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Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

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Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#221

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.

Why dont you just use something like Tekkit, FeedTheBeast, or ATLauncher? They bundle mods together and its a click and play ordeal. They are essentially just autoconfigs for Forge. I find the most odd thing about minecraft is how much 3rd party adds to the game, but is in no way supported by mojang. Even when Things such as pistons and horses began as mods, and were implemented into the standard game years later. It…

Why would you trust your account data with a 3rd party launcher? Mojang explicitly advises you not to enter your login + password into non-official launchers.

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#222
post #208
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not when you have a hit as big as Minecraft. Kids growing up with Minecraft today will still be playing it nostalgically 30-40 years from now.

Yes, but Minecraft is not a lego - you do not need to buy newer sets. You buy it once and you own infinity of it. The only reason to buy another Minecraft is when new incompatible hardware becomes the norm.

> Yes, but Minecraft is not a lego - you do not need to buy newer sets.

Minecraft the game does not generate a continuous income after the initial sales, but recently they started an official multiplayer server hosting service (called "Minecraft realms"). You can buy a private server for $10 per month.

Given that Minecraft is played by a lot of kids whose parents whose parents or themselves do not know how to set up a server, I think this is a very viable monetization strategy, albeit launched a bit late.

Of course, there have been 3rd party commercial hosting services for Minecraft for a long time, but again, it's not something kids and their parents go after.

Hell, I know how to set up a server but I am considering hiring a Minecraft realm for the winter months, just because it is less hassle than setting up a server and the price is reasonable.

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#223

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.

Really hope they do not wreck Mincraft as much as they wrecked Skype....

Skype was secure and impossible to TAP. Now it is tapped by the NSA.

Skype had a nice and clean UI. Now it's confusing as shit. Crashes. It has ads...

What kind of turd will Microsoft turn Minecraft into.

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#224
post #32

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?

Agreed. I can only assume that MS are going to insist on a sequel with all of the 'NextGen' trappings we've come to expect from them. Minecraft2: MasterChief Edition. With Kinect! And day1 DLC! And product placement... (Use the new MTN DEW powerup to double your building speed! Feed your animals DORITOS to improve their stats!) Good for Markus and the Mojang guys though... they built a multi-billion-dollar empire out…

There's two obvious monetization strategies that I can think of.

The first one they're already doing: that's a commercial server hosting service (Minecraft Realms).

The other one is bringing mods to the console versions as paid DLC. Mods are popular on PC (but miserable to install and maintain) but I don't know if there are any modding options for the console versions. At least the Android Pocket Edition doesn't seem to have any modding options.

Well, there's a third strategy but I don't think they'll go that way. Pay real money for getting some in-game goods or consumables. I don't think this would work very well, because it seems like people really like grinding for hours in search of the elusive diamond blocks. I certainly do :)

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you are dealing in billions, you don't pay taxes.

Oh come on . Not even gonna bother to ask you to back that up.

I'm not sure why he got downvoted so muh. Just read all the threads about Amazon, Starbucks, Google, Vodafone, etc etc who manage to make fucking loads of money while also operating at minimal profit this avoiding / evading large amounts of tax.

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#226
post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notch is Swedish isn't he?

IKEA is Swedish as you get, and it's technically a dutch charity.

Technically it's controlled by a Dutch not-for-profit organisation (not a charity)

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#227
post #136
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…

> Of course you can always just throw money away/at people, but it won't do any good. "Give a man a fish" vs. "teach a man to fish." Yes, throwing fish at the poorest is the right thing to do. Malnourished children grow with diminished intellectual capacity. Then it is too late to teach them to fish.

Better teach the people not to produce children if they can't nourish them.

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#228

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?

Nextgen Minecraft could be a XboxOne exclusive maybe as a launch title with whatever VR/AR device MS is supposedly working on. So, I could buy the Oculus that works only on a super-powered gaming PC that costs more than I make in a month, or the Sony Morpheus product which I'm sure will be great, but Sony won't have Minecraft, they'll have Playstation Home II. MS will have Minecraft. Which one will kids buy? I'm gues…

Minecraft is not ideal for VR in the near future because it's a game where you run around which causes simulator sickness for a significant percentage of the population.

VR is better suited for other types of games, especially those were you are inside a cockpit and your avatar is sitting just like you are in real life.

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#229
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why dont you just use something like Tekkit, FeedTheBeast, or ATLauncher? They bundle mods together and its a click and play ordeal. They are essentially just autoconfigs for Forge. I find the most odd thing about minecraft is how much 3rd party adds to the game, but is in no way supported by mojang. Even when Things such as pistons and horses began as mods, and were implemented into the standard game years later. It…

Why would you trust your account data with a 3rd party launcher? Mojang explicitly advises you not to enter your login + password into non-official launchers.

The 3rd party launchers are a generation or two ahead of the stock launcher, historically the risk is about zero, and the gain is immense.

Technically, CPM 2.2 is much more secure than windows 8.1 but its not sweeping the market.

Re: Microsoft Near Deal to Buy Minecraft Maker Mojang

#230
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My familiarity with notch is only superficial: we met in person 3 times, once before MC got big, once when it was starting to get big, and once after it was already big. Before that we used to hang out in the same game dev irc/forum circles and chatted on occasion there. I won't pretend that makes me really know him as a person but I can say I've never got the impression he cares much about empire and/or massive ego…

He's made public comments to that effect as well, just not quite as bluntly.. But close.
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