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

theeggandtherock.substack.com

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

#271

Post by VoodooJuJu »

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…

>Did the twenty-five staff put in 5x or 6x the work? It seems likely

Ah, if only we were paid proportionate to how hard we worked. Stay-at-home moms and janitors would be billionaires.

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

#272

Post by Jarwain »

ohbtvz wrote: post #95
whatshisface wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you call asking for nothing entitlement?

Is he asking for nothing? Half of the post is about how Mojang got millions then billions and he got nothing. If he's not asking for what he considers to be his share of the pie, then I don't know what the whole post is about.

To me the post is about how he wrote a story for a friend, that friend didn't treat him like a friend, and how he was hurt by that. It sounds like the post was about letting him vent his pain and frustration and reach some level of emotional catharsis, as well as officially releasing the story to the public domain.

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

#274

Post by Karellen »

mcv wrote: post #226
spuz wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My interpretation of the legal status is that the author is entitled to accept the €20k as payment for his time but that amount doesn't constitute payment for the copyright of the work. Mojang subsequently wanted to purchase that copyright and hence why they sent the contract for £1 to be signed. Julian believed the copyright was worth more and so rejected the offer. All that is to say that if my interpretation is co…

> Mojang subsequently wanted to purchase that copyright and hence why they sent the contract for £1 to be signed. That is the move by Mojang that I didn't understand. They were about to be paid 2.5 billion. Why not offer 1 million for the signed contract? They could easily afford that, and with his financial troubles at the time, Julian would probably have signed it. And he'd have missed out on his subsequent persona…

> Why not offer 1 million for the signed contract?

Because they believed (erroneously or not) that they already had paid for the thing the contract was about, and were offering a "peppercorn" payment for the signature itself to make the exchange complete.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppercorn_(law)

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

#275

Post by orlp »

robertlagrant wrote: post #189
cmeacham98 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Indeed. The game would've made $0 less had the ending just said "The End".

I've never even looked at the poem and have beaten Minecraft many times. I'm probably not the target audience though, I generally skip quest text in games.

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

#276

Post by zimpenfish »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #215
mgrthrow wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of times I've been told I don't believe my beliefs because they don't make rational economic sense is innumerable. I'm happy when my tax rate goes up. This apparently really bothers people. (Me being happy about it.)

I don’t think it’s weird that people don’t behave “rationally” in the crude sense of that word[1]. But it seems really weird to be happy about your tax rate going up. Consider the alternative: for example, you could give the money to charity that works in developing countries. So there seems to be two explanations: (1) Either you consider yourself prodigal and want an authority to take care of your spending for you.…

> Consider the alternative: for example, you could give the money to charity that works in developing countries.

Why not both? I am happy for my tax rates to go up - indeed, I will vote for any political party that advocates this - and donate to developing countries (and also food banks in the UK because we are shamefully bad at being a developed country.)

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

#277

Post by the_gipsy »

vintermann wrote: post #135
63 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a bit of a shame but it seems like it's been used as an opportunity to bring in new people and ideas to the game and I appreciate that. Pigstep is a banger.

Agreed on Pigstep, but I bet Raine would have liked to have kept the extended rights Rosenfeld got, only she can't afford to refuse, probably. I also got to say, although Pigstep as a record is great, and Raine's music for Celeste is terrific, the new in-game ambient music doesn't hold up to Rosenfeld's.

Some of the new pieces do hold up, but some sound obviously out of place - IMHO.

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

#278

Post by Jarwain »

operator-name wrote: post #184
colonwqbang wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the part I'm thinking of > Early next year, Markus earned a three-million-dollar dividend on his shares in Mojang. But, as the actual value of his company, which he mostly owned, had gone up by many tens of millions, he figured he didn’t really need another three million on top. So he divided it between the twenty-five staff at Mojang, as a late Christmas bonus. That’s $120,000 each. Five or six times what I…

Or he's upset that he didn't even hear from Notch at all at this point? That at the success of the game he felt forgotten for his contribution and was using this as an example of other contributors being kept in mind? I'm speculating, but having known "artists", some of them think very differently to the average HN crowd.

Never before has the HN bubble been so clear to me before reading the comments of this post.

He outright says it in the article, about how it wasn't about the money. If it was, there are more effective ways of going about getting that compensation than putting the story into the public domain

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

#279

Post by Karellen »

cmeacham98 wrote: post #249
mcv wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One side sees it as the start of a friendship, the other as a work contract. It certainly feels a bit like he was feeling lonely and needed to see this as a friendship. I'm sure there was a deep artistic connection, but that's not quite the same thing as a friendship. It's awkward and frustrating when only one side sees a relationship as a friendship.

It's possible this is true, but then the author needs to stop acting like they are totally blameless and everything is just where the universe took him. All of the author's problems here are self-inflicted.

Where does the author act like they are totally blameless?
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