride it out for the next couple decades with sequels or other monetization techniques. Why take the big payment today when you can have the bigger payment on-going? Especially if you want to continue to make it your life's work. Look at some gaming stars from the past. John Romero didn't "make us his bitch" with his post iD…

It seems to me that the one-trick pony nature of the gaming business is more reason to take a big payout upfront. $2bn is fuck you money for the rest of your life. Who knows if the Minecraft IP will even be worth anything a few years from now?

41 year old you might regret 31 year old you taking you out of the game. A lot of the type-A people who dominate the coding and business worlds might not be happy with just one big paycheck while they watch their peers continue on.

I can't imagine Bill Gates selling MS in '86. He wanted to build an empire.

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#112
My kid loves it, but I'm the one who has to deal with the mods and the shitty YouTube videos and ad-filled garbage forums made by a community that's somehow never heard of GitHub.

Hopefully Microsoft can reign in all of that crap and make the game less of a nightmare to maintain.

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#113
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it fair to say that once you achieve "FU money", numbers start to lose their value? I can't imagine being able to say "no" to something like that. Although likely for something like Minecraft, it'd be stock options/cash mix.

It is important to remember that PV calculations are pretty easy to do, and help bring the FU money back to reality. For instance if Minecraft sells 10,000 copies a day (as someone else said) that is $100m a year. Assuming other platforms add up to the same that is $200m a year. At an 8% interest rate that is worth $2.5 billion assuming it continues forever. It is worth $1.3 billion if it only happens for 10 years.

... and in a month a new game comes out and minecrafters realise this is what minecraft should have been all along ...

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#114

My kid loves it, but I'm the one who has to deal with the mods and the shitty YouTube videos and ad-filled garbage forums made by a community that's somehow never heard of GitHub. Hopefully Microsoft can reign in all of that crap and make the game less of a nightmare to maintain.

Thank you for making me realize I'm not the only crotchety old bastard who bitches and moans about this! My kids are old enough to play Minecraft but too young to understand how to install mods.

Speaking of that, I've looked into the mod making scene and it's rather disgusting. Mojang really dropped the ball by not having an official way to write mods/plugins. Instead we get a horrible client side mod environment (Minecraft Forge), and a half decent server side (Bukkit), but they're not compatible with each other. Bravo Mojang!

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#115

I smell franchise with movie rights, books, etc. I can imagine it being like Star Wars in a couple years.

People keep bring up movies and books, so... honestly curious - about what? A Minecraft movie makes about as much sense as a movie about Battleship, and we saw how well that did...

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#116

For people under a certain age, minecraft is the Internet. If handled correctly, it will be Facebook, email, Skype and damn near everything else to an entire generation of users. Notch didn't really see it. He created the metaverse.

I think about this often actually. It really could be what second life and lots of other platforms really wanted to be. I think if and when the modding api that they have been promising ever comes out it really could be the metaverse, or at least OASIS.

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it fair to say that once you achieve "FU money", numbers start to lose their value? I can't imagine being able to say "no" to something like that. Although likely for something like Minecraft, it'd be stock options/cash mix.

I don't have any "FU money", but it seems very likely to me that once you have that sort of money, there are only a couple of reasons to run it up any further: 1) You have "Big Plans" that need funding (eg. Elon Musk) 2) Running up the numbers as a life gamification to "beat" your peers, or just because you can't stop chasing yourself, like one of those freak beast weightlifters that looks like a space monster but is…

Or maybe:

3) you don't want the project to lose its integrity/vision. The dollar amount matters less than finding a fitting buyer at a good enough price.

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#118
post #78

Great! I'm going start writing a Clippy mod for Minecraft so I'm zero-day prepared for the purchase. In this mod, Clippy runs around dropping random notes that give players worthless hints about how to play the game. "Did you know . . .!"

That stopped being funny 10 years ago. Microsoft will also close the game for any modding so...

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#119

My kid loves it, but I'm the one who has to deal with the mods and the shitty YouTube videos and ad-filled garbage forums made by a community that's somehow never heard of GitHub. Hopefully Microsoft can reign in all of that crap and make the game less of a nightmare to maintain.

Thank you Freshyill and JWN! I nearly ripped my hair out trying to keep the Minecraft, Forge, and the JVM in sync version-wise for the Pixelmon mod. I tried upgrading just one of them and the Pixelmon mod silently failed.

Of course the forums are a Wild Wild West of inconsistent solutions that make me feel like Druidic incantations would be just as effective.

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have any "FU money", but it seems very likely to me that once you have that sort of money, there are only a couple of reasons to run it up any further: 1) You have "Big Plans" that need funding (eg. Elon Musk) 2) Running up the numbers as a life gamification to "beat" your peers, or just because you can't stop chasing yourself, like one of those freak beast weightlifters that looks like a space monster but is…

How much would taxes take out of it though? An offer of 2 billion dollars is not equivalent to getting 2 billion in your bank account.

When you are dealing in billions, you don't pay taxes.
Post reply on HN