I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you • Hacker News Board

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#201

Post by hnbad » Thu, Dec 08, 2022, 9:07 AM UTC

Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #40

I feel for the guy, making a living off of art is difficult. However, with an extensive email chain explaining the story was written as the ending of Minecraft, even going into detail about how it was to be displayed in game, an agreed upon offer (if a bit vague), and then an exchange of funds - with no immediate attempt to return said funds. I'm no lawyer, but that sounds a lot like a legally binding agreement. > So…

I don't know about Swedish law but in German law works created outside of an employment contract do not automatically assign an exclusive copyright to the buyer, so at best Mojang had a non-exclusive, non-transferrable, limited usage right for the poem for the use in Minecraft and nothing else. As I understand it, this makes his claim that Microsoft may not have the right to use it questionable but it confirms his main point that they don't own it. Given that the author is German, this seems relevant.

For what it's worth, this often comes as a surprise even to many German creators who are not aware of this because intuitively if you get paid to create something "for" someone, you sell them your rights to it. But in reality that requires an explicit contract spelling this out. A typical example is professional photographers actually only selling you prints of the photos they take for you, or a design agency not giving you the source files for designs they create for you.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#202

Post by Gatsky » Thu, Dec 08, 2022, 9:09 AM UTC

Well I enjoyed the piece. But it evinces a kind of derangement unique to modern life. Minecraft became so popular, and worth so much money, that the author couldn’t get over it.

Another example is that guy who threw away a hard drive with his bitcoin wallet on it, now worth $200 million or something like that. He can’t move on. Last I heard he was trying to finance a plan to exhume an acre of landfill and sort through it all by hand.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#203

Post by bearmode » Thu, Dec 08, 2022, 9:09 AM UTC

So he was commissioned to write 9 minutes of scrolling text (but which would undoubtedly be able to be read quicker if just presented with the prose all at once), and was paid around €20,000?

And he thinks something's unfair here for some reason?

Also he appears to think the ending was even particularly important in Minecraft, that writing 9 minutes of text is worth years of art and development work. That's odd.

>The friendship is more important than the money.

This is insane, he didn't know these people!

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#204

Post by operator-name » Thu, Dec 08, 2022, 9:10 AM UTC

FamosoRandom wrote: post #195

operator-name wrote: post #170

This has also been posted to the Minecraft subreddit, where is has received a lot of positive attention from the community: https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/zf8ye0/i_wrote_t...

This is really interesting to compare both general opinion on HN and on this subreddit. On HN, a place probably filled with technical guys, people are generaly putting themselves in dev shoes. They are accusing the author of feeling entitled to more money because he felt like he was part of the team and that he think his work is equaly important as the work of everyone else. Devs being devs generaly know that coding…

It's a bit sad because I think many here are missing the lesson to be learnt - artists want to be treated as artists (with emotion rather than rationality). When you treat them as cold hearted rational contractors, this kind of mess occurs.

I'm reminded of a similar event with the Doom soundtrack https://medium.com/@mickgordon/my-full-statement-regarding-d...

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#205

Post by Scaevolus » Thu, Dec 08, 2022, 9:11 AM UTC

Contracts, eh? Three people got a cut of the $2B buyout, some random contractor doing a bit of writing for the game isn't going to get anything. I made the game _playable_ for a huge number of people by optimizing the save format (MCRegion) and doing the first implementation of Unicode text, probably affecting the exponential growth rate a bit, but I understand that my contribution amounted to a few weeks of work, explicitly agreed on not doing it for money, and moved on with life.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#206

Post by nigamanth » Thu, Dec 08, 2022, 9:11 AM UTC

cmeacham98 wrote: post #183

pgsandstrom wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im honestly chocked that people react so negatively to this piece. Yes, the author expresses many negative and self centered emotions. He is very clear about that. It is part of the story. It is a story about being a flawed person. I sympathize with him. I loved this piece. I hope he truly did let go of all the hangups he described. And it does seem that he actually did sell the the rights of use to microsoft, making…

My biggest problem with the post is the massive ego the author seems to have about the impact and importance of their writing. To be frank, the author made little to no meaningful contributions to Minecraft's success. The author is so self-centered they belittle the contributions of other Mojang employees and seem to genuinely believe their contribution is on the same level as people like Jeb and C418. They literally…

Sure, Minecraft would have still sold as much if the ending screen said "You won" or much simply "The end".

But, he did still put in the effort in creating the poem. Every part of the game matters, and I think it's fair if he gets paid or at-least gets credit for his contributions to the game.

I understand the author being hurt as he's one of the 5 people that contributed to the game, he just needed the credit or any little token of appreciation from Minecraft. The author asked Markus to mention something he refused, which is kind of the author's fault for not signing a contract, but it's still sad.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#207

Post by strken » Thu, Dec 08, 2022, 9:11 AM UTC

peter422 wrote: post #179

xnorswap wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, the odd twist in this story was that he was paid for his work. I was expecting a story about how he was still chasing his money to this day. I'm fairly sure that no credible lawyer would give him the time of the day if he did try to get more now. He did work, he accepted money for that work and only later he thinks he's entitled to more and wants to re-negotiate. I don't know about his jurisdiction, but here…

If it were so cut and dry they wouldn't have chased his signature years later before the acquisition. A lawyer told them to do that. I think it's more interesting of a legal case than you give it credit for. He isn't denying he was paid for his time but that the rights for the finished work are still ambiguous.

If the chance of a legal case going against Microsoft is 0.1% (e.g. his case is really bad), the estimated damages in such a case are enormous (I have no idea what they would be, but e.g. a tiny payment for every copy of Minecraft would be an enormous sum), and the cost of sending him an email is a couple of hundred dollars worth of legal counsel, then why wouldn't they chase him for a signature?

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#208

Post by cobertos » Thu, Dec 08, 2022, 9:11 AM UTC

lelanthran wrote: post #163

Quoted post unavailable.

He mentions that there were only five people actually on the actual dev team _at launch_? Notch, C418 (music), Jeb (only coder at launch), Kristoffer Zetterstrand (ingame paintings), and him (ending). He said only 25 people were staff at the time as well. I am truly curious who they were and what their roles were.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#209

Post by true_religion » Thu, Dec 08, 2022, 9:12 AM UTC

kergonath wrote: post #155

papa2034 wrote: post #128

I have a strong feeling MS will put out a statement that they own the end poem and it is not public domain. The author talks about how big the game was/became, but it’s actually irrelevant because no one bought the game because of the poem.

> I have a strong feeling MS will put out a statement that they own the end poem and it is not public domain. I don’t think they would do that. That would be unbelievably stupid from a legal department. The funny thing with this sort of IP in most of Europe (though this could be different in Sweden but I really doubt it) is that nobody except the author can own it. All they can have is an exclusive license. If they a…

It doesn’t matter because they have a license to use the work, which is all they have been doing. They aren’t running around saying it’s their property because no one has asked them that.

Now even though they are put on the spotlight, they don’t really need to do anything.

Re: I liberate the ending to Minecraft from Microsoft and give it to you

#210

Post by nigamanth » Thu, Dec 08, 2022, 9:12 AM UTC

Moru wrote: post #131

colonwqbang wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the whole point that the author thinks he deserves more compensation than he got? He's quoting the compensation for various Mojang employees and comparing it to what he got. He seems quite jelaous and/or entitled. 20000€ would in most European countries be a pretty good compensation for about 3 months of work, after taxes. It doesn't seem unreasonable on the face of it.

It wasn't just 20k, it was also some publicity for his other works which never happened.

Agreed, other companies/video games would have asked him for his stories on their games considering that he'd done it for one of the biggest video games.