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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

#391

Post by mikkom »

pdpi wrote: post #322
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…

> It certainly doesn't seem like the ending provided disproportionate value to Mojang compared to the work of their staff. Notch’s choice to make it hard to skip/speed up the text scrolling suggests that he thought it had disproportionate value.

And that's why he paid 20000 euros for it, right?

I don't understand what this guy is complaining about to be honest.

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

#393

Post by nirui »

> Infinity pool; car lift; cinema; iPad-controlled fountains; a full-size replica of James Dean’s motorbike; candy room… The toilets (in all fifteen bathrooms) cost over five grand each. (Featuring Tornado Flushing! Just $5,600!)

Talking about why I'm not hard at work... Nothing mentioned on the list motives me towards money at all. Just take a look of the photo of the house, I don't want to live in a place like that even if I have the money. And the motorbike? Dude, have you read the news about organ donations today?

The End Poem (https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/End_Poem) was the only text in the game that I completely read through. It rolls up, and I sat there read the entire thing. I'm the kind of guy who starts to load another game while the ending cut scene is still playing. GLaDOS starts to sing again? Time to load up Left 4 Dead and find a server. And yet, I read the entire End Poem of Minecraft.

That text makes me feel that somebody behind Minecraft actually cares, understands and put hopes in their game to make people inspired. It's kind sad that the truth comes up to be this.

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

#394

Post by mikkom »

xnorswap wrote: post #141
naet wrote: post #85

I kinda feel like this guy is overstating his contribution to Minecraft. It's nice to have an end screen message, but that isn't what drove the value of the game and could have easily been replaced by something else. Rule #1 of getting paid for your work is don't do a bunch of work without signing a contract first. Even if you're an artist. I highly doubt he could have released that poem on his own and turned it into…

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…

> The idea that just because there isn't a written contract that he magically retains the rights

There is a written contract. They agreed on the price on email and he then took the money.

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

#395

Post by SkeuomorphicBee »

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 think this is a very important quote from the author:

> And I finally got round to reading the original contract, the one I didn’t sign.

> And… Jesus Christ. It was worse than I’d even imagined. It was horrible.

> The contract was for a comprehensive buyout, signing away all my rights forever, which was exactly the thing I’d told Carl that I never did with my work.

So the fact that he kept the money does say that he agreed to write the piece for that amount of money, but it doesn't say anything about under which terms, and the terms is where they disagree. The money transfer says nothing about what rights do Mojang have over the piece and what rights the writer have over the piece.

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

#397

Post by mcv »

s3000 wrote: post #289
mcv wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

There was something similar with the soundtrack of Doom Eternal [1]. They were also about to get paid billions by Microsoft and didn't pay the composer. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33532078

That story sounds way worse. Mick Gordon seemed to understand the business side better than the people at Id he was talking to. That's more of a sad story of a guy being treated poorly by an incompetent/malicious company steamrolling over him, throwing him under the bus, refusing to listen to reason, and doubling down every step of the way with no justice in sight.

Julian's story is more a story of a misunderstood artist caring more about the art than the money, mistaking contract work for friendship, struggling with the consequences, hating himself for it, and finally coming to terms with it.

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

#398

Post by nl »

rippercushions wrote: post #69
nl wrote: post #4

This is a great (long!) piece. I think one important thing for people on HN here is this: > I think Carl, with his background as a Corporate Finance guy, seeing the world through that filter, must have believed that I was trying to blackmail them; trying to maximise my revenue, like the “rational agents” that populate economics textbooks; that I was refusing to sign it to hold up the deal, because I wanted to get pai…

The main takeaway here is that you definitely should not interact with a corporation as anything other than rational economic actor, because while people have motivations, corporations only have one: money.

I think you are sort of missing the point.

Read what the tattoo he got at the end of the story says.

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

#399

Post by BlueTemplar »

dcow wrote: post #162
Moru wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mojang was not a tiny indie company though, it already sold millions of copies before the release. Yes, he should have let his agent negotiate the contract. Do what you are good at and let others do what they are good at.

One can both be a small indie studio and also have sold multiple millions of copies of their game. Indie simply means you don't have a publisher. And Mojan didn't.

Then Activision-Blizzard is indie.

You have to at least put a floor on that thing or you fall completely afoul of the common meaning.

My rule of thumb would be less than $1 million spent before the first public release ? (Which I assume makes Minecraft indie ?)

Now another question is whether you can even call indie those games being advertised and distributed by Steam (or any other platform) where developers are overwelmingly dependent on that platform for like 95%+ of their sales (including keys from third party websites still for that platform) - because dealing with advertisers and distributors was also an extremely important part of the job when games still came in boxes !

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