Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#151

Post by BashiBazouk » Wed, Sep 10, 2014, 2:45 AM UTC

math0ne wrote: post #128

readerrrr wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone could get control of minecraft that was willing to invest in it's development amazing things could be accomplished. Imagine big budget lego minecraft expansions You don't understand. The whole point of Minecraft is user created stuff. In a Lego-like world, for profit expansions are not needed. The mod community is what has made mc what it is, but it gets no support from the developers. Minecraft is more op…

That is simply not true. Do you have any data to back that up? Other than what I have seen written on it I don't have any hard numbers, but what would mojang be doing with all the money if they had it? I don't think mojang is stockpiling cash. Nitpick, but Minecraft doesn't make it on the top 10. It's currently making over 100ml a year, not sure there are many other franchises that can pull that off. I mean total mon…

For comparison, GTA V grossed almost 2 billion after 7 months (October to May). That's just one game not the entire franchise. The game should have another large bump in sales when it hits next gen consoles and PC this fall.

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#152

Post by db48x » Wed, Sep 10, 2014, 2:47 AM UTC

tstactplsignore wrote: post #105

javert wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet Bill Gates has a hard time finding enough qualified people to wisely manage the money he is giving away. For example, if he has someone in charge of spending money on medical research, don't you think there is a point (a few billion) where they just don't know what else to spend money on? I mean, there are only so many medical researchers in the whole world. Of course you can always just throw money away/at peo…

No, this isn't really true. The NIH's budget is 30 billion a year, and that funding is already incredibly competitive. Private universities, other government sources such as NSF, NASA, and DoE, and private institutions then in addition spend an amount that dwarfs that number. On top of all of that, the last 6 years have seen cuts, layoffs, and an enormous amount of work go unfunded in the life sciences. Only about 16…

If they magically funded all of the grants then there wouldn't be enough scientists to do all the work; there's nothing to say that you can't put in more than one proposal at a time.

Edit: well, of course everyone's salaries would go up since there would be so much more demand and no extra supply, but I doubt they could go up that much all at once; most of the money would still go unspent.

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#153

Post by AJ007 » Wed, Sep 10, 2014, 2:48 AM UTC

robotresearcher wrote: post #97

math0ne wrote: post #94

As an avid minecrafter since the early days I can't help but see this as a good thing. The mod community is what has made mc what it is, but it gets no support from the developers. Minecraft has been so wildly profitable but the company is set up in a way which Mojang the developers get a tiny portion of the profits to re-invest in development. Notch essentially diverts all the money into his own pocket while leaving…

I'm not saying you are wrong about the business structure, but all the money does not stay in Notch's pocket. (story from March 2012) http://www.minecraftforum.net/news/7645-notch-gives-3-millio...

And based on where he lives I assume a huge chunk goes to taxes.

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#154

Post by NegativeK » Wed, Sep 10, 2014, 2:52 AM UTC

arrrg wrote: post #61

mindstab wrote: post #19

I don't get it. Mojang already made "all the money" from selling minecraft and are largely maintaining it now. I haven't heard if they even have any new games on the way? The space one was cancelled. What exactly is MS possibly getting that could be worth $2B?

They still sell around 10k PC copies per day … It’s not growing, but it’s also not exactly shrinking (I remember obsessively checking those stats years ago and they always hovered around 10k), and hasn’t for years. Minecraft might be a different beast than other video games, truly more like Lego than video games actually. There are always new young people you can sell the game to and with constant maintenance for fre…

10,000 copies per day at $26.95? That's nearly $100M per year.

That's a fuck ton of revenue if there are only 40 employees. Growth might not be increasing, but I can't help but see that as a lot of sales.

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#155

Post by firebones » Wed, Sep 10, 2014, 2:57 AM UTC

TillE wrote: post #99

xkarga00 wrote: post #52

I hope they resurrect 0x10c

That's precisely the kind of wildly overambitious project without obvious mass appeal that a large game publisher would never ever support. Which also described Minecraft, of course. But I doubt anyone making decisions at Microsoft would take that gamble.

But it's the kind of thing that a crazy multi-billionaire with time on his hands might just try to pull off.

Really, really wish 0x10c would get a second chance after this, from either side of the transaction. If Minecraft is the baseline measure against which future efforts are compared to determine "success", Notch is likely to face a string of "failures". Might as well make one of these failures that comes up short something you love.

So what IS Notch's second act going to be?

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#156

Post by jebblue » Wed, Sep 10, 2014, 3:13 AM UTC

freshyill wrote: post #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.

People of all ages play and enjoy Minecraft including moi.

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#157

Post by nightcracker » Wed, Sep 10, 2014, 3:14 AM UTC

Pyrodogg wrote: post #146

makomk wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bukkit's dead now anyway. The entire development team decided to call it quits due to legal uncertainty and general exhaustion, then Mojang announced that they weren't allowed to do that because Bukkit was actually owned by Mojang and had a special deal which meant there were no legal issues, contradicting what they'd told people who asked privately. Then one of the main developers got pissed about the fact that he'd…

Craftbukkit was never licensable under the LGPL. From the projects inception, it contained proprietary, closed-source Mojang code used without a license. It's LGPL license was invalid from the start. From the get go we were plagued with issues and obstacles we needed to overcome, one of which we were sadly unable to tackle despite our best efforts: the legal barrier of licensing and permission. When starting the Bukk…

This is not how it works. When you write code, you are the owner unless you sell/disclaim all rights. You can contribute your code under a license, a license DOES NOT TRANSFER RIGHTS. Just because something else went wrong with the licensing of other code in the same project does not mean you lose your rights to the code.

Now, in the bukkit project there's two sources of code:

1. Mojang owned closed-source 2. Contributions made by commiters under the LGPL

Then it was distributed in it's entirely under the LPGL. Source #1 clearly is incompatible with this, and this is an issue. However, this has NOTHING to do with the fact that all contributions were licensed by their rights owners, THE CONTRIBUTORS, under the LPGL.

Just because you contribution was distributed with something that's incompatible with the license it was distributed under does not mean you lose the rights to your code.

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#158

Post by gear54rus » Wed, Sep 10, 2014, 3:14 AM UTC

All these comments saying it's a good thing™ that Microsoft will buy it make me a bit sick. Have you forgotten so easily? It's MICROSOFT. Here are some other users' comments that sum it up:

- Sorry, you can't build any more wood blocks today! Would you like to buy an extra 10 wood blocks for 99 Mojang bucks?

- You Died! (Respawn for $2.99?)

Next thing you know they release sequel as an exclusive for their shitbox

It's incredible luck that such an innovative (not Apple innovative, but really innovative) project is maintained by a company like Mojang. And it needs to stay that way. Being avid player, I really don't want Minecraft to become DRM-infested crap Windows became (still, Windows is a very good day-to-day OS, kudos to them). Not to mention their last attempt at gaming: GFWL (yeah, we all remember that one).

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#159

Post by jebblue » Wed, Sep 10, 2014, 3:15 AM UTC

math0ne wrote: post #94

As an avid minecrafter since the early days I can't help but see this as a good thing. The mod community is what has made mc what it is, but it gets no support from the developers. Minecraft has been so wildly profitable but the company is set up in a way which Mojang the developers get a tiny portion of the profits to re-invest in development. Notch essentially diverts all the money into his own pocket while leaving…

I _never_ use mods not in 3 years of playing Minecraft. There are a lot of us who don't use mods. Your statement is a broad overreach.

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#160

Post by jebblue » Wed, Sep 10, 2014, 3:17 AM UTC

mindstab wrote: post #19

I don't get it. Mojang already made "all the money" from selling minecraft and are largely maintaining it now. I haven't heard if they even have any new games on the way? The space one was cancelled. What exactly is MS possibly getting that could be worth $2B?

They don't need a new game or sequels. 1.8 just came out, it was months in development. All they need to do is come out with releases, some small, some large, add new stuff where it makes sense and as computers and game systems pick up the power to handle the additional computations. This could go on for decades.